The Natural World Somersaults is a book of hard-won, resonant and powerful writing. Shaine Melrose’s language turns intently from light to dark in these unflinching, visceral, and urgent poems that are palpable with both grief and fortitude. Metamorphosis drives this book, as the body, of necessity, searches for and aligns itself with something further than the human: ‘I studied nature with my feet in moss’. Unflinching, honest, and often heartbreaking, this poetic narrative of damaged bodies twists and unfolds through its tenacious journey of uncovering identity and finally discovering some degree of physical and spiritual shelter. ‘I am a history of jagged fragments. / From silence I speak’ Melrose writes. And this book speaks truly through intertwined forms and fragments of belonging and not-belonging: to the body, sexuality, family, culture and the larger non-human world.

JILL JONES

Potent and profound, this is a collection of distilled attentiveness that speaks of the power of the natural world to guide and sustain us, even through the darkest of times. Intimately attuned to the Australian landscape, The Natural World Somersaults is a lyrical personal history of an outsider’s struggle to find strength, self and community in the face of society’s descent towards homogeneity.

This collection is a call to compassion, its poems full of fire and pathos, unsettling the familiar and asking us to pay close attention to the world these lines lay bare. Melrose digs beneath the surface of life, allowing the richness unearthed to nourish her singular view of the world.

RACHAEL MEAD

These sharp, tender, smart and smarting poems move from childhood memories to depict the charge and dangers of adolescence and the cultivation of a gentler way of being. Attentive to the more-than-human, these are poems attuned to the dark and light, celebrating resilience and renewal. Truthful and musical, this is a vital and striking debut collection.

FELICITY PLUNKETT