The poems in Fire Season are illuminated by the intensity of everyday experience, dwelling in situations of want or absence, or radiant in the aura of those legendary beings, the heroines and monsters of film and story and myth, around whom the drama of life is concentrated. Alert to the forces which inhabit relationships, or exhaust them, and to the ways in which the moment is transformed by impending or departed consequence, the collection seeks to convey, as its title suggests, something of the vitality and the threat of fire, 'Something about heroism / and the weight of stone. Something about ash.' Kate Middleton is a Melbourne poet. Her poems have been published in journals and newspapers in Australia, the USA and UK. She studied music at the University of Melbourne and has worked as a librettist on three operas, two of which have been performed. In 2006 she won the Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize for 'Rainbow's End', published in this collection. Fire Season is her first book of poetry.