A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
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.
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.
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.
This idea of returning forms one of the central tropes of Feldspar in both a figurative and literal sense. Many of these poems revisit scenes of the past, of the casual rituals of life down on the farm.
If I had to sum up Carl Walsh’s Tarp Green Light in one word it would be mindful. The work focuses inward, quietly observant, converting memory into the present moment through deep and sustained observation.
If you pick this up, you won’t want to put it down until you have finished reading it. That’s what happened to me when Suniti sent it as a manuscript. The first sentence in chapter 1 is: ‘I’ve fallen in love with the woman next door.’
Some books I’m not sure if I consume them or they consume me. Chinese fish has an amazing hypnotic clarity. Page turning, subterranean transitions keep moving me forward, they flow with no catch of air to breathe, a woman’s way book.
The Art world and the literary scene don’t interact in any culturally productive way, yet any writer would admit to feeding off visual art and any visual artist would say the same of literature. Since Tipping is both writer and visual artist, he must be very well-nourished.
This book is a representation of various women in the visual sense of being portraits but also a representation of their lives and works. And it’s a representation of Dina’s feminist take on the world: to a large extent, it’s a representation of Dina’s immediate world.
Rochford Street Review 