Poet of Jazz

Journeying

JOURNEYING

‘Jake Dennis enters a moment, present or past, and renders it utterly alive.’ – Naomi Shihab Nye

Nominated for the 2025 Noel Rowe Poetry Award

A celebration of love in all its forms, and a searing interrogation of racism, Journeying is a fierce, tender, incisive debut by a poet of insight, musicality, and heart. It offers readers a diasporic voyage through postcolonial and feminist ideas of art, belonging, identity, relationships, loss, and representation.

‘From Yangon to Boorloo, these poems are selfies from below that jazz through a post-multicultural climate of love and death.’ – Ouyang Yu 

Celebrating the best of the author’s poetry published locally and internationally over the past two decades, this is a lived-experience #OwnVoices poetry collection inspired by growing up as a second-generation Asian Catholic immigrant and POC in Australia.

Noel Rowe Poetry Award Judges’ Comments: ‘This is a lively manuscript with an impressive range of subjects and cultural references. The many ekphrastic poems respond vividly to painters, sculptors and musicians. The poet thoughtfully examines cross-cultural identity, postcolonialism and racism in contemporary Australia, alongside explorations of masculinity and desire.’ – Elizabeth Allen, Jane Gibian, and Vivian Smith (Vagabond Press, NSW)

* * *

JAKE DENNIS @PoetOfJazz Burmese-Australian Boorloo-based entertainer (singer/poet/actor), carer, and educator whose prize-winning poetry is published in over one hundred publications across seventeen countries. Jake Dennis is a soulful jazz crooner and the author of prize-nominated debut and sophomore poetry collections.

Available from

Amazon AU$21.63 + shipping (Pre-Order Special)

Fremantle Press RRP $29.99 (distributed by Penguin Group)

Booktopia AU28.99 + shipping (Pre-Order Special)

The Nile AU$25.49 + shipping (Pre-order Special)

Coming soon to a bookshop near you!