Puncher & Wattmann is an independent Australian publishing house founded by David Musgrave

David Musgrave

David Musgrave is an Australian poet, novelist, publisher and critic. He is currently the publisher of Puncher & Wattmann, an independent press which publishes Australian poetry and literary fiction...

 in 2005. It specialises in publishing Australian poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 and literary fiction

Literary fiction

Literary fiction is a term that came into common usage during the early 1960s. The term is principally used to distinguish "serious fiction" which is a work that claims to hold literary merit, in comparison from genre fiction and popular fiction . In broad terms, literary fiction focuses more upon...

. Launched by David Malouf

David Malouf

David George Joseph Malouf is an acclaimed Australian writer. He was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, his 1993 novel Remembering Babylon won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, he won the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award in 2008, and he was...

, its first title, James Stinks (and so does Chuck) by Nick Riemer (2005) was placed third in the Mary Gilmore Award in 2006. Subsequent poetry titles have included Simon West's First Names (2006), shortlisted for the 2006 Kenneth Slessor Award, Peter Kirkpatrick's Westering (2006), shortlisted for the 2008 Kenneth Slessor Award, John Watson's Montale: An Autobiographical Anthology (2006), shortlisted for the 2007 Victorian Premier's and Adelaide festival Award for Innovation and Phyllis Perlstone's The Edge of Everything, also shortlisted for the 2008 Kenneth Slessor Award. Both Westering and First Names were awarded the William Baylebridge Prize in 2007.

In late 2006 P&W published its first novel, Helen Garner

Helen Garner

Helen Garner is an award-winning Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist.-Life:Garner was born in Geelong, Victoria, the eldest of six children. She attended Manifold Heights State School, Ocean Grove State School and then The Hermitage in Geelong...

 and the Meaning of Everything by Alex Jones. In 2007 P&W published Basket of Sunlight by Meredith Wattison and The Kurri Kurri Book of the Dead by Greg McLaren

Greg McLaren

Greg McLaren is an Australian poet. Born in the New South Wales Hunter Valley coalfields town, Kurri Kurri. He moved to Sydney in 1990 where he studied at the University of Sydney and in 2005 he was awarded a PhD in Australian Literature. His thesis was on Buddhist influences on the Australian...

. In 2008 P&W published Morris in Iceland by Alex Jones, a novel concerned with the socialist artist William Morris, A Shrine to Lata Mangeshkar by Kerry Leves and Moving Along: Selected Verse by J.K. Murphy, Erasure Traces and Views From Mt Brogden & A Dictionary of Minor Poets by John Watson; later in the year it will publish Fishing in the Devonian by Carol Jenkins, paragliding in a warzone by Louise Wakeling, Skin Theory by Philip Hammial, Squeezing Desire Through a Sieve" Micro-Essays on Law and Poetry by M T C Cronin and The Right by Matthew Karpin.

Puncher & Wattmann is a member of SPUNChttp://www.spunc.com.au/home.htm, (Small Press Underground networking Community - Australia).

The names "Puncher and Wattman" come from Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

's play "Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...

(1952)," specifically from a speech by Lucky when he is given his hat to think. The excerpt is as follows:

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labors left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labors of men that as a result of the labors unfinished of Testew and Cunnard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labors of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown...