Poetry
The cover of Kristin Henry’s verse novel All the Way Home shows a man at the wheel of a car, looking ahead at an endless dirt road. There is even a YouTube trailer for the book on the publisher’s website, with more driving. But in Henry’s book, as in all the best road movies, nobody ever seems to get anywhere.
...Bricks, knowledge, gravity
‘I just read a history of bricks.’
We learn about the ways our teachers have influenced us over many years. As an undergraduate student at the University of Melbourne, I took every class taught by Professor Peter Steele SJ. More than a decade after I first ...
Kate Middleton
and then when the
by Dan Disney
John Leonard Press, $24.95 pb, 46 pp, 9780980852325
Dan Disney’s début collection, and then when the, is a slim volume infused with irreverent outings in philosophy and place. Just as the opening poem ...
Anthony Lynch reviews 'The Quadrant Book of Poetry' edited by Les Murray
In his polemical Introduction, Les Murray notes that Quadrant was founded sixty years ago by poet James McAuley, the ‘stern formalist’ who ensured that poetry occupied a prominent place in the magazine. Poetry has continued to be central to Quadrant, its profile not waning under Murray’s stewardship as ...
... (read more)Martin Duwell reviews 'Here, There and Elsewhere' by Vivian Smith
This new book of Vivian Smith’s is really quite a surprise. If it were the case of any other poet approaching his eighties you might think of it as rather a grab bag, knocked together out of odds and ends. It is made up of an imaginary biography of ‘Ern Malley’; another set of sonnets, ‘Diary Without Dates' ...
... (read more)Rose Lucas
Ladylike
by Kate Lilley
UWA Publishing, $19.95 pb, 86 pp, 9781742584393
Like all good titles, Kate Lilley’s Ladylike offers the reader a coded and evocative entrée into her new collection. These poems are concerned with exposing and cr ...
Broadly speaking, there are two types of epitaphs: those formulated by loved ones to describe the living qualities of the interred; and those that would presume to speak from the grave. Writers, ever reluctant to pass up a blank page – even if it is a tombstone – are disproportionate constituents of the latter ...
... (read more)Alan Fish: The Keeper of Fish; and M.A. Carter: Keeping Carter
Philip Salom as Fisher King
Cassandra Atherton
The Keeper of Fish
by Alan Fish (edited by Philip Salom)
Puncher & Wattmann (Inbooks), $24 pb, 90 pp, 9781921450464
Anthony Lynch
Island Earth: New and Selected Poems
by S.K. Kelen
Brandl & Schlesinger, $29.95 pb, 335 pp, 9781876454173
‘Dark satanic mills won the day’, S.K. Kelen tells us in one of his strongest poems ...
Maria Takolander reviews 'Young Poets: An Australian Anthology' edited by John Leonard
John Leonard’s anthology of young Australian poets, showcasing the work of an exclusive septet, comes hot on the heels of Felicity Plunkett’s more accommodating Thirty Australian Poets (reviewed by Fiona Wright in the December 2011–January 2012 issue of ABR). Young Poets: An Australian Anthology ...
... (read more)