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Spinifex Press and Finola Moorhead’s Modern Classic

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A Handwritten Modern Classic by Finola Moorhead. Spinifex Press 2013. (First Published by Post Neo Books 1982).

handwritten

From the original 1982 Post Neo edition

I must have read Finola Moorhead’s A Handwritten Modern Classic just after it was published in 1982. It was one of those books that you never forget. It was handwritten not typed.

HANDWRITTEN!

I had to relearn how to read this book. I started as if this was just another book but by the second paragraph I had tripped over words and landed flat on my face.

Finola’s handwriting is not that hard to read (compared to mine for example) but I had to approach the text in a different manner, I had to read more closely, and I had to reread just to make sure… those last two letters are they ‘th’ or a strange ‘r’? Is the word “death” or “dear”? Reread the sentence…ah must be death!

But once you crack the code you are in!! And it’s a wonderful place to be (whether it is 1982 or 2013!) and the Post Neo edition has held a special place on my bookshelf for decades.

A Handwritten Modern Classic is a manifesto, it is (at times) handwritten poetry disguised as prose. Interestingly it still seems contemporary – Malcolm Fraser may not be PM but the issues remain the same. Above all it asks questions about writing and literature that we still need to ask today.

It is exciting that Spinifex has republished this small press classic – and brought it to the attention of a new generation, a new group of readers and writers. It will be interesting to see how it is received 30 years after Pete Spence and Post Neo Books decided to publish a handwritten manifesto – a classic even then!

Rochford Street Review is proud to be able to publish berni m janssen’s extraordinary launch speech for this ‘classic’ of Australian literature and is over the moon at being able to publish Finola Moorhead’s own thoughts on her classic becoming a classic!

- Mark Roberts

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A Handwritten Modern Classic is available from Spinifex Press http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=219/

Poems for the People: Robbie Coburn reviews ‘Stepping Over Seasons’ by Ashley Capes

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Stepping Over Seasons by Ashley Capes, Interactive Press. 2009

stepping over seasonsVictorian poet Ashley Capes has been a favourite of mine for quite some time now, beginning when I got a hold of a copy of his chapbook of Haiku Orion Tips the Saucepan (2010) and his collection Pollen and the Storm (2008). His second collection, Stepping Over Seasons, does not disappoint.

Capes’ work is distinguished by its searing honesty, uncharacteristic of much contemporary Australian poetry, or any modern poetry for that matter, touching on themes of love, loss, death, marriage, struggles of living in rural Australia and the placement of the poet in the modern world.

As a poet, Capes does not attempt to dazzle or confuse with an elaborate use of pretentious wording that eliminates everyone but scholars, rather presents a series of short poems that remind us of poetry’s true purpose and paint a picture with skilful simplicity.  It is no surprise that Mark William Jackson has stated Capes’ work “will appeal to both lovers of poetry and readers who have been burned by poetry in the past” (http://overland.org.au/blogs/not-assigned/2010/05/review-%E2%80%93-stepping-over-seasons/).

The collection focuses on depicting “the finer details of life” with an emphasis on “change within people and places as seasons change”, creating a broad and powerful body of work.

Capes has the ability to create an evocative poem from something as simple as an object or place, such as his wedding ring in ‘other objects’:

my wedding ring is a plain silver
barrel band. same as dad’s, very modest
and very hard to keep smooth,
with scratches I can’t keep track of
and don’t want to hide. It’s no good pretending

There is something fresh about the feel of this poem, as with the entire collection, with a perspective only observed by the active creative mind.  This is also demonstrated in the award winning ‘farm’, that explores the hardships of drought in small towns with a chilling use of metaphor:

dawn comes like someone embarrassed
to bring bad news, sunlight
very soft on weatherboard.

Perhaps the most moving and clearly relatable poems of all touch upon the darkness and hardship attached to the existence of a writer, such as ‘fujin’s bag’ and ‘late night’. ‘Late night’ discusses the limitations placed upon the artist in poetry with only words to produce an emotion or image. ‘fujin’s bag’ reflects on the displacement of the poet in the modern world while he sits at a desk writing late into the night, calling upon the happenings around him while still confined to the page:

still moulded
to the desk, blinking
back sleep, convincing
myself, somehow
that all this
darkness is necessary.

Personally the greatest triumph in the collection is one of the longer pieces ‘on the road’, that centres on the idea of death as a possibility in day to day routine when driving, and that the bustle of existence and force of habit eliminates thought:

you don’t think about
yourself just behind the glass
in the supposed repose of the white sheet,
belongings in a plastic bag:
one that’s somehow meant to sum you up
or give comfort to loved ones.

This poem also analyses the footprint that is left by the dead, how disposable a life seems to those not personally involved, and the realization that death is an inevitability.

Even when Capes is discussing darker topics such as a lifeless, empty town in ‘small town’, he manages to create and capture atmosphere with masterful simplicity and beauty:

marks on the footpath
don’t fade and the cemetery
never shrinks, only the town around it.

Capes’ output is truly remarkable, publishing high-calibre work consistently in almost every good lit journal in the country and I would go as far as to say this is his best release yet, and one of the best books of Australian poetry I’ve read in quite some time.

Simply put, this is a wonderful collection of astounding work that was recognized with a Commended Award in the 2009 IP Picks Best Poetry Competition that joins Capes’ other poetic achievements for individual pieces, such as commendations in the 2008 MPU Poetry Competition,  the 2009 Rosemary Dobson Prize and a prize in the 2008 Ipswich Poetry Feast Open Poetry Section.

For me, at least, this is a book that demands to be read again and again. I look forward to more work from Ashley Capes, who stands up with the best as one of Australia’s finest contemporary poets.

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Robbie Coburn is a poet, writer and performer from country Victoria. His first chapbook Human Batteries was published by Picaro Press in 2012. He is currently working on a book for children, a verse novel and a volume of memoir entitled Years of Skin.He can be found at: www.robbiecoburn.com

Stepping Over Seasons is available from Interactive Press: http://www.ipoz.biz/Titles/SOS.htm

 

Abortion, desertion, corruption, self-interest, revenge and the need for justice: Petrina Meldrum reviews ‘The Tower Mill’ by James Moloney

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The Tower Mill by James Moloney. QUP 2012

Tower MillThe Tower Mill is James Moloney’s first attempt at writing for adults. His reputation as one of Australia’s best known and well respected writers for children and young adults precedes him.

In the early stages of the novel we can be forgiven for feeling we are reading a YA novel as Moloney’s two main characters, Tom Riley, and Susan Kinnane (Tom’s mother), recount, from their own points of view, the history of their somewhat unconventional lives. Mother and son are given alternating sections within each chapter to tell their story, and although Tom, now an adult, is looking back, trying to make sense of how he feels about his mother’s role in his life, and Susan’s story is running forward, starting in 1968 when she is still a schoolgirl, and finishing in 2003; their stories are chronologically matched throughout, a structure that works extremely well. We are left to put the story of these two lives together and draw our own conclusions.

It is through the story, as we watch the characters mature emotionally, that we become aware of the shift from a young adult to an adult voice, a process that Moloney perhaps needed to go through himself in its writing, and which he has carried off with aplomb.

The backdrop for the story is Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland at a pivotal point in 1971 when the Springboks Rugby Team came to Brisbane and met with anti-apartheid protests. These, in turn, were met by the declaration of a State of Emergency, and followed by excessive force meted out by Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s police-force. There are political references throughout the novel; for those who have no prior knowledge of this era in Queensland’s history, the references do no more than whet the appetite, while, for those who lived through it, they provide a time for reflection. In view of Queensland’s present political climate, The Tower Mill could be read as a cautionary tale about where voter complacency can lead.

The book takes its title from The Tower Mill, a convict tower which gave its name to the hotel where the Springboks stayed while on tour. The protests took place outside the Hotel. Moloney has a fictional event take place, during a protest, that has a momentous effect on Tom’s life and that of his mother, Susan. We become involved, not always sympathetically, as we follow the consequences of the events that took place on that dark night in 1971.

Tom is the character most emotionally damaged by what happened that night. He never knew his father. He never felt his mother’s love. But the alternative would have been worse. From his point of view Susan always kept him at arms length; his brief encounters with her in his teen years felt more instructional than loving – how to be an activist – how to thumb your nose at authority – how not to conform. Susan might have been trying to open his mind beyond the conventional life he was leading with Mike Riley, the man he calls Dad, but for Tom, a teenager looking for a way into his mother’s heart, it was not what he was longing to hear.

Susan is a person with a vision of where her life should lead, and, like many who opt to follow their chosen path no matter what, she makes sacrifices that impact on others and leaves them to cope as they will. Her strong feminist views will do little to endear today’s readers who view gender politics in a more balanced way, but Susan is of her time and this needs to be taken into consideration. The characters whose lives she touches are left to pick up the pieces, not least the man she marries out of convenience, Mike Riley, a poet and English teacher. He becomes Tom’s surrogate father when Susan chooses to leave him and Tom and become a ‘political exile’ after receiving a letter, the contents of which are withheld from Mike until close to the end of the novel. If there is a weak point in the plot, I feel this is it. The content of the letter does not warrant the secrecy. If Susan were true to character, whatever the obstacles, whatever the outcome, she would have pursued the man responsible for taking away the life of her lover and Tom’s biological father, to the end. She would not have used it as an excuse to leave Brisbane for Sydney.

That said, The Tower Mill will not disappoint. We are left with plenty to think about long after we have put it down. The issues are huge: abortion, desertion, corruption, self-interest, the desire for revenge and the need for justice. Moloney has left Tom’s lack of willingness to agree to forgive and move on at the end of the novel open enough to allow him a way into a sequel, and to allow to Tom to take up the cause for justice his mother failed to pursue. I for one would look forward to reading it.

- Petrina Meldrum

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Petrina Meldrum is a Tasmanian based writer currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Tasmania. Her short stories for adults and children have appeared in a number of publications. She is presently working on a novel.

The Tower Mill is avaialble from http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book.aspx/1210/The%20Tower%20Mill

Rochford Street Review Supporting Subscriptions

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As we close off Issue 5 of Rochford Street Review it is perhaps time to consider making a donation to keeping Rochford Street Review afloat through a Rochford Street Review Supporting Subscription.

Rochford Street Review is an independent on-line literary and cultural journal. It receives no funding from any government or corporate sponsors and relies on the support of its readers to stay afloat. In the long term we would like to be in a position to pay reviewers as we think it is important that writers receive payment for their work whenever possible. In the short term, however, we are simply aiming to keep our heads above water and ensure Rochford Street review can continue into a second year.

You can help us meet our short term aims and maybe even start us thinking about the long term by clicking on the ‘donate’ button below and make a contribution of any amount to the future of Rochford Street Review

You can donate using PayPal or by using a credit card. Let us know if you receive a receipt.

Rochford Street Review thanks you for your support.

And watch out for issue 6!

Treading the lesser-known path: Gig Ryan Reviews ‘One Under Bacchus’ by Duncan Hose

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 One Under Bacchus by Duncan Hose. Inken Publisch, 2011

This review is based on Gig Ryan’s launch speech, Saturday July 9, 2011, Melbourne Trades Hall.

When Duncan Hose won the Newcastle Poetry Prize in 2010 with his poem ‘The Allegory of Edward Trouble’ -  a colourful and brilliant re-imagining of Ned Kelly’s life and meaning where “blood stains the hydrangeas” (immediately we’re aware of a colonised country, not yet claiming Lawson’s wattle as its emblem), “My heart mulched and tartan like the / golden bogs of Tasmania”) – it signalled a huge change in the reception of Australian poetry.  When a prize renowned mainly for its well-rewarded conservatism and staidness goes to an adventurous, thoughtful, funny, searching work, we can breathe a sigh of relief that the best doesn’t have to “waste its sweetness on the desert air”, though sweet doesn’t much apply to that particular poem.

Ned Kelly poems both open and close  Hose’s striking second book, One Under Bacchus. Hose investigates how these national myths have influenced or even formed us, but further this book follows a particular trajectory: after the idealised bushranger, Hose then moves on to the tale of Alexander Pearce, an escaped convict who ate his dead mates to survive:

…………..these leg bracelets
keep us awake with their chewing, four days on the heath
…………..Hell hath little flowers, white honey bunches limned with red
The sky tho circumpolar hath no regular sun, only grays more illumined
Less cloaked, like a promise’s promise my running mate’s
…………..A convict’s convict whom I chose once I knowed
He spells his name ‘Charels’…
I will make myself live for a scoop of Hobart liquor
…………..Before taking the drop, since we did abscond & have already
Eaten Terence Diggory.

                            ‘On the Work of Pearce’s British Addictions’

That is, the mythologising of place includes both the idealised and the demonised. Then follows a series of poems on types of imperialism – the sort of anxieties of influence that some Australians feel, with actual ancestry often in another hemisphere, and intellectual ancestry often in U.K. or U.S., these poems feature America, the fur trade, Napoleon, Berrigan, followed by poems about Scotland and Ireland, that is, a short history of the colonised or slaughtered – the poet travels “hatless in the white and shining air” (to quote Berrigan’s ‘A New Old Song’), here the contrast is between an idealised past, an idealised quest and our seemingly less heroic present:

Auntie Elko’s brought photos of the ‘smog-o-the-wilderness‘   that’s
……………………………..the visible realm

‘One Under Bacchus’

and  in ‘Pasties of Iona’:

rather than ‘mekin pilgrimage’ we
drag the cursor over the sacred island &
pants off on the sixth floor
……………………..google the bejesus oot ay it.

The next section has a few ‘love’ poems, followed by a return to Hobart’s settlement, then a Blue Hills sequence (a kind of homage to Laurie Duggan’s neverending Blue Hills) with Aussie attitudes displayed “Europeans – stay in Europe!”: substitute nationality here and we have current government policy in fact – the timelessness of Poetry! – thus showing the nagging ambiguity of Australia’s relation to the rest of world. The book finishes with the longest poem  ‘Edward Trouble’. There’s a constant satirising of pretensions to nationalism, and awareness of the lie of a solely British ‘civilisation’ – “Saturday morning upholstered with the silks / and dressinggowns of chinese Australia”, that is, there are constant reminders of the various types of dispossession on which Australia is founded:

……………………..avenging crows
Suggest new hats for the colony.

‘A wedding party’

.

.

The                                         Glamour
……………………………………………Of a beggared Australian syntax
Souths                     plant in the ‘native’ section             instruments of death

…………As decoration                       those black-bunged marsupials by god

We’d pat them to death if we could

‘Anglo but Cosmic’

Hose uses a courtly excruciating language of archaic spellings, misspellings, neologisms – there’s both a seriousness of intent and a gracefully light-footed style, like a Watteau painting, half Moby Dick in his high-falutin’ language, half Horatio Hornblower in the noble heroics at work in much of his historic diggings. He mixes words of Scots, Irish, French, 19th Century English, that is, these poems enact through their language the history they are dissecting and critiquing.

These poems don’t strain for an affectlessly confident relaxation that Berrigan sometimes wants, but for a highly-strung language – that suddenly thuds down into a joke, jokes that lurch with meaning. – “he was a skald Father, he drank to think”.  There is appropriately ‘Sonnet to Ted’ here, followed by  the amusingly-titled ‘Typical American Poem’:

Zorro had the dream contented
By the view one would see
…………From the guillotine
Forest around full of crow [sounds]
……………………………..& grubs
Like a period piece on BBC TV
……………………………..Zorro drives
Through the giant Drive In.

Jim’s drapes sure are Dusty.

Zorro, like Kelly, is also a masked hero, creating his own icon.  Also look at the two pictures by Hose in this book – one a half-naked masked woman, the other a young hare – these again contrast the mask of Art, of Civilisation, with Nature.But this book finishes with  the “totemised and trophied”  Kelly:

I too was a bird lover tho’ mostly / I shot them…
I belong to the majority mob w.../…  the minority
………….philosophy ….  the forge
to cast a bigot

Duncan Hose treads the lesser-known path of maverick Australian poets such as Norman Talbot, John Watson and Javant Biarujia – that is, like all good must-read poets, he invents a new language, full of playful disguises and serious intent, reaffirming Baudelaire’s view that only the human-made is beautiful.

- Gig Ryan

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Gig Ryan is Poetry Editor at The Age newspaper (Melbourne) and a freelance reviewer. She has published numerous books including New and Selected Poems (Giramondo, Australia, 2011); Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, UK, 2012); songs with Disband, Six Goodbyes (1988), and Driving Past, Real Estate (1999), Travel (2006).

One Under Bacchus is available from inken publisch http://inkenpublisch.bigcartel.com/

Tongues of Flame: Mark Roberts Previews the 2012 Queensland Poetry Festival

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One should perhaps suggest to Campbell Newman that he keeps well clear of the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts between 24th and the 26th August – though I would image the prospect of Mr Newman, or any of his cabinet, venturing anywhere near a Contemporary Arts Centre named after a poet would be remote under any circumstance. I somehow suspect that Premier Newman is not the sort of person that appreciates poetry or poets and that he would feel very uncomfortable surrounded by some of Queensland’s and Australia’s best poets at the 16th Annual Queensland Poetry Festival.

The 2012 festival kicks off on 24 August with the Official Opening at 6pm followed by “the opening night event”, Tongues of Flame featuring ‘national treasure’ Robert Adamson (NSW), African-American jazz poet L.E. Scott (NZ), ‘brilliant interdisciplinarian’ a.rawlings (Canada) and singer-songwriter Holly Throsby (NSW).

The Festival includes two paid workshops: ‘The Art of Reading a Poem’ with Robert Adamson on 24 August and ‘The Poetry of Politics’ with L.E. Scott on 25 August. Other poets appearing at various events over the three days of the festival include Kathryn Lomer, Ray Liversidge, Nathan Curnow, Paul Summers, Jean Kent, Marty Smith, David Stavanger, Steve Smart, L.E. Scott, Michelle Dicinoski, Carmen Leigh Keates, Philip Hammial, Brenda Saunders, Charmaine Papertalk-Green, Misbah Khokhar, Cameron Hindrum, Geoff Lemon, Jill Jones, Nicola Easthope, Robert Adamson and angela rawlings among others.

There are also a number of awards being announced during the festival, including the 2012 Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award for Unpublished Poetry which this year is being judged by Robert Adamson, Sue Abbey and Kent MacCarter, and the 2012 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an unpublished manuscript with 2012 judges Thomas Shapcott, Felicity Plunkett, Justin Clemens.

Interestingly for a poetry festival there is also a ‘film festival/challenge’ with the Queensland Poetry Festival Filmmakers Challenge exploring “the arena where poetic expression and audio-visual technology collide”. Filmmakers, video artists, poets, and all multimedia practitioners were asked to create a short work which could include a record of poetry performance, a video text manipulation or their own interpretation of the challenge. The winner, along with a selection of shortlisted entries, will be screened at the festival.

In addition to the Brisbane program the festival for the first time while be going bush….or at least to Bundaberg, Gladstone, and Rockhampton to host workshops, readings, and performances as part of the inaugural QPF Regional Roadshow.

Of particular interest this year is a collaboration the Festival and Cordite Poetry Review which has seen the on-line publication of ‘Gibberbird: Of Birds and Other Strings’.(Special Issue 39.1). Gibberbird consists of a ‘source’ poem, written by Canadian poet (and 2012 Arts Queensland Poet in Residence) angela rawlings, together with ten poems responding to the source poem by a number of Queensland poets. As the title suggests the project is centred around birds and, as Cordite suggests in their introduction, the source poem represents “a foreigner’s first tenuous steps into Queensland’s ornithological lexicon via unorthodox categorization and linguistic sorting methods’. While Rochford Street Review will attempt a more in-depth review of this intriguing poetic collaboration in the new future, an initial reading suggests that this is a work that will repay multiple careful readings.

All in all the 2012 Queensland Poetry Festival promises to be an exciting few days for anyone who finds themselves north of the Treed River between the 24 and 26 August. Above everything else the Festival takes occurs at a critical time for artists and poets in Queensland after the new LNP Government declared their hand earlier this year by scrapping the Premier’s Literary Awards and then cutting a swath through government funding of arts organizations. Lets hoped that the QPF have their funding locked in for the next few years!

- Mark Roberts

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Mark Roberts is a Sydney based writer and critic. He currently edits Rochford Street Review.

Queensland Poetry Festival http://www.queenslandpoetryfestival.com/

‘Gibberbird: Of Birds and Other Strings’ http://cordite.org.au/content/poetry/gibberbird/

Signifying the Feminine: Marietta Elliott-Kleerkoper reviews This Woman by Adrienne Eberhard

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This Woman by Adrienne Eberhard. Black Pepper, 2011 Reviewed by: Marietta Elliott-KLeerkoper

The title of Adrienne Eberhard’s new collection of poetry states her intention boldly: This Woman. ‘This’ signifies the place: the here and now. ‘Woman’ signifies the feminine, the female domain, a domain also encompassed by the symbolism of Susan Hawthorne’s ‘Cow’. Margaret Bradstock, in her review of the collection in Mascara Literary Review (Issue 10 October 2011), states that it is ‘female poetry’ and that it is ‘confessional’. I find these epithets limiting. Maybe ‘personal’ and ‘lyrical’ are more apt. However, as we know, the personal is both universal and political. And these qualities are not necessarily ‘female’, as is demonstrated in new collections such as Luke Davies’ Interferon Psalms and Christopher Swan’s Daylight Dark and Shadow.

One of Eberhard’s most significant and enduring influences is Seamus Heany:

Seamus Heany … his ability to invoke childhood … his ability to use language and metaphor … his way of anchoring his poems in the natural world … Heany was (sic) a poet of place …

‘In dialogue with Poetry: The intimate self/the invisible mender.’ Adrienne Eberhard. Zest e-magazine, 2007.

And Eberhard is herself a poet of place. How could she not be, living by the beauty of the D’Entrecastaux Channel in Tasmania?

… Across the Channel,

Bruny stretches like a tawny lion, colour leaching

from tawny hills until grassy slopes are sandy

as the beaches rimming the island like an endless

string of pearls …

‘Littoral’

Within this landscape, under the ‘enamelled cobalt’ of the sky, are the children ‘claiming the world with their noise’. In this way, the microcosmic and the macrocosmic are united.

The notion of place includes its history (a previous volume was ‘Lady Jane Franklin’). While Margaret Bradstock may have a point, that Eberhard has romanticised that history in omitting its less palatable aspects (I am not qualified to judge), Eberhard does not shirk from confronting even the most painful experiences. Her poems on breast cancer are hard-hitting, almost savage:

Soon her own breast will radiate lurid colour, her son

will hold out his small arms and she will turn away,

her breasts dangerous. The surgeon will take his knife

and rectify. Her breast will follow the knife’s hollowing,

all pertness spent in the sharpness of steel,

falling into itself, as if trying to salvage something.

‘This woman’

and there is the pain of witnessing her son’s colour blindness, a condition ‘carried by daughters, inherited by sons’ (‘Vision’). For me, these poems are the most poignant, perhaps partly because I too have suffered breast cancer.

Another way Eberhard says Heany has influenced her is in his use of metaphor. She says of metaphor:

… in the beginning was metaphor. This is what enables us to see the potential of the world

Adrienne Eberhard. Zest e-magazine, 2007.

Kinzie has defined metaphor as follows:

Usually something physical and capable of being imagined by us visually … is transferred from the literal realm over to the spiritual

Mary Kinzie: A Poet’s Guide to Poetry.

University of Chicago Press, 1999

In Eberhard’s case, the ‘physical’ is commonly the landscape or the body – one expressed in terms of the other, for example, in poems such as ‘The Natural Order’, where the girl is described in terms of the wind, and ‘Trust’, where the child in his different stages of growth is described in terms of the animals he encountered. Out of this comparison, the message is that we are anchored in the natural world. The comparison can also enhance the description of both the landscape and the figures in the landscape. However, if this becomes too much of a pattern, the power of the comparison can be weakened.

Kinzie also points out that:

… the poet must find the right objects and the means of shifting the conception of them from one realm to another.

This can be difficult to achieve. There is a danger of bathos (so well illustrated in the works of Alexander Pope, who uses this device with intent): for example: the comparison of a flock of crows with a bikie gang; a bird’s nest ‘soft as suede shoes’ (reminded me of Elvis: ‘Don’t step on my blue suede shoes!’).

A further issue with comparison is its formulation. Simile (‘as’ or ‘like’) introduces a foreign element, to paraphrase Kinzie. In this way it is less direct. Moreover, there is an inherent ambiguity in the simile: the two arms of the comparison are as much unlike as like. It is less of a shifting from one realm to another. In Eberhard’s work there is a preponderance of simile, as opposed to a more direct form of metaphor. Take, for example, the similes used in ‘Littoral’ (see previous quotation).

In relation to diction, Kinzie states that:

… the more syllables in the word, the more conceptual, cerebral, conversational, and/or editorial it will tend to be.

Eberhard seems to have a fondness for the longer, latinate word, such as ‘luminous’, ‘translucent, ‘illuminated’, ‘excoriation’. Clearly, there is a place for both what Kinzie calls ‘objective, thing-or texture-filled’  language and abstract language. However, at times, this kind of consciously poetic language, especially if repeated from one poem to the next, or even in the same poem (see use of the word ‘golden’ in ‘Instructions for Learning the Saxophone’, p.80) the language seems over-written, especially in the case of phrases such as ‘luminous light’ and  ‘ancient past’, where the adjective is in fact largely redundant.

In this collection, the poet has drawn us into her world with intimacy and honesty.  It is a world rich in beauty, in history, in love of family. We are indeed ‘very lucky’:

And if we are very lucky … the poems we write will briefly repair the holes, the tears, the scatterings, the separations, so that for an instant, as the transaction between reader and poem takes place, the reader will inhabit a world made whole.

Adrienne Eberhard. Zest e-magazine, 2007.

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Marietta Elliott-Kleerkoper was born in Amsterdam and survived the Holocaust in hiding. She arrived in Australia at the age of 11 with her family. She taught foreign languages and English as a Second Language and lectured in Teacher Education at several universities. She has been published in Australian and overseas journals and anthologies, has won several poetry prizes. Her Dutch-English poetry book and CD Island of wakefulness appeared with Hybrid in 2006. She is a former president of Melbourne Poets Union.

Rochford Street Review – Coming Soon

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Welcome to Rochford Street Review

Announcing a new on-line review site devoted to new Australian writing.

Rochford Street Review will function more like a blog than a traditional magazine with new reviews being added as they are received rather than being held and released in a single issue. Given our background as a small press publisher in the 1980’ and 90’s there will be a particular emphasis on small press publications (particularly poetry).

The first reviews should start appearing within the next three weeks and will include reviews of:

  • Laurie Duggan’s Allotments.
  • Michael Wilding’s Wild and Woolley: A Publishing Memoir
  • Chris Mooney-Singh’s The Bearded Chameleon
  • Gig Ryan’s New and Selected Poems
  • Mascara Literary Review Issue 10

Rochford Street Review will be edited by Mark Roberts. Mark has extensive experience in both publishing and reviewing Australian writing having published reviews and articles extensively in journals and newspapers over the past 30 years (see http://printedshadows.wordpress.com/). Mark also ran Rochford Street Press which published a number of titles during the 1980’s and was a co-editor of P76 Magazine.

For further information please email rochfordstpress@optusnet.com.au