Reviews/Essays

Everything, all at Once Ultimo Press Sydney, 2021 ISBN 9781761150173 Reviewed by H.C. GILFIND Everything, all at Once presents fiction and poetry from the ‘thirty writers under thirty’ who won the inaugural Ultimo prize in 2021. This prize asked entrants to explore the theme of ‘identity’—a pertinent choice, considering how central and contested particular identities […]

Eurydice Speaks  by Claire Gaskin ISBN: 9780648848127 ]  Hunter Publishers Reviewed by LESH KARAN I feather my empty rest with writing I gave up relationships to right it Orpheus didn’t have to make that choice (sonnet 12) When I read Eurydice Speaks, what struck me the most (among many other things) was voice, and how it […]

Anthropocene By Sudeep Sen Salt Desert Media Group Ltd. 9781913738389 Reviewed by JENNNIFER MACKENZIE     Sudeep Sen, the poet, is in his study — where he can usually be found when in Delhi, sequestered, engaged with the world. His companion is the neem tree, light refracting through the pattern of its leaves. The tree, […]

An Embroidery of Old Maps and New by Angela Costi Spinifex, 2020 Reviewed by GEORGE MOURATIDIS             In some topoi of poesy lore, it is believed that the first iteration of Homeric oral verse as a material text was woven by women on a loom – deft fingers spinning, immortalising […]

Gentle and Fierce by Vanessa Berry Giramondo ISBN 9781925818710 Reviewed by FERNANDA DAHLSTROM   Gentle and Fierce is a book of essays that provides glimpses of Sydney author Vanessa Berry’s life by dissecting her encounters with non-human animals in various contexts – in the household, in captivity, in art and in the form of ornamental […]

My Friend Fox by Heidi Everett ISBN 9781761150159 Ultimo Press Reviewed by IZZY ROBERTS-ORR At night, I can hear the foxes screaming. Nothing is wrong, this is just what they do, particularly during mating season. The first time I heard it, I thought something was seriously wrong – that a small child was being chased […]

How Decent Folk Behave By Maxine Beneba Clarke Hachette ISBN 9780733647666 Reviewed by CHRISTINE SHAMISTA Building glass walls to show ‘how decent folk behave’ From the beginning to the end, front and back covers inclusive, Maxine Beneba Clarke’s newly released book, How Decent Folk Behave, is rich with carefully curated images and words that connect […]

Racism: Stories on fear, hate and bigotry Edited by Winnie Dunn, Stephen Pham, and Phoebe Grainer Sweatshop Literacy Movement Reviewed by ADELE ARIA   I was eager yet simultaneously exhausted to begin reading Racism: Stories on fear, hate & bigotry. This is not a criticism but rather acknowledges my visceral familiarity with the phenomenon. I […]

One Hundred Days Alice Pung Black Inc Reviewed by FERNANDA DAHLSTROM   Alice Pung’s fifth book and second novel, One Hundred Days (Black Inc, 2021), deals with the difficult relationship between sixteen-year-old Karuna and her manipulative and overbearing (but also loving and hardworking) Chinese Filapino mother. Karuna’s father, who is Anglo Australian, has left the […]

Ordinary Matter by Laura Elvery UQP ISBN 9780702262760 Reviewed by BEC KAVANAGH Laura Elvery’s second collection of short stories, Ordinary Matter, takes its inspiration from the mere twenty times women have won the Nobel Prize for science. And yet it isn’t science that connects the pieces in this collection, but the ‘softer’ stuff: the women […]

Whisper Songs by Tony Birch UQP ISBN 9780702263279 Reviewed by BEN HESSION Tony Birch is a Naarm (Melbourne) based writer, who is probably better known for his prose, including his short story collections and novels, of which, The White Girl, won the Indigenous Writers’ Prize of the 2020 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards. He […]

The Strangest Place: New and Selected Poems Stephen Edgar Black Pepper ISBN 9780648038740 Reviewed by KEVIN HART   Poetry always involves a delicate negotiation between craft and art. Craft can easily be misunderstood as a set of skills completely external to what is being written. Yet a poet shows craft by moving confidently within the work […]

Take Care by Eunice Andrada Giramondo ISBN 9781925818796 Reviewed by DONNALYN XU How do we give shape to what resists language? How do words move against the body, in dialogue with its silence, its noise? These tangled questions emerge from my reading of Eunice Andrada’s second collection of poems, TAKE CARE, and the writing of […]

While I am drawing breath By Rose Ausländer, translated by Anthony Vivis and Jean Boase-Beier ISBN 978 1906570 30 9 Arc Publications Reviewed by LESLEY LEBKOWICZ Black milk: the poetry of Rose Ausländer Many poetry readers, asked about the poetry of the Holocaust, will think of Paul Celan’s Todesfuge and its powerful opening image: Black […]

The Everlasting Sunday by Robert Lukins ISBN UQP Reviewed by AMY WALTERS Robert Lukins’ debut novel follows seventeen-year-old Radford as he commences at Goodwin Manor, “a place for boys who had been found by trouble” (19). The Manor is a dilapidated institution of reform in the Shropshire countryside, which the Queensland-raised Lukins has said was […]

Our Shadows by Gail Jones ISBN 9781922330284 Text Publishing  Reviewed by KATELIN FARNSWORTH  Our Shadows by Gail Jones is a family saga that examines the intimate lives of three generations living in Kalgoorlie. The story starts with Paddy Hannan, an Irish-born prospector who discovered gold back in 1893. Paddy’s history is woven in and out […]

Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt by Elena Gomez Puncher and Wattmann ISBN 9781925780741 Reviewed by Dženana Vucic To read Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt (2020), Elena Gomez’s second full-length poetry collection, is to be propelled headlong through the dizzy intersect of postmodernity and Marxist-feminist critique, to be flooded with possibilities for distraction, and […]

The Mother Wound Amani Haydar Panmacmillan ISBN 9781760982454 Reviewed by ANNE BREWSTER Strong Women Amani Haydar’s powerful memoir takes its title from Dr Oscar Serrallach’s term ‘the mother wound’, which describes how ‘the relationship between mothers and daughters is affected by unhealed traumatic experiences passed down matriarchal lines’ (333). In her family, Haydar says, the […]

Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau Hachette ISBN 9780733646270 Reviewed by MEGAN CHEONG Consumption and corporeality in late capitalism A reading of Jamie Marina Lau’s Gunk Baby After the deliquescent dream of Pink Mountain on Locust Island, Jamie Marina Lau’s Gunk Baby is a wake-up call from a silent number in the small hours of […]