Allow Only Joy: Selected Poems

"all that is outside
him torrents in him
but he sings

I am a porous man
heads I win
tails I win"

"Allow only joy" is the author's unflinching answer to the questions raised in this startling collection of poems - tender, ironic, compassionate, and inspirational in their openness to the thrilling possibilities of life. This revised edition contains 12 poems not previously included.

From 2003 to 2006 John Ellison Davies was Poet Laureate of the International Corporation of Lost Structures, an internet based arts collective. ICOLS is no longer active but its web site endures, archived by the Tate Gallery in London.

His poems and short stories have appeared in Northern Perspective, Southerly, The Australian, Newcastle Herald, The Age, Adelaide Review, Overland, Mattoid, Phoenix Review, Fremantle Arts Review, The Canberra Times, Fine Line, Webber's, the Sydney Morning Herald, Ulitarra, and Weekend Australian Review – online in Diagram 3.5 and OpenWide. Individual poems were broadcast on ABC Radio National's A First Hearing in 1990 and Poetica in 1998.