Flat Exit

Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. "FLAT EXIT is about greetings and departures, learning to let go and circle back to pick up what remains. These poems jump between northeastern Victoria and Melbourne, romantic and platonic relationships, moments of personal triumph and those of shellshocked grief.

"Collected here in this sequence, they explore the dislocation that occurs when moving from regional Australia to its urban mass, and when falling in and out of love for the first time. The poems revolve from homesickness, to self-care, to finding a soul to complement my own at an unexpected time and in an unexpected place—and life before and after the death of a close friend.

"Many of these poems are autobiographical; some are fiction. My intention is not to be confessional but — as Gwen Harwood says — to establish 'a way of seeing'. Mine, as it's been so far." —Broede Carmody