Features

Creating Poetry by Ron Pretty

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March 2016, no. 379
Judith Beveridge reviews 'Creating Poetry' by Ron Pretty

This updated and revised edition of Creating Poetry – first published by Edward Arnold in 1987, and then by Five Islands Press in 2001 – is one of few poetry guidebooks written by an Australian poet. One of its pleasing features is that it uses the work of Australian poets, including John Tranter, Geoff Page, Kevin Brophy, Meredith Wattison, Judith Wrig ...

The Weekly Poem: 52 Exercises in closed and open forms edited by Jordie Albiston

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May 2015, no. 371
Jacinta Le Plastrier reviews 'The Weekly Poem' edited by Jordie Albiston

Discussing the genesis of a poem, W.H. Auden told Paris Review that at any given time he had two things on his mind: ‘a theme that interests me and a problem of verbal form, meter, diction, etc. The theme looks for the right form; the form looks for the right theme. When the two come together, I am able to start writing.’ Australian poet Jordie Albiston ...

History vs Memoir

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June–July 2014, no. 362

In Iris Murdoch’s novel, The Sandcastle (1957), a young artist called Rain Carter is commissioned to paint a retired schoolmaster, Demoyte, an eccentric with an offbeat sense of humour. Instead of his usual attire – a shabby red velvet jacket with tobacco stains and bow tie – Demoyte turns up ...

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Meeting the Devil: A book of memoir from the London Review of Books edited by William Heinemann

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June–July 2014, no. 362
The malleableness of memoir
Anne-Marie Priest finds much to enjoy in LRB's new anthology of life writing (Hilary Mantel, Andrew O'Hagan et al.), but wonders about the elastic definition of what constitutes a memoir. ... (read more)

The Dream of the Great American Novel by Lawrence Buell

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May 2014, no. 361
Maximalism and US literary history

Well, it’s Moby-Dick, obviously. Except when it’s Huckleberry Finn or Absalom, Absalom! or Invisible Man or Gravity’s Rainbow. The Great Gatsby will often do, if one is pressed for time.

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The love song of Henry and Olga

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May 2014, no. 361

On an early spring evening in 1919, in a nearly empty cinema in the English seaside town of Lyme Regis, a slight, dark-haired figure slipped into a seat at the farthest edge of a row. From here, she would have a clear view of the profile of the youthful pianist who, sheltered behind a screen, accompanied the silent film. In white tie and tails, with her fair hair sl ...

Earth Hour by David Malouf

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March 2014, no. 359
Lisa Gorton reviews 'Earth Hour' by David Malouf

David Malouf turns eighty this month, improbably. To mark his birthday, UQP has published a new poetry collection by Malouf. ABR Poetry Editor reviews Earth Hour in this issue.

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Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 18: 1981–1990 (L–Z) edited by Melanie Nolan

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February 2014, no. 358
‘All the far-fetched greatness’

In his brief preface to Volume 1 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography 1788–1850 A–H (1966), Douglas Pike describes the ‘all-Australian, Commonwealth-wide … consultation and co-operation’ underpinning the volume and notes that the breadth and complexity of its intellectual network meant the Dictionary could ‘truly be ...

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Fourth Edition edited by Roland Greene et al.

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October 2013, no. 355
David McCooey reviews 'The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Fourth Edition' by Roland Greene et al.

It’s not just history that is written by the victors, but the encyclopedias, too. The eighteenth-century encyclopedias, such as Diderot’s Encyclopédie, were the projects of emergent superpowers, evidence of both the Enlightenment dream of universal knowledge and burgeoning colonial impulses ...

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The Young Desire It by Kenneth Mackenzie

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September 2013, no. 354
Peter Craven reviews 'The Young Desire It' by Kenneth Mackenzie

The legend of Kenneth Mackenzie (1913–55) has always hovered around the corridors of Australian literature. From Western Australia, was he? Died young, didn’t he? Trouble with drink, wasn’t it? Or sexual identity, could it have been? They say he’s worth reading but nobody much has, have they?

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