Crimson Crop

Crimson Crop is Peter Rose’s fifth poetry collection and his first since 2005. It has at its core a series of elegies, several about his late father Bob Rose, and contains new ‘Catullan’ poems – imitations of Catullus that Rose has been writing and publishing since the 1980s.


Parts I and III comprise individual poems, not specifically themed. Part II – the core of the book – comprises a series of elegies and ruminations on death. There are references to the death of Peter’s father, Bob Rose (a respected Australian Rules footballer and coach), thus continuing the themes of Peter’s bestselling memoir Rose Boys (2001).


Part IV comprises fifteen more themed poems in his ongoing series ‘The Catullan Rag’ – a series of satires and love poems in the manner of the great Roman satirist, Catullus. Peter’s poetry collection ‘The Catullan Rag’ (1993) is notorious, in some circles because of its satirising of literary life in Australia.