Reviews/Essays

Apron-Sorrow / Sovereign-Tea by Natalie Harkin Wakefield Press Reviewed by SAMUEL COX   It is not merely the spaces we inhabit in the present, nor the connections we hold, which give us our sense of self, there is another unstable and contested dimension which stretches away from us and back into the present to inflect […]

Stories of the Tanganekald Jacob Stengle 2021 ALLSA Reviewed by SAMUEL COX Emu and Brolga © Jacob Stengle 2021 “From time immemorial” – David Unaipon   For the first time, Stories of the Tanganekald: a collection of ancient stories from the Coorong, South Australia shares the narratives of the Tanganekald, a language of the Ngarrindjeri […]

The Office of Literary Endeavours                                                                                                 1. Mark Roberts 5 Islands Press 2025 ISBN 9781923248090   Reviewed by MARGARET BRADSTOCK   In his third poetry book, The Office of Literary Endeavours, Mark Roberts embraces many interlinked themes, dealing mainly with the relationship of the poet, or any individual, to the land we stand upon. The eponymous […]

Lithosphere Ben Walter Puncher & Wattmann ISBN: 9781923099685 Reviewed by ZOWIE DOUGLAS-KINGHORN   Ben Walter’s poetry collection sits between a rock and a hard place. It’s difficult to do nature writing without tumbling into a didactic crevasse, or bathing in the seductive, never-ending wellspring of descriptive language. But the poems that Walter hews together are curiously […]

Brittany Bentley is a poet and writer who is living, working and creating on Yugambeh Country. She is currently studying Creative Writing and English literature at the University of Queensland. Her work has been published in Meanjin.         Salt, Sink, Surrender There are days when I forget how to breathe, and so, I […]

Worthy of the Event by Vivian Blaxell Little Puss Press ISBN: 9781964322995 Reviewed by KAYA WILSON A reaching, layered and tender rejection of the rules-based essay It was in the early panic of Trump’s second term- when the trans podcasts I listen to were discussing the contents of their Go bags, the Executive Orders were […]

Insurgent Visions: Feminism, Justice, Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty  Duke University Press (2025) ISBN: 978-1-4780-3222-9 Reviewed by PAUL GIFFARD-FORET Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s latest book published in 2025 by Duke University Press is an event in itself, if only because her previous and only other book was published more than twenty years ago in 2003 by the […]

Essence  Thuy On UWA Publishing ISBN 978-1-76080-299-8 Reviewed by PARIS ROSEMONT   Thuy On’s third poetry collection, Essence (UWA Publishing, 2025), follows on from her previous collections Turbulence and Decadence. Punctuated into three sections where even the titles are in quaint collective interplay – respectively named ‘Art’, ‘Heart’, and ‘À la carte’ – punchy wordplay […]

Past & Parallel Lives Kaya Ortiz, UWAP ISBN: 978-1-76080-298-1     Love Like This Isn’t Harmless Bron Bateman,  Fremantle Press ISBN: 9781760995355 Reviewed by NATALIE DAMJANOVICH-NAPOLEON   Time travelling: Creating Triumph from Love’s Harm and Fractured Selves In their debut poetry collection, Past & Parallel Lives Kaya Ortiz weaves the recurrent themes of time travel, and […]

Jessica D’cruze is a storyteller, photographer, emerging writer, and artist, as well as a social worker. Diagnosed with ADHD at 36 years old, she embraces nonlinear thinking and creativity in her multidisciplinary work. Jessica explores trans-migrational experiences through food, imagery, and writing, with a strong focus on photo essays as a storytelling medium. She holds a Bachelor […]

Belle Ling is an Australian poet who lives in Hong Kong where she teaches Creative Writing and Literature. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland. Her poems have appeared in Cordite, Mascara, World Literature Today. In 2018, her poem ’63 Temple Street, Mong Kok’ was a co-winner of the ABR Peter […]

What Kept You? by Raaza Jamshed Giramondo ISBN 9781923106413 Reviewed by ROUMINA PARSA   The monster in Frankenstein is a literate creature. He becomes fluent in three languages within his first year of existence, giving him the preternatural gift of communicating directly with his creator.  ‘If I cannot inspire love,’ he tells Victor, ‘I will cause […]

This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga Faber and Faber ISBN 9780571355525 Reviewed by BRIAN OBIRI-ASARE   Right from the get-go, in the third instalment of her Tambudzai series, Tsitsi Dangarembga pinpoints the terrain upon which This Mournable Body will unfold. The novel opens with Tambudzai, now middle-aged, recently unemployed, and mighty hungry for status, checking […]

The Passenger Seat Vijay Khurana Ultimo Press ISBN 9781761153792 Reviewed by NINA CULLEY   Masculinity and Isolation in Vikay Khurana’s The Passengers’ Seat In the summer of 2019, two teenagers drove across British Columbia, leaving behind a strange scene: a cryptic goodbye message, a torched pick-up truck, McDonald’s French fries and cans of Red Bull […]

Find Me at the Jaffa Gate by Micaela Sahhar NewSouth ISBN 9781761170287 Reviewed by FINLEY JAPP   A photograph, Palestine, c.1920s: a young man has stopped on the side of a country road. He poses with flair beside his car, seeming to drink straight from an ibrik (pitcher). The man exudes confidence and joie de […]

The Kool Aid Dispenser  by David Musgrave ISBN ‎ 978-1763670150 Recent Works Press & Selected Poems, (Black Spring Press Group, 2021)                                 Reviewed by MARGARET BRADSTOCK Having known David Musgrave and his award-winning poetry since 2005 (when he became Treasurer for Poets […]

Human/Nature by Jane Rawson UNSW Press ISBN 9781761170010 Reviewed by JAMES GOBBEY   To encounter the natural world with certainty is to remove yourself from the expansive potential of its indeterminacy. As we move through this period of reckoning with humanity’s impact on the planet, answers feel like everything—like a necessity—but throughout Human/Nature, Jane Rawson […]

Plastic Budgie by Olivia de Zilva Pink Shorts Press ISBN: 9781763554146 Reviewed by FERNANDA DAHLSTROM   Olivia de Zilva’s debut is a memoir told in three strikingly different parts. First, de Zilva takes the reader through her memories of a Chinese Australian childhood, where impressionistic description is juxtaposed with nuggets of heavy-handed familial wisdom, as […]

The Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle ISBN 9781761269875 Pan Macmillan Reviewed by AZ COSGROVE   The main thing you need to know about Dylin Hardcastle’s Language of Limbs (2024) is that it’s bloody beautiful. I’m not the first to say that it will be a classic in queer literature, and I won’t be the […]