I Con: New and Selected Poems represents the best examples of poetry from the career of Tim Thorne, a career spanning over forty years and a dozen collections. It contains something for every area of interest, from delicate love lyrics to witty and sardonic comments on political matters. Arranged in roughly chronological order, the book traces the development of this remarkable poet from the early pieces such as "Star" and "Launceston" with their often raw and violent imagery through to his recent A Letter to Egon Kisch, a major contribution to the epistolary poetic canon in the tradition of Byron and Auden. It also contains a selection of the dramatic monologues from his highly acclaimed The Streets Aren't For Dreamers and a number of the pieces based on Australian history and on Australian paintings written in the 1990s. Among the previously unpublished works included here is his series "Trainstations from European Poets", deliberate mistranslations of well-known anthology pieces, which are not just fun, but contain new insights into old favourites. Deeply personal poems about the death of his mother, about the father he never knew, about his baby daughter and about a friend dying of a heroin overdose avoid sentimentality and forge tough art out of delicate subjects. They sit at perfect ease alongside meditations on Antarctic exploration, on the meeting of Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie or on the Iraq War. I Con does what its title suggests, but you'll be glad it does.

Author Biography

Tim Thorne has written twelve collections of poetry, has edited four anthologies and his poems have appeared in most major Australian literary journals. He established the Tasmanian Poetry Festival and was its Director for 17 years. He has performed his work throughout Australia and overseas, and has worked as a poet in a variety of community contexts. He lives in Launceston, Tasmania, with his wife Stephanie and a large garden.