Poem and Dish is creating a new category titled: Poet of the Month.

A poet will be featured every month and one of his or her poems will be posted weekly for four consecutive weeks. I am so excited to be highlighting in the month of February the work of Luke Fischer.

Luke Fischer is a poet and scholar. In 2008 he was awarded a PhD in philosophy from the University of Sydney for his thesis on Rilke and phenomenology. From 2010-2011 he completed post-graduate study in creative writing (poetry). Over the past decade he has primarily lived in Germany and the US, where he held academic positions, and has travelled extensively in Europe and the Middle East. In 2012 he returned to Sydney. He won the 2012 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize and has been shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize. He is the author of the poetry collection Paths of Flight (Black Pepper, 2013), a monograph on Rilke and phenomenology (forthcoming), a book of bedtime stories called The Blue Forest (forthcoming), and a number of articles on literary and philosophical themes.

His book of poems Paths of Flight can be purchased directly through the Black Pepper website (postage is free): http://blackpepperpublishing.com/fischerpof.html