About

John Knight is founder and manager of Post Pressed, an indie publisher of verse, fine arts and academic books since 1995. An accomplished and internationally recognised haijin, he is a foundation editor of Paper Wasp, an Australian journal of haiku. He also served as poetry editor of Scope and Social Alternatives for a number of years. His published verse includes Wattle Winds: an Australian haiku sequence (Paper Wasp, 1993), From Derrida to Sara Lee (Metro Arts, 1994), Extracts from the Jerusalem Archives (Sweetwater Press, 1997), and big man catching a small wave (Post Pressed, 2006). His verse and haiku have been published widely in journals and anthologies in Australia and overseas. In a previous life he was an Associate Professor in The School of Education, The University of Queensland, with a particular interest in policy studies and social and literary theory. His work has been widely published in books and journals in Australia and internationally. After his retirement he has worked in a mentoring relationship with doctoral students at QUT and elsewhere.

Proudly published by Sudden Valley Press

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Reviews

John Knight's collection is a summation of observations during the first stage of his/our journey towards the light that casts no shadows, though this flawed society he has travelled through has cast many shadows, many stones. These are searing journals, unflinching in their observation, yet deftly crafted and hopeful, and we look forward to correspondence from the next stage of his journey. This is the book Knight has been writing all his life.

Ross Clark

John Knight's Letters from the Asylum chronicle the eruption, in the poet's human body, of the voice of that rough beast that Yeats propelled towards Bethlehem. As the body breaks, the poet speaks, out of his fragility, of the inevitable collisions of tenderness and brutality, justice and mercy, love and hate. Knight's scream rises in his throat as the capacity to hold all these things at once within a human skin gives out, breaks down, fails at last to hold.

Andrew Leggett

There's wine and blood of excellent vintages coursing thickly through John Knight's collection. From the slumbering desperation of urban loneliness to the killing fields of the Great World, these poems carry you on and leave you in no doubt that all is connected in horror and beauty.

Duncan Richardson

In Letters from the Asylum, John Knight anatomises the world's pain, and his pain, with unflinching honesty and unusual courage. The poems are never self-indulgently confessional; their language is direct and simple-seeming--and the more heartfelt for that. Knight writes with the passion of indignation, humour, and love. In the process of writing he wrings a hard-won, often tentative meaning. He arrives at an acceptance of our mortality and achieves a peace that is the more precious for being fragile. It is a remarkable achievement, this testament to the range of our humanity, from callous brutality to the most tender love. In the end it is this hope for love that prevails.

Wendy Morgan

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Extract

Where have all the flowers gone?

for Vicki Turner-Jones

Sunday morning picnic: In a quiet park beside the river
we are dedicating a plaque to the memory of a Brisbane
peace activist. The plaque is set on a boulder
in a little garden that is covered with bark chips
and surrounded by a border of cracked rocks cemented
together. A middle-aged man with a beard and
a guitar moves to the front. We sing, "Where have
all the flowers gone?" Some of us are not always in tune.
Her husband reads several of the poems he wrote
for her. They are strong and tender. There are tears
in his voice and on our faces. An old PND member
tells us that it was from the boat ramp here in the park
that she would paddle out in a kayak to try to stop
American nuclear warships and submarines from
entering the Port of Brisbane. We sing another song.
I remember a friend saying Vicki always got seasick but
she went out each time just the same. She was like that.
She was like that too when she climbed over the fence
at Pine Gap or DSIG and got arrested. She always
got arrested. Yes, she was good and loving and solid
and strong and stubborn like that. This morning
a friend from the City Council came and planted
the garden with shrubs and flowering plants. He waited
till this morning so no one would take them before
the service. We can still see the labels on some of them.
The man with the guitar stands up again. Vicki's
fifteen year old nephew sings two more songs
we used to sing in demonstrations and at peace rallies
in the Square. He sings well. We join in singing.
All of us hope again for peace on earth. A small boy
beside the garden is looking for something to do.
He finds a sharp piece of split wood and uses it to lever
the rocks in the border. His even smaller brother
comes and copies him. And we, being pacifists,
do not attempt to stop them. No matter. Next week
or sooner, the flowers will be gone, the rock border
breached and the turf cut up by trail bikes.
They'll have a harder job to take the boulder, though.

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