Debut collection by ayoung poet whose simple, funny and deceptively nave poems engage with the virtualrealities of the internet.

The Honeymoon Stage is a collection ofpoems written for friends on the internet over a five-year period. Thesefriends were spread across the globe, and most of them the poet had never met,and will never know. Poetry was the method by which the correspondents feltthey could authenticate themselves to one another, despite their separation inspace, and their friendships being mediated through screens. The poems engagewith the flattened syntax of internet language, registering its awkwardnesswhile bringing human qualities to the centre of the exchange. They inhabit asurreal world marked by shifting identities and video-clip encounters,blog-like intimacies and strange scraps of information, discovering in thisreality new ways of thinking and feeling.

OscarSchwartz is a poet and researcher based in Darwin who is concernedwith the intersection between technology and culture.Hispoetry has been published in BestAustralian Poems, the Age, Cordite and international journals.