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For the Seasons

Haikus
Brief Description
Beverley Farmer is one of our finest prose writers, but her new book, For the Seasons: Haikus, is likely to make her reputation as a poet too. The manuscript of For the Seasons, composed over twenty-five years ago, was rediscovered by the critic and scholar Lyn... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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Beverley Farmer is one of our finest prose writers, but her new book, For the Seasons: Haikus, is likely to make her reputation as a poet too.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Beverley Farmer is one of our finest prose writers, but her new book, For the Seasons: Haikus, is likely to make her reputation as a poet too. The manuscript of For the Seasons, composed over twenty-five years ago, was rediscovered by the critic and scholar Lyn Jacobs after Farmer's death in 2018. The collection has never been published in full before. It joins the three prose works by Farmer Giramondo has now brought back into print: the novels Alone and The Seal Woman and the journal A Body of Water.

The haikus collected in For the Seasons are arranged in sections, beginning with Spring then progressing to Summer and Autumn and ending with Winter. One is immediately struck by the delicacy of Farmer's observations, drawn from her immersion in the coastal landscape around Point Lonsdale on the Bellarine Peninsula in southern Victoria. The constraints imposed by the haiku form encourage attention to the finest details and textures of light and colour, of air and sand and sea and foster an awareness of the transient life they hold, its beauty, vitality and decay. The emotion is all in the detail, the 'I' barely features, yet the mood of the seasons, and their progression is keenly registered. Farmer's poetry is remarkable in this respect, modest, self-effacing, and yet revelatory in its intensity.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781923106567

Publisher: Giramondo Publishing Co

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 01 February 2026

Country: Australia

Imprint: Giramondo Publishing Co

Illustration: Illustrations

DIMENSIONS

Width: 148.0mm

Height: 210.0mm

Weight: 150g

Pages: 118

About the Author

Beverley Farmer (19412018) was the author of four collections of short stories, including Milk, which won the NSW Premier's Award for Fiction; the novels Alone, The Seal Woman and The House in the Light, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award; and the writer's notebook, A Body of Water. Giramondo first published The Bone House, Farmer's collection of essays on the life of the body and the life of the mind in 2005, and This Water: Five Tales in 2017: it was longlisted for the Stella Prize.

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  • A Body of Water
    Winner of the Australian Book Design Award 2021: Best Designed Literary Fiction Cover A new edition of Beverley Farmer's out-of-print classic A Body of Water, which in its mixing of genresโ€”essay, memoir, fiction, folk taleโ€”opened up new frontiers for Australian literature. A Body of Water was first published thirty years ago. The writing of the book takes place over a...
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  • Alone
    A new edition of Beverley Farmer's classic 1980 debut, out of print for many years. Alone captures the emergence of one of Australia's most powerful and distinctive writers. Set in Melbourne in the late 1950s, and taking place over the course of two days and nights, Alone chronicles the feelings of obsession and hopelessness, isolation and desire provoked by the...
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    Portrait of a widow in mourning by one of Australia's most important women writers The Seal Woman was first published to acclaim in 1992 but has been out of print for many years. The novel explores the mind of a middle-aged Danish woman mourning the recent death of her husband at sea, in a cottage lent to her by friends...
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    The three long essays that make up The Bone House are an extended meditation on the life of the body and the life of the mind, each based on a single theme and woven out of the same few elemental symbols of earth, water, fire and blood, light and darkness. What does art know that we do not? How does...
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