A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
It was with sadness that Rochford Street Review heard of the death of Suzanne Bellamy on Monday 20 June. Suzanne was one of those rare people, full of life, action and history.
Suzanne was a friend and supporter of Rochford Street Review and appeared on our pages a number of times over the years.
Rose Hunter’s most recent book, Body Shell Girl (Spinifex Press, May/June 2022), is a memoir in verse that tells the story of her first two years in the sex industry. She is also the author of five other books of poetry, including glass (Five Islands Press, 2017). She has been published widely in journals in Australia, the USA, and Canada, and has been awarded an Australia Council for the Arts grant. Rose was born in Australia and lived in Canada for ten years, then Mexico for ten more. She is currently on the Gold Coast, where she is enrolled in a PhD in Creative Writing at Griffith University
Body Shell Girl is a special book – layered, creative, complicated. On one level we can approach it as a confessional, a delivery of one woman’s story where the subject matter is clear – we know Rose has created a verse novel inspired in her own words by ‘the radioactive journals’ she kept in the first two years of a decade long stint in the sex industry – in this way the book joins a conversation, a context with other books that explore this industry from different points of view.
Louise Wakeling is a Sydney poet who lives in the Blue Mountains. Off Limits (Puncher & Wattmann, 2021) is her fourth collection of poetry. Her work has also been published online in Burrow and in anthologies such as The Best Australian Poems (2010), Antipodes (Phoenix Publications, 2011), Contemporary Poetry (Puncher & Wattmann, 2016), Caring for Country (Phoenix Publications, 2017), Live Encounters (2018), Arrival (Lost in Books (2018), Wild Voices: An anthology on wildlife issues, ed. David Bassett (2019) and Messages from the Embers: From Devastation to Hope: Australian Bushfire Anthology (Black Quill Press, 2020). Her first novel, Saturn Return, was published by Hale & Iremonger in 1990. Wakeling currently alternates between writing poetry, casual English teaching and working on a second novel about coercive control and intergenerational trauma in the lives of three generations of women in Sydney and on the NSW Central Coast.
Nathanael O’Reilly is an Irish-Australian poet residing in Texas. His books include Boulevard (Beir Bua Press, 2021); (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020); BLUE (above/ground press, 2020); Preparations for Departure (UWAP, 2017); Distance (Ginninderra Press, 2015); Suburban Exile (Picaro Press, 2011); and Symptoms of Homesickness (Picaro Press, 2010). His poetry, published in fourteen countries, appears in journals and anthologies including Anthropocene, Cordite Poetry Review, The Elevation Review, Ink, Sweat & Tears, New World Writing, Mascara Literary Review, Ponder Review, Westerly and Wisconsin Review. He is the poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature.
The verse novel is a form now in constant transition and evolution, and here we see a huge range of writers interviewed, and their individual work explored. The Verse Novel Australia & New Zealand (2021) throws a wide and inclusive net, almost literally across the sea, from Australia to New Zealand, including parts of the Pacific.
Louise Wakeling’s latest collection begins with what might seem the familiar outlines of a city we all know and love, but she immediately starts tracking unusual pathways across it, taking on other, unfamiliar identities in order to do so.
Once considered amongst the giants of Australian literature, Katharine Susannah Prichard moved in a broad and fascinating social circle, friends with many of the literary and political greats in this country, Alfred Deakin, John Curtin, H.V. (Doc) Evatt, Miles Franklin, Vance and Nettie Palmer amongst them. Prichard, a foundation member of the Communist Party of Australia in 1921, was a writer of fiction, poetry and memoir, and lesser known as a playwright.
Rochford Street Review 