Marvelous, resonant and surreal moments: Mark Mahemoff reviews Devotional Poems by Graham Henderson
Devotional is a difficult collection to read. It is dark and pessimistic. But many lines glint with beauty.
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David Ades: 3 Poems
David Adès is the author of Mapping the World, Afloat in Light, and the chapbook Only the Questions Are Eternal. David won the Wirra Wirra Vineyards Short Story Prize 2005. Mapping the World was commended for the FAW Anne Elder Award 2008. David’s poems have been read on the Australian radio poetry program Poetica and on the U.S. radio poetry program Prosody. David’s poetry has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has won the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and has been twice shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize.
The Heart of the Human Quest for Enlightenment: Judith Beveridge launches ‘The Diwan of Nawid’ by Mal McKimmie
What I really love about Nawid’s poems is the way in which he follows his ‘own heart’s language’ – to use a phrase by Jane Hirshfield. Perhaps one of the dangers of writing poetry which explores the spiritual quest is to fall back on the old cliches, but Mal is such a skilful poet that he finds unique metaphors and analogies to articulate Nawid’s feelings and thinking.
Call for Submissions: P76 Issue 9 – poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora / odyssey
A delight in language: Jean Kent launches ‘nibs & nubs’ by Josh Stenberg.
An utter delight in language propels so many of the poems. Josh has such a natural fluency and feeling for how to let a poem become itself – it all feels effortless! – and he combines this with much wit and delightful leaps of thought.
Unearthing what has been buried: Angela Costi reviews ‘Earlier’ by Rosanna E. Licari
Earlier is an immersive composite of free verse and lyric found in condensed stanzas and in cascading spaces with intermittent words. This is a collection adept at employing the requisite form for the subject or theme of the poem.
Andrew Taylor: 3 Poems
Andrew Taylor is the author of nineteen books of poetry, the most recent being Impossible Preludes (Margaret River Press, 2016), the chapbook Coogee Poems Plus with art work by Travis Taylor (Baden Press 2021) and Shore Lines (Pitt Street Poetry 2023).
Moments of true contact: Peter Minter launches ‘Undercoat: Poems about Paintings’ by Mark O’Flynn
In this new book of poetry Mark deepens and extends his range with a particular focus on ekphrasis, which in very rough terms means using one form of art or literature to describe or respond to what is seen in a different form of art or literature.
Bloomsday Feature. ‘The Light Far From the Hill’. A poem by Linda Adair
Linda Adair is a poet and a publisher of Rochford Press, and co-editor of Rochford Street Review and a (re)emerging artist. Her many Irish ancestors arrived in the early to mid 19th century, to escape the English occupation of Eire and the politicisation of the food shortage which became a polite genocide but was rebranded as the Great Famine. Born on Darug Land in the era of the ‘Great Australian Silence’ of what colonisation really meant, Adair explores the stories of women and men marginalised by history in her poems.
Rochford Street Review 