A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
I am happy to announce the triumphant arrival of Cathy Altmann’s third book of poetry. Triumphant because despite the public and personal exhaustion of COVID, with its insistence on longevity, Cathy birthed, gathered and salvaged thirty-nine poems, turning them into a collection of attentive and intuitive distillations for our times.
Margaret is a significant voice in Australian poetry, one who has been widely published in journals and anthologies. Some of her recent poems have been used as libretti in Luke Styles’ contemporary music, and performed in both Sydney and Paris.
As Audrey Lorde writes, ‘Poetry is not a Luxury’, for Morgan Yasbincek poetry is a tool for survival of living agency and a means of deep enquiry into the foundational.
Devotional is a difficult collection to read. It is dark and pessimistic. But many lines glint with beauty.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Given the nature of events here and overseas in the last half-decade, it’s not too surprising that so much recent literature has been centered around themes of loss, grieving, and healing. Seams of Repair would seem to be part of this tendency, and its title (as well as its cover) points to the power of restoration, where the mending of breakage is reliant on the strength of its craft.
Rochford Street Review 