A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
This beautiful collection is both a joy to read and a challenge. Each poem stands as part of a carefully curated section. The sections combine to form a collection which demands to be read as a whole,
Jennifer Mackenzie’s work is often ekphrastic, inspired by, or growing out from, another work of art. She doesn’t describe that work of origin, as if outside of it, but becomes thoroughly embedded, moving between direct quotation and poetic re-imagining.
The Nightmare Sequence is a profound and deeply moving act of truth-telling created by poet Omar Sakr and artist Safdar Ahmed. It is bravely published by University of Queensland Press, in an almost unprecedented period of censorship in Australia’s artistic and literary scene.
With both passion and precision, her poems explore the rift between justice and the law within the often-veiled domestic environment as well as in the courtroom and other more public spaces, in the past and also, urgently, in the present.
Her new book is her best, bravest, and most ambitious work to date, a remarkable and many-sided achievement that elevates her work, thematically and aesthetically, to a new level.
This very beautiful book is a credit to the design flair of Gerhard Bachfischer and the editorial work and fine production values of Mark Tredinnick and Steven Meyrick at 5 Islands Press. It is itself a beautiful object and a triumph for Alison Gorman as her debut collection.
It seems to me that themes in this collection include medicine, reflecting Aideen’s work as a doctor; relationships, often bringing the sting of betrayal in their endings;
What stands out for me in The Literate Detective is its sustained celebration of what it is to inhabit language, to become larger through breathing in this added dimension language gives us.
Lizz Murphy’s latest collection, Bitumen Psalms is a collection of short song-poems in a tiny book exploring ‘tiny’ moments of life.
Rochford Street Review 