Reviews/Essays

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck translated by Michael Hofmann ISBN 9781783786121 Granta Reviewed by GAN AINM It’s hard to avoid the idea of allegory when approaching Jenny Erpenbeck’s International Booker Prize-winner, Kairos. Right from the cover, we are told by Neel Mukherjee that ‘Erpenbeck has written an allegory for her nation, a country that has ceased […]

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar Pan Macmillan ISBN: 9781035026074 Reviewed by JAMES GOBBEY If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among those that survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe not […]

Moon Wrasse by Willo Drummond Puncher and Wattmann ISBN 1922571679 Review by MISBAH WOLF When I first picked up Willo Drummond’s debut poetry collection, Moon Wrasse, I was torn between a deep panic of knowing I wanted to become mixed up in the muck, blood, and bloom of the work and wanting to also turn away […]

The Djinn Hunters By Nadia Niaz Hunter Publishers ISBN: 978-0-6453366-9-6 Reviewed by JAVARIA FAROOQUI  The Djinn Hunters is a literary fusion of colours, words, shapes, and heritage, which has been carefully crafted in very interesting and distinct poetic styles. Nadia Niaz plays with the strands of her memories of Lahore to build evocative narratives in […]

Az is a 26-year-old trans wheelchair user with an acquired brain injury. His works of both fiction and non-fiction have appeared in such publications as Voiceworks, Archer, Overland, Mascara Review, ABC News, and the 2023 anthology of the Australian Short Story Festival. He is currently completing a Master of Literature and also graduated with distinction […]

meditations with passing water Jake Goetz Rabbit Poetry Reviewed by HOLLY FRIEDLANDER LIDDICOAT It’s a sophisticated piece of work that imparts its subject matter through its form. This is what I distinctly remember from first reading Jake Goetz’s ‘meditations with passing water’, in one sitting, in 2018, and what still rings true on re-reading five […]

The Open by Lucy Van ISBN: 9780648917601 Cordite Books Reviewed by LUOYANG CHEN Perth is getting colder and I am getting cold. I am on my way to get some jumpers from Target. Writing this review in my head while walking to the bus stop, I am thinking: This is great. I want to test […]

Breath by Carly-Jay Metcalfe ISBN 9780702268359 UQP Reviewed by LIZ SUTHERLAND Breathing was one of the few things in life I took for granted. Until I was 20, out with pneumonia for four months, three fractured ribs from excessive coughing. Then again at 32, post-COVID coughing for three months, two fractured ribs that time. Sickness […]

Leaf By Anne Elvey Liquid Amber Press ISBN 9780645044966 Reviewed by JENNIFER COMPTON   Anne Elvey was recently shortlisted for the David Harold Tribe Poetry Award for one of her elegant, prayerful compositions, that hardly seem to be composed of words as we know them, and yet I suppose they must be. They lift up […]

Women & Children By Tony Birch UQP ISBN: 9780702266270 Reviewed by PIP NEWLING Tony Birch holds a rare place in Australian literature – a male writer focused on telling domestic and working class stories. His pages shimmer with the dirt of hard work, difficult choices, and  everyday of life. The joys in reading his stories […]

Murnane by Emmett Stinson Melbourne University Publishing ISBN: 9780522879469 Reviewed by SAMUEL COX Emmett Stinson’s Murnane offers a critical and enlightening assessment of the Gerald Murnane’s four late fictions, and through these incredibly self-reflexive works, a reading of the eponymous author’s entire oeuvre. Stinson’s superb introduction gives way to chapter- length considerations of Barley Patch […]

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) by Lara Vetter Reaktion Books ISBN:9781789147599 Reviewed by NAOMI MILTHORPE It may say more about my own tastes than about the culture more broadly, but most of my reading in the past months has been about misunderstood and multifaceted women. Lara Vetter’s slim critical life of the modernist poet H.D. has slid […]

But The Girl Jessica Yu Penguin ISBN: 9781761046148 Reviewed by HOLDEN WALKER Jessica Zhan Mei Yu’s novel But The Girl (2023) is the story of protagonist and narrator “Girl”, as she embarks on a study abroad experience in the UK while immersing herself in British culture, contemplating her thesis, attempting to write her novel, and […]

Slipstream By Catherine Cole Valley Press ISBN: 9781915606341 Reviewed by CAROLINE VAN DE POL As an admirer of Catherine Cole’s earlier novels, short story collections and memoir such as Sleep, Seabirds Crying in the Harbour Dark and The Poet Who Forgot, I awaited the publication of her new book, Slipstream: On Memory and Migration, with […]

slack tide by Sarah Day Pitt St Poetry ISBN 978-1-922080-04-2. Reviewed by KATIE HANSORD “Rules are what people think, They aren’t a law of nature”.  (House Like a Folk Tale, 42) Deeply thoughtful and brilliant, Sarah Day’s most recent collection, slack tide (Pitt Street Poetry, 2022), deftly invokes the wider world of natural imagery and […]