The Convent Mermaid

Rod Usher’s third collection, Convent Mermaid, is full of wit and sadness, love and loss. Many of the poems spring from his long experience as a journalist, novelist and from years of living and working in Europe. As Les Murray has written, Rod´s poetry inspires both tears and laughter. He’s equally at home in poetic conversation with Emily Dickinson, David Bowie and Federico Garcia Lorca, in revisiting Cro-Magnon Man, or portraying the to-and-fro of love and sex. His poems find their feet in Australia, Spain, England and the U.S., their rhyme typically embedded rather than obligatory, though he bows to the tight rules of haiku. Rod´s poems regularly appear in leading literary magazines such as Island, Meanjin and Quadrant, as well as in various anthologies, including Australian Love Poems and the UK's Aesthetica Annual. His most recent novel is Poor Man's Wealth (HarperCollins, 2011), a title which, not surprisingly, comes from a poem.

Rod Usher is the author of three novels, two poetry collections and three non-fiction titles.
His novels A Man of Marbles and Florid States were published in 1989 and 1990 respectively. Florid States was short-listed for the MIND Book of the Year Award in the UK. Poor Man´s Wealth appeared in 2011.
His first poetry book, Above Water, was self-published and illustrated by Geelong artist John Druce. His collection Smiling Treason was published in 1992.
Since his third novel Rod has returned to writing poetry, and has been published widely in recent years, particularly in Meanjin, Island and Quadrant. His poems have also appeared in The Age, Overland, and Going Down Swinging and in anthologies including Australian Love Poems 2013, The Best of Quadrant 2000-2010, Aesthetica Magazine Annual (UK), Flood, Fire and Famine and The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry (2014).
His non-fiction books are Sleep: All You Ever Wanted to Know But Were Too Tired to Ask, Images of Our Time and Their Best Shots; 21 Years of the Nikon Awards. He has worked as a journalist in many countries and is a former literary editor of The Age, former chief sub-editor of The Sunday Times, London, and former senior writer for TIME magazine in Europe.
He currently lives in Spain, making frequent trips home to Melbourne.