Poetry
William Christie reviews 'The Cambridge Companion to the Sonnet' edited by A.D. Cousins and Peter Howarth
It is a measure of the stature of William Wordsworth among his younger contemporaries that he would find himself subject to innumerable challenges over the early years of the nineteenth century. What upset the second generation of Romantic poets – Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and, to some extent ...
... (read more)Mark Tredinnick’s much-anticipated first collection of poetry, Fire Diary, is an examination of place and how to respond to it. The title provides a clue to the form of the book; many poems chart the daily exigencies of living within nature. More importantly, the collection explores the moods and aspirations of the self ...
... (read more)Scatter
Rose Lucas
amphora
by joanne burns
Giramondo, $24.95 pb, 136 pp, 9781920882631
joanne burns has long been a force in Australian poetry. amphora, her thirteenth collection, builds on that legacy wit ...
'Hautes Fenêtres: Thoughts on the place of translation in recent Australian poetry' by Simon West
In a 1995 interview for the Paris Review, Ted Hughes was asked if the 1960s boom in translated poetry, particularly with series such as the Penguin Modern European Poets, had influenced poetry written in England. ‘Has it modified the British tradition!’ he replied. ‘Everything is now completely open, every approach, with infinite possibilities. Obviou ...
Babushka doll
William Heyward
New Impressions of Africa: Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique
by Raymond Roussel (translated by Mark Ford)
Princeton University Press (Footprint Books), $47.95 hb, 253 pp, 9780691144597
Like all of his earlier books, Ra ...
An absorbing report from the land of poetry
Philip Mead
The Best Australian Poems 2010
edited by Robert Adamson
Black Inc., $24.95 pb, 250 pp, 9781863954969
Anyone who hasn’t caught up with the thriving diversity of recent Australian poetry shoul ...
Peter Craven reviews 'The Rest on the Flight: Selected Poems' by Peter Porter
It’s the voice, isn’t it, of a master, so unmistakably in command of a music that is inseparable from the personal modesty that is its signature, which belies all grandeur and refuses to take credit for the gift but has it nonetheless in abundance. When Craig Sherborne read the last poem in this Selected Poems ...
... (read more)Martin Duwell reviews 'Colombine: New & Selected Poems' by Jennifer Harrison
Colombine selects from Jennifer Harrison’s four previous collections and adds a book-length group of new poems. In keeping with current practice, the new poems precede the selections, so that anyone wanting to consider Harrison’s twenty-year poetic career in terms of development has to begin ...
... (read more)‘Hope in flight’
Maria Takolander
Seasons of doubt & burning: New & Selected Poems
by Robyn Rowland
Five Islands Press, $29.95 pb, 226 pp, 9789734041609
Robyn Rowland writes what could be described as a traditionally femi ...