Released 13 September 2024 // Poetry Pamphlet // 82 pages
 
‘if I can catch hypothermia then I can catch a break
 
the lonely eye of childhood lingers above my head
 
I’m sorry mum. I love you
 
Beyond this cover blooms the rich, colourful, raw writings of Hay’s inner garden: a private place where vulnerabilities emerge as phantoms of past lives, absent people, and unlived dreams. This is contemporary poetry at its finest, and Hay should be read widely.'
 
– Briony Collins, poet and novelist
 
'In his new collection, David Hay offers us lyrical prose and vivid poetic imagery; existential angst tempered with social realism and gritty, witty humour. Throughout this book moonlight envelopes the reader with loneliness, longing and love’s promises and there are shadows everywhere. But there is beauty too, and much beauty in Hay’s writing and his poised poetic and narrative art. 'A prayer is just words,' he writes, and the words in Beyond the Iron Gate is a Garden are a poetic prayer of utterance for even the most hardened cynic.'
 
–JP Seabright, author of White Cloud Over Purple and more