Kate Maxwell is a Sydney-based writer who has been published and awarded in Australian and International literary magazines for many years. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in journals such as fourW, Hecate, Linq, Swyntax, Verandah, Cordite, Meniscus, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and Blood and Bourbon.

T his is the debut collection of an already published and awarded writer with a well-developed poetic style, and a strong awareness of how language and form work together to convey meaning. To read Kate Maxwell’s poems in Never Good at Maths is to enter a world of social conscience, of ironic humour and satire at the expense of pretentiousness, privilege and inhumanity, and to listen to the not-so-small personal voice of the poet. A recurrent device is that of poetic ventriloquy, of subject matter spoken through a persona, to both distance the poet and reinforce her stance. In each case, Maxwell’s language invokes the spoken idiom to good effect. In its exploration of everyday characters and scenarios, whether with sharp-edged wit or fellow-feeling, the poems in Never Good at Maths will strike a chord with readers, requiring them to re-assess many current issues. – Margaret Bradstock, author of Brief Garden