Reviews/Essays

Speak Now Edited by Victor Marsh Clouds of Magellan ISBN 978-0-9807120-9-4 Reviewed by FIONA McKEAN   As Australia is currently poised to answer the question of whether it will say “I do” to same-sex marriage, it’s difficult to imagine a more topical publication than Speak Now, a collection of essays and creative non-fiction pieces on […]

Furious Triangle by Catherine Vidler Puncher and Wattmann ISBN Reviewed by BONNY CASSIDY Readers of a contemporary online poetry journal like Mascara Literary Review are probably among those most comfortable with the idea that a poem can be found or generated in any manner of ways.  We accept that modern poetics has become happily detached […]

The Bearded Chameleon by Chris Mooney-Singh Black Pepper Press ISBN 9781876044718 Reviewed by PHILTON       There are poems for the page and poems for the stage. Chris Mooney-Singh is an established live performer. His second poetry collection, The Bearded Chameleon, transposes his performative skills into poetically good reading. Mooney-Singh is a chameleon because […]

Australians love to venerate and immortalise their outlaws as heroes, seeing rebelliousness and the concept of a ‘fair go’ as part of their cultural identity.  Men such as Ned Kelly, Mad Dog Morgan and Jack Doolan have been celebrated in both film and song for sticking it to the authorities and battling for the ‘little […]

Everyday Static by Toby Fitch Vagabond Press 16 pages Reviewed by ASHLEY CAPES   There is a fascinating tension in Toby Fitch’s Everyday Static, where beauty is wrung from points where the cityscape and the natural world intersect. On one hand the city is a great provider of poetry for Fitch, both through its parade […]

The Monsoon Bride by Michelle Aung Thin TEXT ISBN 9781921758638 Reviewed by Paul Giffard-Foret   Politics of Desire and the Colonial Machine In the much politicised and somewhat romanticised discourse around present Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar) in the Occident, Michelle Aung Thin in her debut novel The Monsoon Bride has chosen to explore the nation’s British […]

Every Man in this Village is a Liar by Megan Stack New York, Doubleday, 2010 This edition: Scribe, 2011 ISBN: 9781921844096 RRP $24.95 Reviewed by TESSA LUNNEY     As it turned out, the first thing I learned about war was also the truest, and maybe it’s as true for nations as for individuals: You […]

This Woman by Adrienne Eberhard Black Pepper Press ISBN 9781876044725 Reviewed by MARGARET BRADSTOCK     As the collection’s title suggests, This Woman is a book of poetry situating the poet within her world. It is female poetry, confessional poetry, celebrating motherhood, children, love, nature and its fecundity and, above all, the significance of place, […]

After Gilgamesh by Jenny Lewis Mulfran Press ISBN 9781907327100 Reviewed by ROBERTA LOWING   It would be easy to categorize After Gilgamesh (1) as a missed opportunity or a token memento. This 64-page paperback is a record of what is billed as the “unique contemporary music theatre production” (2) After Gilgamesh, which was performed in […]

Authentic Local by Pam Brown Papertiger Media, Soi 3 ISBN 9780980769517 Reviewed by HEATHER TAYLOR JOHNSON   In Pam Brown’s latest book of poems, Authentic Local, she asks             who are we now?             a tricky question,             and a hopeless one.                                                 (‘Alibis’) It is the same question she has been asking for almost […]

Surface to Air by Jaya Savige University of Queensland Press, 2011 ISBN 9780702239137 Reviewed by MICHELLE CAHILL   There is a dazzling quality about Jaya Savige’s second collection, Surface to Air, though if the poems are rapid and rippled in their dialectic, their wit is matched by complexity. Savige’s virtuosity accommodates an impressive range of […]

Seven Studies for a Self Portrait     by Jee Leong Koh Bench Press Reviewed by CAROL CHAN    Poetry is worth something, but there are more important things. In his essay ‘Art vs Laundry’#, the American literary critic Stephen Burt challenges poets and readers to confront the tension between feeling that poetry is inconsequential, and that […]

Not Dark Yet by David Walker Giramondo Press, 2011 ISBN 9781920882655 Reviewed by IPSITA SENGUPTA   Despite its humour and ebullience, Not Dark Yet has a Beowulf frame of loss, death and violence. Shadows of the author’s memory, his sight and familial love are played out in a mediterranean climate. Not all of the eighteen […]

The Indigo Book of Australian Prose Poems Ed Michael Byrne Ginninderra Press ISBN 978 1 74027 650 4 Reviewed by ED WRIGHT   The  American poet Charles Simic once commented in Verse magazine that “Writing a prose poem is a bit like trying to catch a fly in a dark room. The fly probably isn’t […]

warming the core of things by Nora Krouk Hybrid Publishers ISBN: 978192166543 Reviewed by BROOK EMERY       Over the last few months, while all the wise futurists have been forecasting the decline of the book and the ascension of the virtual word, I’ve been thinking about why I’m so attracted to books, specifically […]

Out to Lunch by Andy Kissane Puncher and Wattmann ISBN:9781921450204 Reviewed by ANDY JACKSON     Among other things, Andy Kissane’s poetry in Out to Lunch focusses on suburbia, public transport, family, television, the beach and sausages.  So, why am I surprised to be moved?  And, not only moved, but challenged? That the visceral, emotional […]

 amphora by joanne burns                                                          Giramondo Publishing, 2011 ISBN 9781920882631 Reviewed by IVY IRELAND         quadrillions of singing atoms: joanne burns’ amphora joanne burns’ most recent collection, amphora, could almost be a gold-bound book of saints, if it weren’t for the utterly human myths also seeping through its pages.  The collection’s amphorae are […]

Colombine, New & Selected Poems by Jennifer Harrison ISBN 9781876044657 Black Pepper Press   Reviewed by SUSAN FEALY     For Jennifer Harrison, discovery occurs through play with language and in Colombine, New & Selected Poems we see a dialectic stance to her investigations. The tensions of mind/body, freedom/constraint and the lyric ‘I’ /modern awareness […]

Swallow by Claire Potter 5 Islands Press ISBN 978-0-7340-4159-3 Reviewed by PHILLIP ELLIS   There is a thing called midnight, within which we may awaken and listen to the sounds of the night that are heightened by the darkness. And we may remember that one of the functions of poetry is to heighten, not so […]

The Circus by Ken Bolton Wakefield Press 2010 ISBN: 9781862546899 REVIEWED BY RAE DEE JONES   For thirty years Ken Bolton has shown tenacious dedication to his chosen art. Apart from producing a series of volumes of poetry of unusual consistency, he also edited the magazine Magic Sam. When I read this recent volume after […]