now out from Sandy Press

 

List price = $US14.95
Available through Amazon.

& a blurb:

Mark Young’s Sorties

A sortie is a military manouevre, ‘an attack made by troops coming out from a position of defence.’ In Mark Young’s prose, the citadel is the home, or else the inside of his head; while the sorties are mounted against the land and city scapes of Rockhampton in Queensland, where Young lived in the earlier years of the 21st century. Or against the past. It wouldn’t be right to say he takes no prisoners. Birds are his constant companions, however; and the past, while certainly over, is sometimes close behind. These are intelligent, humorous, precise and well-informed observations, largely autobiographical, but delivered without any attempt at the construction of a narrative or of a unitary self. Mark Young, who gave up playing the double bass because he couldn’t fit the instrument into a taxi before or after a gig, now makes use of the keyboard, with its black and white registers, colored all over, to entertain, to perplex and to delight.

— Martin Edmond, author of Luca Antara, Isinglass, and many other books.

A PDF preview of sorties is available on the sandy press website.