Books
Staying Whole While Falling Apart is a playful yet serious exploration of loss and grief, of trying to find balance and stability amidst a giddying welter of experiences. You’ll laugh and cry with Aaron Auslander, a kind of everyman, as he tries to make sense of the flux and tumble of his life. The poetry is sharp and it cuts right to the bone, exposing the vulnerabilities and the precarious provisos under which we all can live. This is a potent book animated by courage and finely-honed craft.
Judith Beveridge – Australian Poet – recipient of PM’s Literary Award for Poetry, 2019
In Staying Whole While Falling Apart, a cycle of poems documenting the “finest failures” of one Aaron Auslander (foodie, divorcee, outdoorsman, self-medicating, dysfunctional dreamer), James Gering has orchestrated a wry, deadpan fanfare for the common man. The result is by turns ruthlessly unsentimental and grimly funny, and as a whole, oddly moving. In searching for a comparison, the best I could come up with is Ted Hughes’ Crow. But where “Crow” is bleak and dismal, Gering’s anti-hero poems reach quixotically for the glowing heights of redemption.
Peter Selgin – author of The Inventors and Duplicity
In Staying Whole While Falling Apart, James Gering’s protagonist Aaron Auslander may have a different background from you and me, but he shares the truth: about you… about me. Beyond our differences, the universality of truth transcends individual identity and imbues our common core – our humanity composed of doubts, decisions, confusion, heartbreak, tragedy, wishes, daydreams, love…. Is Aaron the author’s alter ego? Perhaps. Is this Gering’s psychoanalytical autobiographical CT scan? Not sure. But it is yours, it is mine. Like Aaron, we are all Auslanders, strangers wishing to belong, “a wispy plume of smoke unsure which way to drift”. In this volume, Gering’s masterful matter-of-fact lyricism reveals glimpses of truth from our own life-panorama.
Daniel Ionita – poet, translator & literary editor
Tickets to the Fall of Icarus
Gering takes us on the wonderful freefall — at times laugh-out-loud — of Audrey and Icarus. Full of literary references, puns and wit, this collection is a waterfall of mordant humour, note-perfect and a mirror to our post-pandemic selves. Read it in a rush or savour the sly satire — or just gorge on the whimsy and poetic spell-making. You’ll want to rush into the Australian bush to stash vodka and Lion Stout and make your own bottle sculpture by the road. And, of course, fall in love.
Anna Kerdijk Nicholson – author of The Bundanon Cantos, Possession and Everyday Epic
In Tickets to the Fall of Icarus, Gering gives us the putative mythical hero juxtaposed against quotidian Audrey in a well-choreographed yet often confronting poetic dance. Paradoxically, beauty is paired with pain and loneliness is ensconced in relationships. Gering achieves artistic flair through deft control of language and shots of Kafkaesque absurdism. This collection might be an invitation to dive deep into the blind-spot of the Johari window, that psychological tool to better understand our relationships and some frightening aspects of ourselves. But, hey, ultimately it’s the landing that kills you, not the fall itself. So, through Gering’s poignant yet bitingly honest storytelling, let’s enjoy the flight!
Daniel Ionita – author of Pentimento
Poetry shouldn’t be this much of a page-turner. This is what sense-making looks like from the inside out. Oh to be sat next to Audrey or Icarus at a dinner party.
Jesse Anderson – online director