The fortyeight poems that comprise Alex Skovrons seventh booklength collection Letters from the Periphery are populated by a variety of voices speaking across many settings from 1960s Sydney to the cafes of todays Melbourne from the Trojan War and Byzantine Aleppo to the dark forest of Dantes Inferno from eighteenthcentury Lisbon to Vienna at the turn of the twentieth from the American Civil War to warfronts of our time and of the future. A richly diverse gathering this book also marks Skovrons return to the longer poem notably the title sequence featuring a mysterious stalker versed in philosophy the suite The Light We Convert grounded in the world of nineteenthcentury music and the poets translation of the opening Canto from The Divine Comedy.Alex Skovron is the author of six previous collections most recently Towards the Equator New ampampamp Selected Poems 2014 shortlisted in the Prime Ministers Literary Awards. His other books include a prose novella The Poet 2005 joint winner of the FAW Christina Stead Award for fiction and a volume of short stories The Man who Took to his Bed 2017.