The Foliage in the Underworld

Martin Duwell wrote in Australian Poetry Review that 'Sharkey's project seems to be built on a desire to make poetry once more (or more satisfactorily) deal with life as a socially lived phenomenon, and that 'not many people are writing so well and so humorously about the Australia we inhabit'. Jeremy Fisher wrote in the journal Text, that Sharkey 'has the rare ability to reach into our national psyche and pull out the ugly centre yet not rail at the horror of it all'. Since relinquishing editorship of the Australian Poetry Journal, Sharkey has published Many Such as She: an anthology of Australian Victorian Women Poets of World War One (2018, revised edition 2019) with Walleah Press, Hobart. The present collection gathers and sometimes revises poems from stray current or hard to find sources.