Reviews/Essays

terra bravura by Meredith Wattison Puncher & Wattman ISBN 978-1-92145-063-1 Reviewed by WILLO DRUMMOND The blurb to Meredith Wattison’s terra bravura states that the collection differs from her previous work in that it is “fully autobiographical”.  This position is announced boldly from the very first line, and resonates throughout the volume, with a complex weave of visual […]

Hollywood Starlet by Ivy Alvarez dancing girl press Reviewed by ROSE HUNTER Each poem in Ivy Alvarez’ chapbook Hollywood Starlet features a female star from years past, for example such screen icons as Rita Hayworth, Jean Harlow, Jayne Mansfield, and Greta Garbo. Recognising these famous names is one of the obvious pleasures of the book, […]

Nothing Sacred by Linda Weste Australian Scholarly Publishing ISBN  978-1-925333-22-0 Reviewed by ASHLEY HAYWOOD Nothing Sacred, a novel in free verse, spans an historical denouement: the decades precipitating the climatic assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, and the eventual fall of the late Roman Republic. After Caesar’s death, a second triumvirate was formed which would be […]

Hook and Eye By Judith Beveridge Braziller, Ed Paul Kane ISBN 978-0-8076-0000-9 Reviewed by MICHELE SEMINARA Judith Beveridge’s Hook and Eye is a collection of previously published poems selected to showcase the highly regarded Australian poet’s work to an American readership. The poems are for the most part imaginatively — rather than autobiographically — conceived, […]

Writing Australian Unsettlement: Modes of Poetic Invention 1796-1945 by Michael Farrell Palgrave ISBN 978-1-137-48571-7 Reviewed by ROBERT WOOD Michael Farrell’s Writing Australian Unsettlement is necessary reading. It is a welcome contribution to a small field. However, Farrell’s work has several areas that are problematic and that are also symptomatic of wider issues concerning poetry and politics in […]

I’m Not Racist But…. by Tim Soutphommasane New South Books ISBN  9781742234274 Reviewed by JARNI BLAKKARLY Discussion about race and racism has been forcing its confrontational self into Australia’s mainstream public sphere quite a bit lately. It has been so visible and tangible that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for those who would rather not discuss it […]

Inside My Mother by Ali Cobby Eckermann Giramondo ISBN 9781922146885 Reviewed by GEOFF PAGE   Since the appearance of her popular first collection, Little Bit Long Time, in 2009, Aboriginal poet, Ali Cobby Eckermann, has produced five more books including a couple of verse novels, the second of which, Ruby Moonlight, won the NSW Premier’s […]

Small Acts of Disappearance by Fiona Wright Giramondo ISBN 978-1-922146-93-9 Reviewed by EMMA ROSE SMITH ‘I just saw Fiona Wright,’ says my friend over the phone. ‘At least, I thought it was her.’ A statement that wouldn’t be out of place at a poetry event or around the streets of the inner-west of Sydney. But my […]

The Hazards by Sarah Holland-Batt UQP ISBN 978-0-7022-5359-1 Reviewed by TIFFANY TSAO The first poem of Sarah Holland-Batt’s The Hazards provides a fitting opening for a collection so beautiful, so cold, and so much about the coldness of beauty. The eponymous jellyfish speaker of the poem ‘Medusa’ is unapologetically cerebral—‘a brain trailing its nettles’, a […]

Unclaimed Terrain by Ajay Navaria Translated by Laura Brueck Giramondo ISBN: 9781922146892 Reviewed by MEETA CHATTERJEE-PADMANABHAN Unclaimed Terrain by Ajay Navaria translated by Laura Brueck, and published in Australia by Giramondo cannot be described complacently as a ‘good read’. That is not what it set out to be. The stories are provocative and unsettling. There is […]

Wild by Libby Hart Pitt Street Poetry ISBN 9781922080387 (paperback) Reviewed by HEATHER TAYLOR-JOHNSON To say that Libby Hart’s third book of poetry, Wild, was a highly anticipated one is to take into account that her first book, Fresh News from the Artic, won the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore […]

Haifa Fragments by Khulud Khamis Spinifex Press ISBN 9781742199009 Reviewed by SELMA DABBAGH The protagonist of Khulud Khamis’s first novel, Haifa Fragments, Maisoon, is a jewellery designer and her story resembles an assemblage on a jeweller’s worktop; a thickly strung necklace that tailors off without a clasp, several loose, coloured stones lying around and about it – […]

Yimbama by Ken Canning Vagabond Press ISBN 978-1-922181-43-5 Reviewed by BRENDA SAUNDERS The poetry in this collection covers the full range of social and cultural conditions facing Aboriginal people today. Burraga Gutya writes of imprisonment, mental illness, domestic violence, dislocation and the injustice due to racism or ignorance. On the back cover notes to this […]

The Boy from Aleppo who Painted the War by Sumia Sukkar Eyewear Publishing ISBN: 9781908998460 Reviewed by TESSA LUNNEY The main character’s name looks grey, which mean I won’t like him. Gustave Aschenbach is a very dark name; he must be bad. I don’t want to finish the book in case it upsets me. Thinking […]

Kin by Anne Elvey 5Islands Press ISBN 978-0-7340-4897-4 Reviewed by DIMITRA HARVEY Val Plumwood wrote, “the ecological crisis requires from us a new kind of culture”. She was of course referring to the set of human/nature dualisms that underpin the contemporary West, and which “promote human distance from, control of and ruthlessness towards the sphere […]

Home After Dark by Kavita Nandan USP Press. Fiji ISBN 9789820109216 Reviewed by SUMEDHA IYER Early in Kavita Nandan’s Home After Dark, the protagonist Kamini meets V.S. Naipaul and tells him that A House for Mr. Biswas is her favourite book. He asks her where she is from; when she says she is Fijian, he simply […]

The Life of Houses by Lisa Gorton Giramondo ISBN 9781922146809 Reviewed by ALEXANDRA MCLEAVY The Life of Houses opens with one of the central characters, Anna, awaiting her lover’s arrival in a hotel dining room. The setting is ornate, the hour early and the space as yet unpopulated. “It had become the part of her evenings […]

Stories of Sydney Ed by Michael Mohammed Ahmad Seizure ISBN 978-1-921134-26-5 Reviewed by REBECCA ALLEN Soaring white-tiled sails curve up into the cloudless sky. Below, foamy tails of boats criss-cross that famous stretch of liquid blue. Waves glitter in the summer sun. A post-card city. Sydney shows off the same made-up face in thousands of […]

Drones and Phantoms by Jennifer Maiden Giramondo ISBN 978-1-9221-46-72-4 Reviewed by MELINDA BUFTON Jennifer Maiden’s Drones and Phantoms is her 19th poetry collection, the most recent in a list of titles published with marked regularity since the early 1970s. Her work is frequently noted to contain recurring themes that circle violence and war, her bio […]

The Blind Man With The Lamp by Tasos Leivaditis (trans. N N Trakakis) Denise Harvey ISBN 978-960-7120-32-8 Reviewed by ANDY JACKSON Ever since its emergence, the prose poem has been a uniquely potent embodiment of paradox. While a poem, arguably, could be defined as the literary form which declares itself to be “not prose”, a […]