Fukuoka relates the experiences of two Australian brothers, Alf and Wally, in a prisoner-of-war camp in Japan during the Second World War, expressed in poetry in the voice of the surviving brother Alf.

Based on the lives of his own great-uncles, Andrew Sneddon’s poetry captures the intimacy that exists between brothers, while reflecting on the psychology of the human condition in ways that transcend the particular.

Sneddon’s verse contemplates life and death, brutality and kindness, beauty and horror, courage and cowardice. It reflects on suffering and the consequences of suffering.

Each poem — some bleak, some uplifting, some confronting and others soothing — will move readers in different ways. Fukuoka is poetry for those who question what it is to be human.