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States of Poetry 2016

Editing an anthology of poets from New South Wales is both a wonderful and confronting task. Wonderful because you get to spend close-reading time with the work of poets that you greatly admire; confronting because of all the excellent poets you might include. However, one can take comfort in the fact that this anthology is going to be an annual occurrence, and in t ...

When I moved to Canberra in 2000, I knew it only by the stories that are told of it: of a place lacking human qualities, but full of government processes. Living here, working in the creative writing program at the University of Canberra, and pursuing my own writing practice, quickly disabused me of that. The ACT I have come to know is filled with people who make, t ...

For its small population, Tasmania has produced, or attracted from elsewhere, a significant number of published poets, past and present. Not all have loved the place. In the case of Gwen Harwood, the island state was her prison, or at least that’s what she told her friends:

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Prismatic and dynamic, Australian Book Review's States of Poetry anthologies are about refraction as well as brilliance, shade and trace as much as what is lit. If anthologies generate disagreement, it is because of an illusion that they set or express the fixed amidst a mobile and vibrant set of practices. The recurring, multifarious nature of States of Po ...