Reviews/Essays

Equal To The Earth by Jee Leong Koh Bench Press, 2009 http://www.benchpresspoetry.com/ Reviewed by ANDY QUAN         Poetry is both universal and specific. Its rhythms and cadences can tap into something like an original language. An image or sentence might reach deeply inside of you telling you that your understanding of the world […]

la, la, la by Tatjana Lukic ISBN 978-0-7340-4051-0 Order from: www.fiveislandspress.com     Reviewed by KERRY LEVES     Born in Ojisek, Croatia, in 1959, Tatjana Lukic studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Sarajevo, and published four poetry collections in Serbo-Croatian while she was still in her twenties. After long-brewing ethnic conflicts broke out […]

Eighth Habitation by Adam Aitken Giramondo Publishing Poetry, Paperback, 144pp ISBN 978-1-920882-46-4 $24.00 Publication April 2009   Reviewed by KIM CHENG BOEY    In “The Photo,” the concluding poem in Eight Habitation, the traveller-poet who has journeyed from the safe and familiar precincts of Sydney to the ravaged landscape of Cambodian history, poses a question: “To […]

What Came Between by Patrick Cullen Scribe, 2009 ISBN: 9781921372889 $27.95 http://www.scribepublications.com.au/     Reviewed by MARIA FREIJ     Patrick Cullen’s first book, What Came Between, explores the life of three families in Laman Street, Newcastle in the aftermath of the 1989 earthquake, and following another incident with earth-shattering consequences for the community: the closing […]

Between Stations by Kim Cheng Boey Essays, Paperback, 320pp ISBN 978 192088 2501 Giramondo (September 2009) Aus $24.95 www.giramondopublishing.com/index.html   Reviewed by CYRIL WONG                Kim Cheng Boey is a writer and poet who migrated to Sydney with his family from Singapore in 1997. One could call him a migrant writer. Between Stations, according to […]

Autographs by Alex Skovron Hybrid Publishers ISBN 978-1-876462-60-4     Reviewed by CAMERON LOWE   Autographs, Alex Skovron’s fifth collection of poetry, is a welcome addition to an already well-established oeuvre. Unlike Skovron’s novella The Poet (2005), which was burdened by an unconvincing narrative, the fifty-six prose poems that comprise Autographs are a return to his […]

Rofel G. Brion, Ph.D. is professor of interdisciplinary studies, literature and creative writing at the Ateneo de Manila University. Baka Sakali. Maybe by Chance, his first book of poems, won the Philippine National Book Award in 1981; he has published two more poetry collections since then.  He has been fellow at various literature and writing […]

  Motherlode: Australian Women’s Poetry, 1986-2008   Jennifer Harrison & Kate Waterhouse (eds)   Puncher and Wattmann, 2009 ISBN9781921450167 www.puncherandwattmann.com/pwmotherlode.html       Not A Muse Kate Rogers, Viki Holmes (eds) Haven Books, Hong Kong  ISBN 978-988-18094-1-4 http://www.havenbooksonline.com/books/catalogue/not-a-muse    Reviewed by BROOK EMERY                       What are my credentials, or lack thereof, to review […]

History Of The Day                                                     by Stephen Edgar Black Pepper Press, 2009 ISBN 9781876044626 http://users.vic.chariot.net.au/~bpepper/edgarhotd.html   Reviewed by MICHELLE CAHILL                History of the Day is Stephen Edgar’s seventh collection. Acclaimed for his formal virtuosity, the painterly style of his images, and an objective, pondering engagement with his themes, his work stems from the modernist tradition for which temporal, aesthetic […]

Borobudur by Jennifer Mackenzie Transit Lounge ISBN 978-0-9804616-6-4 Reviewed by STEPHEN ATKINSON        Journeys, actual and metaphorical, geographical and spiritual, and the cultural exchanges they facilitate, are at the heart of Australian poet Jennifer Mackenzie’s epic Borobudur, in which the pilgrimages of Borobudur’s priest-architect Gunavarman are a reflection of the writer’s own travels through the region […]

Canyon by Andrew Slattery Australian Poetry Centre ISBN 978-0-9804465-7-9 PO Box 284, Balaclava, VIC, 3183 www.australianpoetrycentre.org.au   Reviewed by ROB RIEL              Canyon is a handsome chapbook, the cover stylishly sewn rather than stapled to the text. Publication in this form is a valuable initiative of the Australian Poetry Centre, similar in scope to the […]

EVEN MUTTERS CAN MATTER: TEMPTING STUDENTS WITH THE TASTE OF BAHASA INDONESIA DOUGLAS MILES: An Essay On W.S. Rendra       W.S. Rendra who enjoyed several visits to Australia, died in Jakarta on the 6 August, 2009 at the age of 74.  I valued a joking relationship with the “Burong Merak” (= peacock).  He delighted in this soubriquet and successfully nurtured his own media image […]

Tenzin Tsundue is a poet, writer and a noted Tibetan freedom activist. He won the ‘Outlook-Picador Award for Non-Fiction’ in 2001. He has published three books to date, which have been translated into several languages. Tsundue’s writings have also appeared in various publications around the world including The International PEN, The Indian PEN, Indian Literature, […]

Drinking Water in a Suburb Called Zetland: Notes on Memory and the City in Some Poems by Pam Brown True Thoughts by Pam Brown Salt Publishing, 2008 ISBN:  9781844715152 Reviewed by TIM WRIGHT     In a recent discussion of the lyric in Australian poetry on her blog[i], Pam Brown wrote of her poetics that she was […]

Storm and Honey by Judith Beveridge Giramondo Press, 2009 ISBN 9781920882563 http://www.giramondopublishing.com/storm-and-honey Reviewed by NATALIE OWEN-JONES           Storm and Honey is Judith Beveridge’s fourth major volume of poetry. Her first two, The Domesticity of Giraffes, and Accidental Grace, established her as one of the finest voices in Australian poetry, and her third, […]

Aria by Sarah Holland Batt University of Queensland Press 2008 ISBN 9780702236754 http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/index.php Reviewed by KIM CHENG BOEY   Poetry is about finding the image that will suffice, that will embody the complex of emotion and thought possessing the poet’s body and soul. It is about finding concrete details that have a special resonance, and creating […]

            Belonging is longing, a longing. For migrants to live in a land they have chosen to settle themselves in, to be(long) or not to be(long) is a crucial question. It depends on what they long for: Is it a temporary abode for short-term benefits before packing up and going […]

The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness, Ghosts from Elsewhere   By Tabish Khair PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2009   ISBN 978 0 230 23406 2   Reviewed by MICHELLE CAHILL http://us.macmillan.com/thegothicpostcolonialismandotherness     Tabish Khair’s, The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness, Ghosts from Elsewhere provides new readings of how the colonial/racial Other is negotiated through Gothic tropes in the work […]

Trans-Pacific writer and photographer Alex Kuo’s most recent books are White Jade and Other Stories, and Panda Diaries.  His Lipstick and Other Stories won the American Book Award, and recently he received received the Alumni Achievement award from Knox College.     Having taught creative writing in the US as well as in Hong Kong/China, […]

The Best Australian Poems Edited by Robert Adamson Black Inc. 2009 ISBN 9781863954525 Reviewed by CAMERON LOWE  http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/best-australian-poems-2009         The first thing to say about this anthology is that it is full of birds. Currawongs, crows, egrets, magpies, cockatoos, finches, owls—the list could go on. This is hardly surprising given Robert Adamson’s […]