Poetry

Yvette Holt heralds from the Bidjara Nation of Queensland, born and raised in Brisbane, Yvette is a multi-award winning poet, academic and feminist. She has lectured on Aboriginal Women Studies and Australian History in an Indigenous Context at the University of Queensland and the Australian Catholic University respectively. Her research has been in Indigenous Australian literature with […]

Deepika Arwind, 23, is a poet, writer and journalist based out of Bangalore, India. Her poems have appeared in Indian poetry anthologies and poetry journals. She has also read poetry at festivals like the Poetry with Prakriti Festival in Chennai, and won several poetry prizes. She is currently working on short fiction.     The […]

Oscar Tantoco Serquina, Jr. currently serves as an instructor in the University of the Philippines-Diliman, where he finished his BA degree major in Speech Communication. He was a fellow for poetry in the 10th UST National Writers Workshop and the 49th Siliman National Writers Workshop. His works have been published in several online journals, like […]

In 2009 Stuart Barnes’s unpublished memoir, A Cold Decade was shortlisted for the Olvar Wood Fellowship Award; and his poem “Solomon” was shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize. He lives in Melbourne.   Blood Taken God’s grey waiting room eyes like stray cats’ stench of rotting compost patients spin between doctors like coloured tops between […]

Zhuang Yusa lives in Singapore. His poetry has been published in Sargasso (Puerto Rico), ditch, (Canada), The Toronto Quarterly, Ganymede, The Los Angeles Review, nth position and elsewhere. His poetry has also been anthologized in Ganymede Poets Vol. One (Ganymede Books, 2009) and Smoke (Poets Wear Prada, 2009).     Thoughts In An Easier Time […]

Theophilus is a literature student in Raffles Institution, where he has the privilege of editing two school publications, and lives in denial that he be in Senior High before he knows it. He escapes by taking long and irrelevant walks; these occasionally translate themselves into photographs or poems, which he captures if he can.   […]

Geoff Page is an Australian poet who has published eighteen collections of poetry as well as two novels, four verse novels and several other works including anthologies, translations and a biography of the jazz musician, Bernie McGann. He retired at the end of 2001 from being in charge of the English Department at Narrabundah College […]

Cameron Lowe lives in Geelong. A collection of his poetry, Porch Music, will be published by Whitmore Press in 2010. He is currently a postgraduate student at The University of Melbourne.       The Watcher Under such graceful instruction the surge of coral roses in the vase releases the porcelain lady to be all […]

Charlotte Clutterbuck lives in Canberra and writes essays and poetry. Her collection of poems, Soundings, was published by Five Islands Press in 1997. She won the Romanos the Melodist Prize for religious poetry in 2002 and the David Campbell Prize in 2009.       auxiliaries   There were causes:               we could have […]

Iain Britton’s first collection of poems – Hauled Head First into a Leviathan – Cinnamon Press (UK), was a Forward Prize nomination in 2008. His second collection Liquefaction was published by Interactive Press (Australia) in 2009. Recently Oystercatcher Press (UK) published his third collection. Some poems can be accessed via such online magazines as Blackbox Manifold, Nthposition, […]

  Helen Hagemann has poetry published in Australian literary magazines and anthologies. In 2009, her first collection, Evangelyne & other poems, was published by the Australian Poetry Centre in their New Poets Series.       The Merry-go-Round                                    Perth Zoo Carousel   In a cross-section of fairy penguins & café, a merry-go-round, creaking […]

Rodney Williams has had poems published in various journals, including Overland, Blue Dog, Five Bells, page seventeen, The Paradise Anthology & Tasmanian Times, along with Poetry New Zealand and Antipodes. His haiku and tanka have appeared in a range of periodicals in Australia and America, as well as in New Zealand, Austria, Ireland and Canada. […]

Stephen Edgar has published seven collections of poetry, the most recent being History of the Day (Black Pepper Publishing), which was awarded the William Baylebridge Memorial Prize for 2009. “The Fifth Element”, from which three sections appear in this issue of Mascara Literary Review, is one of three interlinked narrative poems at the heart of […]

Denis Gallagher was born in Sydney in 1948 and now lives in Blackheath NSW. He wrote his first poem as a student at Normanhurst Boys’ High School, and recalls that it included the word “shibboleths”. His enthusiasm for poetry continued whilst a student at The University of Sydney in the late 1960s, but it wasn’t until several years […]

Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes and translates in French, English and Chinese. Her books include Water the Moon (Marick Press, 2010) and Silhouette/Shadow (co-authored with Gao Xingjian, Contours, 2007). Co-director of Vif éditions (www.vif-editions.com), an independent Parisian publishing house, and one of the editors at Cerise Press (www.cerisepress.com), she is also a zheng (ancient Chinese zither) concertist. […]

Jen Webb lives in Canberra, and is the author of a number of works including the poetry collection, Proverbs from Sierra Leone (Five Islands Press, 2004).   Bête à chagrin   a thin morning, Canberra cold, and the cat  is sleeping outside, he’s dozing out there dying in the sun, not knowing it, he thinks […]

Kelly lives in Perth, Western Australia. She has a BA Arts and a Postgraduate Diploma (Creative Writing) from Curtin University. Her poetry has been published in print and online journals. Her first collection of poetry, People from bones (with co-author, Bron Bateman) was released in the UK and Australia in June 2002 (Ragged Raven Press, […]

Daniel East is an Australian writer currently working in South Korea. His work has been published in Voiceworks, Cordite and the 2007 Max Harris Poetry Award, “Poems in Perspex”. He was a member of Australia’s only poetry boyband, The Bracket Creeps and co-wrote “Sexy Tales of Paleontology” which won the 2010 Sydney Fringe Comedy Award. […]

Janine Fraser’s book Portraits in a Glasshouse was published by Five Islands Press, Series 10 New Poets.  She has also written numerous books for children, including the Sarindi series published by HarperCollins.  She lives in Riddells Creek, Victoria.     Red Tulips (1)   Tight brown Fists shoved in dark Earth pockets   Latent with […]

Eileen Chong is a Sydney poet. She was born in Singapore where she studied and taught before moving to Australia in 2007. She is currently completing a Master of Letters at Sydney University with a focus on poetry. Her writing has been published in literary journals such as Meanjin, HEAT Magazine, Mascara Literary Review, Softblow, […]