A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
Margaret Bradstock is a Sydney poet, critic and editor. She lectured at UNSW for 25 years and has been Asialink Writer-in-residence at Beiing University, co-editor of Five Bells for Poets Union, and on the Board of Directors for Australian Poetry.
Chad Norman lives and writes in Truro, Nova Scotia. In 1992 he was awarded the Gwendolyn MacEwen Memorial Award For Poetry, which was judged by Margaret Atwood, Barry Callaghan, and Al Purdy.
There’s a certain relentless quality to this book, a refusal to stand still. “To falter becomes a fissure for the grime”. This is both an engine driving us through this uneasy though forgiven world alongside a promise that the explorations evident in this book are not the end of the story, just the beginning.
Ivy Ireland is the author of the poetry collections Incidental Complications (2007), Porch Light (2015), The Owl Inside (2020) and Tide (2023). Ivy’s literary awards include the Australian Young Poet Fellowship, the Olga Masters Short Story Award, the Harri Jones Memorial Prize, the Thunderbolt Prize, the Newcastle Poetry Prize local award, and runner-up in the UC International Poetry Prize.
I’ve read and admired Ivy Ireland’s three previous books of poetry. This afternoon, simply, subjectively, in five minutes, I’d like to share with you five reasons why I keep reading Ivy’s poetry and why you, too, might enjoy the poems in Tide.
Robbie Coburn is a poet based in Melbourne, described by ArtsHub as ‘one of Australia’s most essential poets’. His verse novel, The Foal in the Wire, will be published by Hachette Australia in 2025. His poetry collections include Ghost Poetry (2024), And I Could Not Have Hurt You (2023), and The Other Flesh (2019), and he has published a number of chapbooks, including Before Bone and Viscera (Rochford Press, 2014).
When you read these books you’ll see that the work is supported by a network of women sharing their work – the Saturday Writing Sisters – and also women critiquing and editing each other’s work.
Rochford Street Review 