On the 2nd December 2011 the first three reviews/articles were uploaded to the brand new Rochford Street Review site. The articles were:
- ‘Comments on Mike Ladd’s review of Australian Poetry Since 1788, edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, UNSW Press, in The Sydney Morning Herald ‘Spectrum’ November 12-13 2011′ by Mark Roberts
- ‘Kris Hemensley on Pete Spence’s new collection ‘Perrier Fever’. Grand Parade Poets 2011. by Kris Hemensley
- MICHAEL WILDING – THE WOOLLEY YEARS a review of Wild & Woolley: A Publishing Memoir by Michael Wilding. Giramando Shorts. 2011by Mark Roberts
I had a vague idea of what I wanted RSR to be. I wanted, for example, a site that would pick up small press publications and try to place them in some sort of context. There seemed to be a rise in the number of chapbooks being produced for example and, for the most part they were being ignored by the major reviewing outlets (the Saturday papers, ABR etc). The mainstream literary journals had limited capacity to run reviews and it seemed that a lot of good stuff might be slipping through the gaps. A new on-line journal seemed to be the way to go so I began looking for the easiest (and cheapest) way of setting it up. After checking out a number of blog sites and templates I settled on WordPress for some reason – so far it seems to have worked OK.
At the time I was aiming to publish a review a week if possible. After a year there have been 87 posts of which 73 have been reviews, articles or launch speeches (the others have been admin posts – desperate appeals for money, desperate appeals for reviewers or table of contents for special events). We have had 19,800 hits up until 8pm on 2 December 2012 (which means we have averaged just over 50 a day!).
As the site has evolved over the last year one of the more pleasing features has been the number of people who have been willing to either write for RSR or offer us a launch speech or an article they haven’t yet been able to place. The diversity of the people who have contributed, from young and/or new reviewers to more established writers and critics, has been particularly pleasing – more so when you realise we are not in the position to pay people for their work.
There are, of course, a number of things I wanted to do over the past year but haven’t as yet. One of the highlights was the special Dransfield piece in April which attracted almost 200 hits on a single day. I had wanted to do something similar on Vicki Viidikas and Jennifer Rankin but haven’t been able to organise it. I also wanted to do a series of interviews – I did one with Johanna Featherstone from Red Room on their ‘Disappearing’ project but am only half way through transcribing it.
As we begin our second year I have thrown together the following stats:
OVERALL POSTS
| Number of posts | 87 |
| Number of Reviews | 73 |
| Number of Admin posts | 14 |
GENDER BREAKDOWN BY AUTHOR (author of book being reviewed)
| issue 1 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Author | |
| Male | 6 | |
| Female | 0 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 0 | |
| 6 | ||
| Issue 2 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Author | |
| Male | 5 | |
| Female | 2 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 2 | |
| 9 | ||
| Issue 3 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Author | |
| Male | 8 | |
| Female | 5 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 7 | |
| 20 | ||
| Issue 4 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Author | |
| Male | 6 | |
| Female | 4 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 5 | |
| 15 | ||
| Issue 5 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Author | |
| Male | 8 | |
| Female | 5 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 4 | |
| 17 | ||
| Issue 6 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Author | |
| Male | 3 | |
| Female | 2 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 2 | |
| 7 |
| Total | Male | 35 |
| Female | 18 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 20 | |
| 73 |
GENDER BREAKDOWN BY REVIEWER
| issue 1 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 5 | |
| Female | 0 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 0 | |
| 5 | ||
| Issue 2 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 7 | |
| Female | 1 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 1 | |
| 9 | ||
| Issue 3 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 15 | |
| Female | 3 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 2 | |
| 20 | ||
| Issue 4 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 7 | |
| Female | 8 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 0 | |
| 15 | ||
| Issue 5 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 9 | |
| Female | 8 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 0 | |
| 17 | ||
| Issue 6 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 3 | |
| Female | 4 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 0 | |
| 7 |
| Total | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 46 | |
| Female | 24 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 3 |
GENDER BREAKDOWN BY REVIEW (Excluding Mark Roberts – editor)
| issue 1 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 1 | |
| Female | 0 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 0 | |
| 1 | ||
| Issue 2 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 5 | |
| Female | 1 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 1 | |
| 7 | ||
| Issue 3 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 7 | |
| Female | 3 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 2 | |
| 12 | ||
| Issue 4 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 4 | |
| Female | 8 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 0 | |
| 12 | ||
| Issue 5 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 5 | |
| Female | 8 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 0 | |
| 13 | ||
| Issue 6 | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 2 | |
| Female | 4 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 0 | |
| 6 |
| Total | Reviews Gender Breakdown by Reviewer | |
| Male | 24 | |
| Female | 24 | |
| mixed (eg joint) | 3 |
Rochford Street Review 
Thanks for all your work, Mark.
Love it! Stats are a funny/odd thing . . .
Happies to RSR!