Book launch: "Essentially Unfinished" by John Kelly

John Kelly, a teacher of English, Classical Studies and Religious Education for nearly forty years, cordially invites you to the launch of his latest poetry collection, which elicits high praise from readers of the manuscript.

Ann Rennie, Melbourne educator, broadcaster and author, says: John Kelly’s beautiful anthology Essentially Unfinished is a joy to read. In it resides both the gift of words and the gift of faith. John notes, I really write because it is a call as sure as hunger. This book is a sacred feast; images and ideas to savour and sit with, memories to recollect, wisdom to ponder whilst immersing oneself in John’s self-avowed slow prayer of the pen upon the page.

Andrew Hamilton SJ, a theology lecturer whose poetry and articles regularly appear in Madonna magazine and Eureka Street, writes: Kelly has a gift for noticing and celebrating the small ways in which we brush up against our world, shown especially in his poems about his childhood. He also has a passion for honouring and embodying and passing on what he has inherited. His poems exploring his Irish background, particularly through visiting Ireland, are especially moving in their recognition, both bracing and freeing, that life bursts beyond the tabernacles in which we confine it. This is holy ground, and the diction is more crystalline.

John’s earlier poetry publications were Seasons of the Spirit (Homebush: St Paul's Publications,1978), Bearings (Melbourne: The Polding Press, 1982) and A Schoolbag Full (Adelaide: Grace Avenue Publications, 2021)

John Kelly warmly invites you to the launch of his latest anthology of poems new and old. Essentially Unfinished is a feast for the heart and mind, with a wealth of recently-written poems as well as some of the best Kelly's previously published work.