Reviews/Essays

The Promise By Tony Birch University of Queensland Press, 2014 ISBN: 978 0 7022 4999 0 Reviewed by MARGOT McGOVERN     A father mourning his dead son spends solitary afternoons ‘raking fallen leaves and weeding the garden … on [his] knees, sifting through the rose beds with [his] bare hands’. A widower cannot rest in […]

The Secret Maker of the World by Abbas El-Zein University of Queensland Press, 2014 ISBN: 9780701150071 Reviewed by TESSA LUNNEY   How strange, my love. In Baghdad, death and murder fall from the sky, always faceless, known only by the trail of destruction they leave behind. In Dilwa, death and murder have a name and place […]

Foreign Soil Maxine Beneba Clarke Hachette Australia Sydney, NSW, 2014 ISBN 978-0-73363242-6 Reviewed by HEATHER TAYLOR JOHNSON Sometimes we read prose – a novel, perhaps, or a short story – and we think I bet this writer is a poet, too, and then we turn to the page that tells us of the author’s past […]

The Last Candles of the Night by Ian Bedford Lacunar Publishing ISBN: 9781922198129 Reviewed by SUBHASH JAIRETH   The Last Candles of the Night opens with two epigraphs. The first in Persian: two lines of a verse by Ali Sher Nava’i of Heart. The second comes from an Urdu poem by Zaheer Kashmiri, which has […]

Transactions of Belonging by Jaya Padmanabhan Leadstart Publishing ISBN-13: 978-9383562275 Reviewed by JESSICA FALEIRO   The word ‘belonging’ evokes a strong feeling of connection to place, person, thing or feeling.  In her debut collection of short stories, Jaya Padmanabhan explores these facets of belonging to whom, to what and to where, by making us wonder […]

Stone Postcard by Paul Magee ISBN 9780980852394 John Leonard Press Reviewed by BONNY CASSIDY   A short poem, “Swimming in Minus”, lies at the centre of Paul Magee’s Stone Postcard. Positioned here, it makes a statement about the collection; the kind of poem that a more predictable writer might have placed at the book’s opening: […]

Lens Flare By Benedict Andrews Pitt Street Poetry ISBN 978-1-922080-34-9   Peony By Eileen Chong Pitt Street Poetry. ISBN 978-1-922080-28-8 Reviewed by GEOFF PAGE   It is often difficult when writers change from one literary genre to another. Reviewers — and writers in the encroached-upon form — are quick to “guard their own turf”. Benedict Andrews, […]

Weekend’s end by Tim Wright bulky news press Reviewed by CHRIS BROWN   Late last year I received in the mail a copy of Tim Wright’s poetry chapbook, Weekend’s end. I’d been in occasional correspondence with Wright for a few years and but for this, might never have seen (or reviewed) the book, which was […]

The End of the World Maria Takolander Giramondo ISBN 9781922146519 Reviewed by JACINTA LE PLASTRIER     In native American and other cultural traditions, the raven has a powerful symbology. It is considered a messenger who carries information between worlds, is of the earth but also capable of bridging to other realms. It can also […]

The Petrov Poems by Lesley Lebkowicz Pitt Street Poetry, 2013 ISBN 9781922080141 Reviewed by LINDA WESTE Lesley Lebkowicz’s The Petrov Poems is a verse novel that keeps its offerings close to its chest: at eighty pages the volume is slim and unassuming, its cover inconspicuous. While this reserve accords with its theme of espionage, nevertheless its […]

Circle Work by Cameron Lowe Puncher and Wattmann ISBN: 9781922186232   Reviewed by VANESSA PAGE Cameron Lowe’s Circle Work is a graceful collection of poems, with no trace of the masculine, high octane themes that you might expect from a book bearing this title. Instead, the reader is drawn into Lowe’s strange and beautiful landscapes […]

Maps, Cargo by Bella Li Vagabond Press, 2013         The Tulip Beds by A. J. Carruthers Vagabond Press, 2013 Reviewed by TAMRYN BENNETT   As Rare Object #94 and #92 respectively, Bella Li’s Maps, Cargo and A. J Carruthers’ The Tulip Beds are set to become even more recherché as Vagabond rounds-out […]

Naming the Ruins by Dinah Romah Vagabond Reviewed and launched by MERLINDA BOBIS     What do you do with loss? Or with the violated body? Or the devastated dream? What do you with ruins? You name them. You story them. You incant them into ‘oracles of love.’ This is what Naming the Ruins and […]

Sea of Heartbeak (Unexpected Resilience) by Les Wicks Puncher & Wattman Poetry ISBN: 9781922186348 Reviewed by JOHN UPTON     Before you open Les Wick’s latest collection he’s already playing with your eye and your mind: the title is a joke and an admonition: it’s “Sea of Heartbeak”, not “Heartbreak”. A sentimental cliché becomes a warning […]

Sputnik’s Cousin by Kent MacCarter Transit Lounge ISBN: 9781921924675 Reviewed by DAN DISNEY   If you are looking for narrative sensibilities or lyric sense-making in a narrow sense, then Sputnik’s Cousin is not for you. About as far out as its Russian satellite namesake once was, this is a book of astronomically strange experiments delivered […]

Onkalo by Bernice Chauly (Math Paper Press, 2013) Reviewed by JENNIFER MACKENZIE ‘Say it loud, say it silent’ (Socks) Bernice Chauly’s Onkalo begins with an extraordinary quotation in the preface from Michael Madison, director of Into Eternity, a documentary on Onkalo, a nuclear fuel repository being built on the coast of Finland: You are now […]

Radiance by Andy Kissane Puncher & Wattmann, 2014 ISBN: 9781922186522 Reviewed by ANNA KERDIJIK NICHOLSON   Radiance is Andy Kissane’s fourth collection of poetry. In my view this collection is a subtle change from, but consistent with, his previous books of poetry (1). Kissane may be setting out his thesis in the poem ‘Summer’, in which he […]

New and Selected Poems by Chris Wallace-Crabbe Carcanet, 2013 ISBN 978-1906188-07-8 Reviewed by CASSANDRA ATHERTON On the eve of his eightieth birthday, it seems appropriate that Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s New and Selected Poems offers readers an insight into his rich oeuvre and the opportunity to remedy, at least on a small scale, what Michael Sharkey (2007) has […]

1953 by Geoff Page UQP ISBN  9780702249525 Reviewed by LINDA WESTE ‘Innovative’: the characteristic imputed to a recent prize-winning verse novel [1] that left prose novel competitors on the short list, prompts one to ask: what determines innovation in a form whose conventions are not widely understood? Geoff Page’s 1953 is a notable exemplar of […]

The Pillow Book by Jee Leong Koh Math Paper Press, 2012 ISBN: 978-981-07-3078-9 Reviewed by TIFFANY TSAO In taking its title and opening epigraph from one of the first masterpieces of the zuihitsu tradition—the pillow book written by Sei Shōnagon in the tenth century—Koh’s own pillow book seems to invite close comparison. However, as the […]