A new poetry book by Tom Petsinis is a collection of poems that touches the heart.

Petsinis looks at the trade tools his father left behind after his passing and contemplates what we learn from our fathers, not only in the context of skills but in a metaphysical sense.

The poems turn their attention to a collection of tools: most common, others long obsolete, a few imaginary.

In considering each object, the poet taps into a field of energy formed from contact with the human hand at work.

This takes the poet on a journey through the turbulence of the Balkan wars, then migration to Australia, life in working-class Fitzroy in the 1960s, and beyond this to confrontations with death and celebrations of life.

Just as these tools once worked on the physical world to make existence more human, to centre the user in a home and a community, so their used presence serve to make our humanity more meaningful.

It is a poetry full of metaphor and emotion. The book is published by Australian Scholarly Publishing and it was launched by scholar and author Laurie Clancy at the Melbourne Writers Festival this month.

Among Tom Petsinis other exceptional poetry is a collection of metaphysical sonnets about monastic life on the island of Mt Athos, translated into Greek by Yiannis Milides.

His novels The French Mathematician and The Death of Pan, have also been translated into Greek and published in Athens.

Tom’s forthcoming work is a play titled Salonica Bound, which will be performed in Melbourne at the La Mama Theatre in Carlton and in the city of Thessaloniki.