Reviews/Essays

Eidolon by Sandeep Parmar Shearsman Books ISBN 978-1-848613-92-8 Reviewed by NABINA DAS The reading of Eidolon for me started with the cover art of Sandeep Parmar’s book. The Gustave Moreau painting evokes a sense of mystery and intrigue, as also of solitariness in a ravaged world—emotions that continue to run through the slim volume. The 50 title-less […]

Selected Poems from Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire (trans. Jan Owen) Arc Publications ISBN 978-1-908376-40-4 Reviewed by JUDITH BISHOP ‘– Hypocrite lecteur, – mon semblable, – mon frère!’ With these halting, celebrated lines,  Baudelaire most hauntingly begs the reader to look inside herself, and to recognize there what he has seen in himself: […]

Bejing Spring by Pan Zijie maninriver press, 2015 ISBN 10: 0987473352 Reviewed by OUYANG YU Shortly after I received a copy of Beijing Spring, in Melbourne, for reviewing, I got on my way to Canberra for a visit and read the book in one go on my flight there. Immediately, a number of things, quite suggestive absences, […]

Painting Red Orchids by Eileen Chong Pitt St Poetry ISBN 978-1-922080-66-0 Reviewed by GEOFF PAGE   Painting Red Orchids is Eileen Chong’s third collection in six years. Born in Singapore, she has lived in Sydney since 2007. Although her Chinese roots run deep she is also very much a citizen of her adopted city and […]

brush by joanne burns Giramondo Publishing ISBN 978-1-922146-71-7 Reviewed by NAME ‘It must give pleasure’[1] It should be no surprise that I am a big fan of joanne burns’ poetry. Although brush is not a New and Selected per se, it is a excellent introduction to her work and a substantial confirmation of the poet’s talent and […]

The Special by David Stavanger University of Queensland Press ISBN 978-0-7022-5319-5 Reviewed by MICHELE SEMINARA This book is dedicated to the dead who are bravely living (and to those who wake wild-eyed in the dark) So begins David Stavanger’s first full length collection, The Special, published by UQP as wining manuscript of the 2013 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. As […]

Engraft by Michele Seminara Island Publishing Reviewed by ANNA COUANI   Not so long ago, publishing a first book of poetry was akin to dropping a pebble into a bottomless well. Today, although the poetry scene is a confined one, Engraft by Michele Seminara finds itself in a much more vibrant situation. After only a […]

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’, […]

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 […]