Toupie

New, selected & revised poems and micro stories

Kathleen Bleakley

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English

Spineless Wonders
01 December 2025

Poetry; Poetry by individual poets

Toupie a French word meaning spinning toy/top, signifies the collection's themes: colour, movement and change.

Toupie is Kathleen Bleakley's seventh collection is a showcase of movement and change in Bleakley's writing over three decades.

'Kathleen Bleakley expresses poignant and vivid feelings for a number of family members and friends in Toupie but the omphalos in this collection is her life with, and deep love for 'pling, her long-term partner, and photographer, who is in slow decline with lymphoma. The striking feature for me in this collection is her skilful and sensitive use of colour. She creates her own chakra-like system with her display of significant colours in a narrative that moves from earthly life to the astral, the afterlife.'

Joanne Burns

'Dazzling and polychromatic, Kathleen Bleakley's Toupie: new and selected poetry and prose, is a whirligig of memory and synaesthesia. In ee cumming-esque poems and prose, Bleakley uses fragments and fractured metaphors to explore the unreliability of memory and the poignant quotidian experience. Bleakley's Toupie is a powder keg - it's like ""Watch[ing] fireworks cascade.'

Cassandra Atherton

By: Kathleen Bleakley
Imprint: Spineless Wonders
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 133mm,
ISBN: 9780987535542
ISBN 10: 0987535544
Pages: 120
Publication Date: 01 December 2025
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Kathleen Miriam Bleakley (kmb) was born in Morocco; and has lived and travelled in diverse places - OS and Oz. kmb writes poetry, and prose including micro stories and 'factions'. kmb's ekphrastic writing (responding to other art forms) and artistic collaborations reflect her creative arts background. Toupie is her seventh collection.