Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly’s songs are steeped in poetry. And now he has gathered from around the world the poems he loves – poems that have inspired and challenged him over the years, a number of which he has set to music. This wide-ranging and deeply moving anthology combines the ancient and the modern, the hallowed and the profane, the famous and the little known, to speak to two of literature’s great themes that have proven so powerful in his music: love and death – plus everything in between.Here are poems by Yehuda Amichai, W.H. Auden, Tusiata Avia, Hera Lindsay Bird, William Blake, Bertolt Brecht, Constantine Cavafy, Alison Croggon, Mahmoud Darwish, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Ali Cobby Eckermann, James Fenton, Thomas Hardy, Kevin Hart, Gwen Harwood, Seamus Heaney, Philip Hodgins, Homer, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Langston Hughes, John Keats, Ono No Komachi, Maxine Kumin, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Norman MacCaig, Paula Meehan, Czeslaw Milosz, Les Murray, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Ovid, Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Porter, Rumi, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Izumi Shikibu, Warsan Shire, Kenneth Slessor, Wislawa Szymborska, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Ko Un, Walt Whitman, Judith Wright, W.B. Yeats and many more.

This extraordinary book has its genesis in a series of concerts first staged in 2004. Over four nights Paul Kelly performed, in alphabetical order, one hundred of his songs from the previous three decades. In between songs he told stories about them, and from those little tales grew How to Make Gravy, a memoir like no other. Each of its hundred chapters, also in alphabetical order by song title, consists of lyrics followed by a story, the nature of the latter taking its cue from the former. Some pieces are confessional, some tell Kelly's personal and family history, some take you on a road tour with the band, some form an idiosyncratic history of popular music, some are like small essays, some stand as a kind of how-to of the songwriter's art – from the point of inspiration to writing, honing, collaborating, performing, recording and reworking. Paul Kelly is a born storyteller. Give him two verses with a chorus or 550 pages, but he won't waste a word. How to Make Gravy is a long volume that's as tight as a three-piece band. There isn't a topic this man can't turn his pen to – contemporary music and the people who play it, football, cricket, literature, opera, social issues, love, loss, poetry, the land and the history of Australia … there are even quizzes. The writing is insightful, funny, honest, compassionate, intelligent, playful, erudite, warm, thought-provoking. Paul Kelly is a star with zero pretensions, an everyman who is also a renaissance man. He thinks and loves and travels and reads widely, and his musical memoir is destined to become a classic – it doesn't have a bum note on it.

Based on more than 100 interviews with key players, politicians, advisers, and public servants, this is the inside story of how Paul Keating and John Howard changed Australian politics. Capturing the authentic nature of Australian politics, this account chronicles how, despite differences in belief, temperament, and party, Keating and Howard united for the common goal of making Australia into a successful nation of the globalized age. Arguing that Keating and Howard have the most success when they collaborate, this detailed and informative record follows the politicians’ combined efforts to alter the nation's direction, redefine their parties, and manage the new economic, social, cultural, and foreign policy agendas.

The iconic Australian song – “out anthem of home” – appears here for the first time as a beautiful book for the young, and the young at heart – which is to say, all of us. Featuring the inspirational words from Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody, the riveting paintings of Peter Hudson, and the sweet wild artwork of Gurindji schoolchildren from Kalkaringi, NT, this book will light up rooms and hearts all over Australia – and all profits will be donated to arts and literacy projects for the Gurindji children, in memory and celebration of one of the greatest moments of courage and peace in our history.

Twenty-five years after becoming prime minister, Bob Hawke's rise to power is still one of the most dramatic political narratives Australia has known. The Hawke Ascendancy tells the story of the Labor Party's return to office in 1983 after its crushing defeat in 1975. It is the inside account of Bob Hawke, Malcolm Fraser, and Bill Hayden, and their unique power struggle. This definitive work deals with the personality clashes, policy achievements, and power struggles in both the Labor and Liberal parties. Hawke, alienated from his own party in 1975, finally broke down the doors of its opposition to him and became Labor's savior and one of Australia's most respected prime ministers. Fraser, invulnerable and all-powerful in 1975, eventually succumbed to external pressures and internal weakness. Hayden, an initially reluctant but then aggressive leader, took Labor to the very brink only to falter himself. And the ruthlessly ambitious John Howard was biding his time. In this first installment of his incisive and compelling analysis of modern Australian politics, Paul Kelly sketches the triumph and tragedy of individuals against the big issues of the era—economic management, resources development, and Australia's place in the world. The Hawke Ascendancy is, above all, a gripping inside account of how Australian politics really works.