Reviews/Essays

On Manannan’s Isle by Usha Kishore Isle of Man, UK. ISBN: 978-1-304-14507-9 (PB) REVIEWED by Sutapa Chaudhuri   On Manannan’s Isle is Usha Kishore’s debut collection of poetry. The fifty-six poems included in this collection are multicultural in nature and present a ‘chiaroscuro world’ (‘A Spoonful of Indian Sky’). Intertextual and multilayered, these poems build […]

Bapo by Nicholas Jose Giramondo ISBN 978-1-922146-63-2 Reviewed by GAY LYNCH Nicholas Jose explains his take on the term ‘Bapo’ in the introduction of his collection of short stories of that title: an unusual  kind of Chinese painting that tricks the eye into thinking it sees a collage of fragments. The word literally means ‘eight broken’, […]

Death Fugue by Sheng Keyi translated by Shelly Bryant Giramondo ISBN 978-1-922146-62-5 Reviewed by JENNIFER MACKENZIE He calls out more sweetly play death death is a master from Germany he calls out more darkly now stroke your strings then as smoke you will rise into air then a grave you will have in the clouds there […]

The Two Rivers of Granada Descend from the Snow To the Wheat/Los Dos Rios de Granada Bajan de la Nieve al Trigo. by Juan Garrido Salgado Reviewed by JANET GALBRAITH   On opening the envelope that contains Juan Garrido Salgado’s latest offering of poetry: The Two Rivers of Granada Descend from the Snow To the […]

The Deep North by Bronwyn Lea Braziller Edited by Paul Kane ISBN 978-0807616260 Reviewed by ANTHONY LYNCH Think of the north, and in Australia we might think of Queensland, in particular the far north of that state. Or, we might think of the northern hemisphere – Europe, North America. Or Australia’s most immediate northern neighbour, Papua […]

Open House by David Brooks UQP ISBN 978 0 7022 5352 2 Reviewed by NADIA NIAZ How can we Be so arrogant, to think that our souls are worth so much? David Brooks poses a cogent question and one that has often been asked by writers. Surely the act of writing is one of arrogance, the […]

Final Theory by Bonny Cassidy Giramondo ISBN 978-1-922146-61-8 Reviewed by CHLOE WILSON Bonny Cassidy’s Final Theory takes as its title an alternate name for the ‘theory of everything’, the elusive, hypothetical theory that would explain and connect everything in the universe. That such a theory remains hypothetical seems key to understanding why Cassidy has named this […]

Disturbance by Ivy Alvarez Seren  ISBN 9781781720875 Reviewed by ANGELA STRETCH   For every verse novel there has to be a starting point, a line in a letter, a speech or a phrase with symbolic meaning, or an image. In Disturbance, it is an inquest into the death of three family members. Ivy Alvarez introduces us […]

the thin bridge by Andy Jackson Whitmore Press ISBN 978 0 9873866 4 9 Reviewed by CAMERON LOWE     Andy Jackson’s chapbook The thin bridge (Whitmore Press, 2014) is preoccupied with the human body. If I counted accurately, the words ‘body’ or ‘bodies’ appear in twelve of the twenty-six poems in this slim collection, […]

Breaking New Sky Ouyang Yu 5 Islands Press ISBN 978-0-7340-4824-0 Reviewed by DIMITRA HARVEY   For a country that crows daily of its multiculturalism, and that is in good part comprised of a long-established and growing Chinese population, it’s perhaps telling that Australia has produced few collections of contemporary poetry from China. Some of those are […]

Land Before Lines By Nicholas Walton-Healey Hunter Publishers, 2014 ISBN: 9780987580269 Reviewed by ADEN ROLFE ‘Is it even possible to photograph a poet?’ asks Justin Clemens in the introduction to Land Before Lines, presumably written some time after he had his photo taken for the selfsame publication. The image features Clemens casting a scowl and a […]

Distance by Nathanael O’Reilly Picaro Press (2014) ISBN 978-1-921691-76-8 Distance, Nathanael O’Reilly’s first full-length poetry collection, is separated into three sections – ‘Australia’, ‘Europe’ and ‘America’ – the first and most substantial section (which deals with the experience of growing up in Australia) functioning as the emotional cornerstone of the collection. The title and section […]

Suite for Percy Grainger by Jessica L Wilkinson Vagabond ISBN 978-1-922181-20-6 Reviewed by GEOFF PAGE   It has always been hard to know what to make of the Australian composer and pianist, Percy Grainger. There have been at least six major biographies and “companions” and something of a revival of interest in his music since the […]

Maze Bright by Jaya Savige Vagabond Reviewed by CHRISTOPHER BROWN     The title of Jaya Savige’s chapbook, Maze Bright, previews several of the book’s concerns regarding writing and writing as process. While the title suggests itself as a single adjective (hyphen omitted), it equally proposes itself as an anastrophic syntax, one signalling perhaps the […]

Battarbee and Namatjira by Martin Edmond Giramondo ISBN 9781922146687 Reviewed by GRACE COCHRANE                         Martin Edmond is a very engaging storyteller. He involves his readers as if they are taking part in a conversation or reading from the same page in his research. He is also […]

Here Come the Dogs by Omar Musa Penguin ISBN 9780670077090 Reviewed by REBECCA JESSEN In an unnamed small suburban town we follow the lives of three young men, Solomon the over-confident charmer, Jimmy his half-brother who tags along, waiting to make his mark, and Aleks who is slightly removed from the others, looking after his family […]

Gap by Rebecca Jessen UQP ISBN 9780702253201 Reviewed by LINDA WESTE   For many readers, the contemporary verse novel offers a startling reading experience; so directly, so succinctly, so urgently does the form communicate—that it compels a single-sitting reading, and is no less memorable for it. Rebecca Jessen’s Gap is one such verse novel; with […]

A Vicious Example by Michael Aiken Grande Parade Poets Reviewed by ALI JANE SMITH       I’ve been visiting Sydney all my life. Doing city things; museums, art galleries, parks, department stores and shops that specialise in the necessary obscurities you can now order online. There are places in Sydney that have been transformed beyond […]

Fixing the Broken Nightingale Richard Allen Flying Island Books (2013) Reviewed by MICHELE SEMINARA Fixing the Broken Nightingale, Richard Janes Allen’s tenth poetry collection, is a small treasure of a book – one you might pop into your bag and dip into at idle moments for bursts of inspiration, contemplation or solace. Indeed, the physical […]

Madame Mephisto by A.M. Bakalar Stork Press ISBN 978-0-9571326-0-3 Reviewed by PAUL GIFFARD-FORET If the artist is a trickster, then Polish British writer A. M. Bakalar’s debut novel Madame Mephisto (2012) shows great mastery – albeit never in an entirely gratuitous or wanton way. A.M. Bakalar belongs to a generation of writers that have embraced the […]