David Lumsden

David Lumsden works with the design of large computer systems, used to edit a literary magazine called Nocturnal Submissions, and has had poems published in various journals.

David Lumsden reviews ‘Charles Darwin: The concise story of an extraordinary man’ by Tim M. Berra, ‘Darwin’s Armada’ by lain McCalman, and ‘Charles Darwin in Australia, Second Edition’ by F.W. Nicholas and J.M. Nicholas

March 2009, no. 309 • 01 March 2009

‘Read monkeys for pre-existence’ wrote the twenty-nine-year-old Darwin in one of his notebooks, pondering Plato’s assertion that our ‘imaginary ideas’ derive from the pre-existence of the soul. Two years earlier, when HMS Beagle had returned from its circumnavigation of the world, Darwin was still a creationist, albeit one who had entertained doubts. Keen to capitalise on his wide-rangin ... (read more)

'Where Gold and Fire Abound’ a poem by David Lumsden

December 2001–January 2002, no. 237 • 01 December 2001

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David Lumsden reviews 'Therapy Like Fish: New and selected poems' by Marcella Polain

June 2009, no. 312 • 01 June 2009

Marcella Polain’s latest book of poems continues her lyrical exploration of personal experience. Her earlier collections centred on immigrant life, shadowed by a violent history, in the adopted context of the Western Australian wheat belt. In the new poems, which occupy more than one third of the current volume, the emotional terrain has thickened, and the range of experience has expanded to inc ... (read more)