Gas Deities

Gas Deities comes from a quest for meaning that negates the big ticket items of ego, intellectual fashion and salvation, for the generative joys of doubt. Using dramatic monologues and the slipperiness of the lyrical "I" Wright takes us on a journey through suburban Australia, with the odd overseas excursion. These poems find magic in the ordinary, and relish the creativity of erring while mining the foibles of certainty and pretension. ‘Ed Wright’s new collection is hugely entertaining and full of his kind of mordant humour. Based closely on voiced monologues and down-to-earth characters, the longer poems are fictions in the vernacular, teasing and knockabout in mood, and reminding me at times of the late Bruce Dawe. They develop through a kind of compassionate irreverence. At first I had thought the poems were funny, then serious, then philosophical, and then I realised they were all three.’ — Philip Salom Gas Deities is Ed Wright’s third book of poetry. His poems have been published in a range of journals and anthologies in Australia and overseas. His other books include eight popular histories and a prizewinning novella, and he writes an Australian Fiction review column in The Australian newspaper. Ed is founder and director of Newcastle’s The Creative Word Shop which provides writing workshops for kids and adults as well as editing and mentoring services to the Hunter region and beyond. He is also Fiction Publisher at Puncher & Wattmann.