The first work of poetry by novelist, essayist and feminist Kate Jennings was published in 1975 by Outback Press, an early publishing venture of Laurie Swartz (Black Inc.). Reviewing Come to Me My Melancholy Baby in the alternative newspaper Digger, cultural theorist Meghan Morris confessed to hating poetry, although she made an exception with Jennings: ‘To write of love and pain and get away with it is an extraordinary achievement,’ which showed an ‘admirable resistance to the let-it-all-dripout school.’ Jennings, she wrote, had reinvented the language of love and suffering. (Digger, April 10 – May 1975, no. 43, p.7.)
Together with the women’s poetry collection Mother I’m Rooted, edited by Jennings and published by Outback that same year, Come to Me My Melancholy Baby broke new ground in Australian literary feminism.
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