Reviews/Essays

Iran: My Grandfather  by Ali Alizadeh  Transit Lounge, 2010 ISBN 9780980571745 Reviewed by ANGELA MEYER       Iran’s fascinating, in parts beautiful and in parts horrific history is worthy of account: the contextual conflict; religion versus progress; and all the complex in-betweens. So many good intentions, misinterpretations, capitulations, and fluctuations has this country endured. Its […]

Ghostmasters  by Mani Rao Chameleon Press, 2010 ISBN 9789881862310 Reviewed by AMOS TOH     Mani Rao has donned many hats – TV executive, visiting fellow, scholar, critic and performer – but she is perhaps most at home as a poet. Tellingly, her poetry has spanned over more than a decade, leaving a “ghostly trail of […]

  When I’m trapping on the Foggy, / fifteen miles off Catherine Hill Bay, / the world is good” (“Trapping on the Foggy”, lines 1-3) writes Anthony Lawrence in his faux-simplistic manner. In his earlier collections, Lawrence often explores traditionally masculine activities, carried out by men in the company of men, like the drinking and […]

Net Needle by Robert Adamson Black Inc ISBN 9781863957311 Reviewed by FIONA SCOTNEY In many ways the collection Net Needle is a logical continuation of Adamson’s recurring themes of love, loss, birds and the Hawkesbury region. It is very Adamson. It has the traits readers have perhaps come to expect and admire from his last […]