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Calibre Essay Prize 2026 - Now Open for Entries

Literary Studies

A History of New Zealand Literature edited by Mark Williams

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April 2017, no. 390
Elizabeth McMahon reviews 'A History of New Zealand Literature' edited by Mark Williams

A History of New Zealand Literature is a rewarding collection replete with the pleasure of new information that is both strange and strangely familiar. I commend it for both its intrinsic interest and, for Australian readers in particular, as one means of redressing Australia and New Zealand’s mutual ignorance of each other’s literary histories and cult ...

The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes ushered in the modern world by William Egginton

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November 2016, no. 386
Gabriel García Ochoa reviews 'The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes ushered in the modern world' by William Egginton

The four-hundredth anniversary of Miguel de Cervantes’s death serves as a good reminder of the influence and importance of his oeuvre, and perhaps too of our strange obsession with ...

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Pitch of Poetry by Charles Bernstein

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October 2016, no. 385
John Hawke reviews 'Pitch of Poetry' by Charles Bernstein

When Viktor Shklovsky, in his famous 1917 essay 'Art as Technique', asserts that the fundamental task of the poetic function is one of 'making strange' the reader's ...

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Release the Bats by DBC Pierre & The Writer’s Room by Charlotte Wood

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October 2016, no. 385
Jen Webb reviews 'Release the Bats: Writing your way out of it' by DBC Pierre and 'The Writer’s Room: Conversations about writing' by Charlotte Wood

Writers have, it seems, an insatiable appetite for reading about writing; and such advice comes in various forms. There are books that promise to teach their readers how to write in any ...

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The Australian National Dictionary: Second Edition edited by Bruce Moore

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October 2016, no. 385
Kate Burridge reviews 'The Australian National Dictionary, Second Edition' edited by Bruce Moore

The appearance of a new dictionary is always exciting, and the publication of the second edition of the Australian National Dictionary is certainly cause for celebration ...

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A Companion to the Works of Kim Scott edited by Belinda Wheeler

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September 2016, no. 384
Bernadette Brennan reviews 'A Companion to the Works of Kim Scott' edited by Belinda Wheeler

In 2004 Kim Scott delivered the prestigious Herbert Blaiklock Memorial Lecture to a predominantly academic audience at the University of Sydney. Provocatively, he began ...

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The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner

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August 2016, no. 383
David McCooey reviews 'The Hatred of Poetry' by Ben Lerner

Do people hate poetry, as the title of Ben Lerner's terrific book-sized essay implies? In Lerner's account, poetry is associated with hatred and contempt, even by ...

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D.H. Lawrence's Australia: Anxiety at the edge of empire by David Game

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June–July 2016, no. 382
Paul Giles reviews 'D.H. Lawrence's Australia: Anxiety at the edge of empire' by David Game

When D.H. Lawrence arrived in Australia on 4 May 1922, he was so ignorant of the country's actual conditions that he was, as David Game observes ...

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The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime by Harold Bloom

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April 2016, no. 380
James Ley reviews 'The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime' by Harold Bloom

As he reminds his readers on numerous occasions in The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime, Harold Bloom is now well into his eighties. He has spent a lifetime teaching and writing about literature at Yale University, where he has long claimed to constitute a 'department of one'. The claim is part lament, part affectation, part boast. ...

The Simplest Words: A Storyteller’s Journey by Alex Miller

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March 2016, no. 379
Brenda Walker reviews 'The Simplest Words' by Alex Miller

In The Simplest Words, Alex Miller's recently published work on his own journey through country, writing, love, friendship, and fatherhood, there is a remarkable scene of levitation. Miller describes his young daughter soaring up his own bookshelves, pas ...

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