Thirty Days' Notice

This collection forms a day-book of poems, set in various locations, especially Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, London and Bruny Island (Tasmania), all significant for Cath Kenneally. Reflective, wry and occasionally rude, the poems in Thirty Days' Notice have their origins in the everyday, dropping in on backyards and beaches, train stations and airports, cafes and kitchens, provoked by photographs, books and letters, relationships and solitude, an undead Catholic childhood and the pangs and pleasures of motherhood as they ponder what a life of days might add up to.

'I love it: it was great to reread some poems that I'd met in various places, and discover new ones … I thought: no one has written these poems before. No one has written so well about these things: the scents and smells of houses; what canisters can tell you, tree-time and human-time … They open wide and catch all kinds of stuff, but that's not the half of it: there's all the grace in the patterning and the movement.' - Chris Andrews, author and academic

'Plenty of modern poets write in this stream of consciousness, free verse style. Not many capture images and moods and synthesise meaning as well as this. The collection reassures us that every life, no matter how ordinary, has its magic and its depth.' - Adrian Deans, NSW Writers Centre newsletter