The emotional and social power of Gig Ryan’s poems have exerted an influence over two generations of readers, since the publication of her award-winning collection Division of Anger in 1981. A canonical figure in Australian poetry, both as a feminist poet, and as an innovator, Ryan is studied widely in high schools and universities, and appears in many anthologies of Australian poetry, but her own books of poetry are now out of print.

New and Selected Poems addresses this neglect, bringing together Ryan’s iconic poems of the last thirty years with those that are less well known, and adding a selection of new poetry written in the ten years since the publication of Heroic Money.