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.

Australia's best music writer examines the life of the Australian music legend - honest, revealing and a must-have for any Paul Kelly fan. Until now, no one has written the definitive biography of Australia's best-loved singer, song writer and poet. Taking us from Paul Kelly's family life as the sixth of eight children in Adelaide, Stuart Coupe, with Paul's blessing and access to friends, family and band mates, shows us the evolution from a young man who only really picked up a guitar in his late teens, to an Australian music icon. As Paul's music career took off he had to juggle the demands of rock'n'roll with real life and it wasn't always pretty. As Paul's manager for a time, Stuart Coupe has seen or heard it all - the good and the bad (like Paul being told by an audience member that his was the worst band ever!). The book will look at Paul Kelly's personal relationships and the impact they have had on Paul's career and his storytelling. It will also highlight his generosity to other artists, like Archie Roach. In 2017 Paul Kelly received an Order of Australia acknowledging his distinguished service to the performing arts and the promotion of the national identity through his contributions as singer, songwriter and musician. At the foundation of it all is his storytelling. PAUL KELLY: The man, the music and the life in between will give us an unfiltered examination of it all.

A bold, invigorating analysis of the decade that revolutionised Australian politics - the 1980s.

Unveiling the inside story of how Paul Keating and John Howard changed Australia, this record presents these two personalities as conviction politicians, tribal warriors, and national interest patriots. Divided by belief, temperament, and party, they were united by generation, city, and the challenge to make Australia into a successful nation for the globalized age. The making of policy and the uses of power are explored, capturing the authentic nature of Australian politics as distinct from the polemics advanced by both sides. Focusing on how these prime ministers altered the nation's direction, this study also depicts how they redefined their parties and struggled over Australia's new economic, social, cultural, and foreign policy agendas. A sequel to the author’s bestselling The End of Certainty, this survey is based on more than 100 interviews with the two key players as well as other politicians, advisers, and public servants.

He transforms the smallest everyday item, a winter coat or holiday gravy, into talismans of redemption and loss, with simple, unadorned language - Daren Wang, Paste Magazine. Kelly remains one of the country's most important artists, a songsmith able to condense epics into perfect four-minute pop songs - Jane Cornwell, London Evening Standard. His voice-sly and warm, laconic and sometimes frail-may be the closest thing we have to a national one - Robert Forster, The Monthly. If I was only allowed to listen to one artist for the rest of my life I would choose Paul Kelly - Kasey Chambers. DON'T START ME TALKING comprises some of the finest poetry written in Australia. Paul Kelly's lyrics illuminate the way we live, sometimes with a haunting and savage intensity, sometimes with humour, always with a lightness and simplicity that belies the complexity of the world he is singing and writing into being. In addition to his lyrics, Kelly has written songs with and for many other artists, as well as his 2010 award-winning 'Mongrel Memoir', How To Make Gravy. The lyrics encompass his writing over two decades, from 1984 to 2012, and are grouped by album in chronological order. Also included are lyrics that have not been previously published.

Drawing on more than sixty on-the-record interviews with all the major players, Triumph and Demise is full of remarkable disclosures. It is the inside account of the hopes, achievements and bitter failures of the Labor Government from 2007 to 2013. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard came together to defeat John Howard, formed a brilliant partnership and raised the hopes of the nation. Yet they fell into tension and then hostility under the pressures of politics and policy. Veteran journalist Paul Kelly probes the dynamics of the Rudd-Gillard partnership and dissects what tore them apart. He tells the full story of Julia Gillard's tragedy as our first female prime minister—her character, Rudd's destabilisation, the carbon tax saga and how Gillard was finally pulled down on the eve of the 2013 election. Kelly documents the most misunderstood event in these years—the rise of Tony Abbott and the reason for his success. It was Abbott's performance that denied Rudd and Gillard the chance to recover. Labor misjudged Abbott and paid the price. Kelly writes with a keen eye and fearless determination. His central theme is that Australian politics has entered a crisis of the system that, unless corrected, will diminish the lives of all Australians.