Anthony Lynch

Anthony Lynch lives on the Bellarine Peninsula, Victoria, where he writes poetry, fiction, and reviews. His work has appeared in The Age, The Best Australian Poems, Island, and Southerly. His short story collection Redfin (2007) was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. His poetry collection Night Train was published in late 2011 by Clouds of Magellan. He is publisher at the independent publishing house Whitmore Press and an editor at Deakin University.

Anthony Lynch reviews 'Dark as Last Night' by Tony Birch

August 2021, no. 434 • 22 July 2021

‘And what is wrong with sad stories? The world is always sad.’ So advises Little Red, the aged, marginalised, knowing female character in the title story of Tony Birch’s latest short fiction collection. As in Birch’s previous works, Dark as Last Night contains an abundance of sad stories, but with grief and trauma ameliorated by the main protagonist’s affection for at least one other cha ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'Old/New World: New & selected poems' by Peter Skrzynecki

November 2007, no. 296 • 01 November 2007

Peter Skrzynecki’s substantial Old/New World comprises selected work from his eight previous collections plus a new collection. From it we could extract his autobiography. We find the youthful son of Polish migrants; his growing awareness of his migrant ‘otherness’; his employment as a teacher in New England; the birth of his first child; the ageing and death of his parents; his passage thro ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'Born Into This' by Adam Thompson

April 2021, no. 430 • 23 March 2021

When as a boy I listened to football on the radio, I would often hear mention of David Harris, a skilful midfielder who played for Geelong and Geelong West respectively in what were then the VFL and VFA. Harris was mostly known as ‘Darky’, not ‘David’. Recently, thanks to a YouTube interview, I learnt that Harris’s parents were Lebanese Australians. While in the interview Harris did not ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'The Escape Sonnets' by Brian Edwards and 'Couchgrass' by Dominique Hecq

April 2007, no. 290 • 01 April 2007

Dominique Hecq and Brian Edwards are well versed in the contingencies of language, roaming in their poetry between experimentation and high tradition – at least in terms of content, if not so much in form. Both target the self-reflexive play of language early in their latest collections: Hecq in her title poem, with ‘words spreading / like couchgrass after summer rains / on my tongue’; Edwar ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'I Con: New and selected poems' by Tim Thorne

February 2009, no. 308 • 01 February 2009

‘I could give ’em / enough social comment to fill a car park’ proffers the narrator in ‘Busking’, halfway through Tim Thorne’s I Con. In many ways, this book delivers on that promise. Thorne’s targets include war, colonisation, inequality, political deception, capitalism and celebrity. One moment he juxtaposes Dannii Minogue’s career with descriptions of police brutality; the next ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'To Sculpt the Moment'

February 2009, no. 308 • 01 February 2009

Despite the deadly title, this anthology of twenty-eight poems from the 2008 Newcastle Poetry Prize is replete with gems. Assembled from 423 entries by judges Jan Owen, Philip Salom, and Richard Tipping – effectively the anthology’s editors – it is a brilliant sampler that few anthologies can match for the legroom offered to the longer poem and poetry sequence. ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'Griffith Review 24: Participation Society' edited by Julianne Schultz

June 2009, no. 312 • 01 June 2009

'It’s in your hands, Julianne,’ proclaims an e-mail from Barack Obama. So opens the latest Griffith Review, which explores the many ways that, across the globe, individuals and groups are taking social, political and environmental matters into their own hands. Addressee aside, the Obama e-mail sent to editor Schultz in the final week of the US election campaign landed in the virtual hands of m ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'The Striped World' by Emma Jones

June 2009, no. 312 • 01 June 2009

It is fitting that ‘Waking’, a poem that links waking with birth, opens this inspired début collection from Emma Jones: ‘There was one morning // when my mother woke and felt a twitch / inside, like the shifting of curtains. // She woke and so did I.’ So the narrator-poet announces her arrival. The birthing theme continues in the next poem, ‘Farming’, in which pearls are ‘shucked fr ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'Best Summer Stories' edited by Aviva Tuffield

December 2018, no. 407 • 26 November 2018

Many readers – though apparently not enough to have saved them – will mourn the recent demise of Black Inc.’s annual Best Australian anthologies of essays, stories, and poems (which first appeared in 1998, 1999, and 2003, respectively). The last of these, however, has won something of a reprieve in Best Summer Stories, edited by Aviva Tuffield. A publisher at Black Inc. when this new project ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'When I Saw the Animal' by Bernard Cohen

November 2018, no. 406 • 25 October 2018

As a boy, I watched with fascination an early sci-fi horror film, The Blob. After a meteorite lands in Pennsylvania, a small, gelatinous blob emerges from the crater. Starting with an inquisitive old man who probes this runaway black pudding with his walking stick, the blob proceeds to consume, literally, everything in its path, growing in girth and bringing greater terrors with each new small-tow ... (read more)