I've never thought of this website as a blog, but more that the News/Events page could act as an occasional check on what is happening in my writing life. So this morning is a long-delayed revisiting of the last months of 2016 but, if I'm being honest, a delaying strategy ... Rather than getting on with the new novel, which is not going well, I'll turn my attention to something - anything! - that will put off the moment of return to 1860s Germany. Which is where I ought to be, and should be feeling more like an inhabitant than the interloper role I seem to be finding myself in. The reason is lack of resources - it is indeed hard to find material in English that will take me into the world of small peasants in Silesia in the second half of the nineteenth century, and this is slowing me down badly.

So, let's return to 2016 instead. The eighth book, Of llamas and piranhas, my collected 'daily poems' from South America, is still on the publishing schedule of Ginninderra Press, but it will be April at the earliest before we see it in print, with its black and white photographs accompanying the poems. Meanwhile, I have one custom-made copy in full cover, courtesy of David Harris and the Photobook Company, and it's a joy to hold, and behold. It's had a wonderful reception from those who have looked through it, which is very reassuring.

Apart from that, the usual crop of acceptances and rejections - pretty well balanced actually, and I've had the pleasure of a number of poems in various small journals and anthologies. It's always a special delight to have a poem published in the Canberra Times, and November saw my poem, 'Magnolia', featured there. New writing has been mainly verse. The long trip to Canberra, then to Brisbane, for a series of family Christmases, inspired  some poems whose origins were the countryside that we passed, and particularly our rain forest stay in Lamington National Park. A beautiful place, and rich in bird life. But I'd have to admit that the last few months have been focused more on living than on writing, and particularly family life, as we travelled from place to place to celebrate Christmas with various offspring.

But now it's time to return to work, and Book 9 is calling ....

Last day in September, and theoretically we're well and truly into Spring. So where's the sunshine? Instead we've had the worst week of massive typhoon-like storms, lightning strikes, flooded rivers and torrential downpours, with so much damage done that it makes a mockery of Spring as a season and adds further warning about a future with global warming.

So once again I'm cowering over a radiator, and it's a chance to update this infrequent 'latest news' page. So what is the news? Best bit, perhaps, that Ginninderra Press have accepted my South American poems for publication either end of this year or early 2017 - and with black and white photographs to match the poems. Our own domestic production one-off book has colour photos, thanks to David's production skills and Photobook Club, but that would make a publisher version prohibitively expensive. I'm just happy that there will be graphics with the text. Their request, for 'a more enticing title', led  me to some hard thinking, and we're all happy with the final result - the book will be called Of llamas and piranhas - and I've written a name poem to go with that title. Watch this space for when it will become available ...

Other good news has included some successes with poems; some published in The Mozzie and in Tamba, also in the Ginninderra Press publication of social justice poems that marked their twenty year celebrations, First Refuge. I was really happy to be included in this, and also to be short-listed for both the Polestar Writers' Journal competitions, poetry and prose, though I wasn't to win either.

However, a very pleasing email to tell me that mine had been the winning entry in a West Australian photography association's contest for this year, where twenty winning photographs were offered to writers throughout Australia to try their hands at a poem or prose piece to match each photo. It's the sort of writing I really enjoy, and I've now learned that the term for this is ekphrasis - writing that grows out of and responds to a graphic artist's visual creation.  My poem, Ambiguous White, will be published next month together with a reproduction of the painting that inspired it, in what promises to be a super-spendid luxury limited edition book, In my View. Unfortunately I can't get to Perth for the book launch, but WA friends will attend for me and pick up my copy.

And outside it's still raining - I keep coming back to that very famous line by a very famous writer: "And the rain, it raineth every day."   Too true.

What a packed two months it's been! When I last updated this page, the trip to South America was still ahead of us, and suddenly now it's all over, and we're back to normal life at home. Well, in so far as life here is ever normal ...

It was indeed a magnificent four and a half weeks away. Real 'much have I travelled in the realms of gold' stuff, and it's hard to pick out highlights. Chile - and at last eating (and loving) Fish Cevice, which I'm now planning to add to my cuisine, and the colourful heritage city of Valparaiso; in Argentina learning to dance the tango, in spite of my two left feet, and wandering in the famous La Recoleta cemetery, that city of the dead in which Eva Peron is now a resident, or browsing in what has been called the most beautiful bookshop in the world 'El Atineo'. Peru and watching fascinated the expert horsemen, as gauchos put on a spectacular Peruvian Paso at the Hacienda Mamacona, and learning to drink Pisco Sours. The wonders of Machu Picchu and watching herds of alpacas and llamas in the high grasslands of the Andes (worth suffering altitude sickness for this - and I did!)  Rio de Janeiro, and the tour of the infamous favelas, with their tiers on tiers of slum housing and tangles of stolen electricity wires. Can this city really be ready for the Olympic games within the next few months? But worth the almost embarrassing luxury of the Hotel Copacabana to also find in nearly Ipamema the cafe, the Garota de Ipanema, where Jobin wrote the famous song about the girl who turned all heads on the beach front there.  The spectacular Iguassu Falls, seen from both the Brazilian and the Argentinian sides - which better? Impossible to decide.

So many highlights. Four days on the Amazon, with jungle walks, visits to small villages, piranha fishing at dusk (yes, caught two and ate them at dinner that night - a neat reversal of the status quo, I felt.) Lake Titicata, highest freshwater lake with its famous reed islands and a whole population living, often in family groups, on these man-made islands. And, of course, the Galapagos Islands, where we battled our way up dried creek river beds to heights that meant leaping from boulder to boulder to reach the top with magnificent views over this Darwinian wonderland. Coming face to face on a pathway with an enormous turtle, built like an armoured tank, and learning swiftly that I didn't have right of way.

So much to remember. I'm glad that I kept not only the daily journal, but also stuck to my resolve to write a poem a day - I've brought back the 34 poems in the set, and now have to decide what to do with them ... But writing these was, as always, one of the real joys of travelling, even on nights when I was dead tired and just craved sleep.

However, it was good to get home and discover some publishing pleasures on return: poems in the new book from Poetica Christi Press, Imagine, and in Polestar and The Mozzie, as well as the special pleasure of a lovely review of Bystanders in the May Polestar Writers' Journal, and finding that I had made it to the short list for the Stringybark Stories competition, where i received a 'highly commended' and publication in their coming book Standing By. Enough encouragement to keep me at my computer and still writing ...