Colleen Keating: Two Canticles
Colleen Keating is a Sydney poet. Her writing explores the wonder and paradox of nature with the harsh realities of life, justice, equality and the increasing threat to our natural environment.
Issue 40
A gentle, subtly joyful collection: Amanda Anastasi launches ‘Rural Ecologies’ by Michael Leach
It was a pleasure to be asked to launch this collection of haiku and senryu by Michael Leach. It is a gentle, subtly joyful collection, even in moments where loss and vulnerability are depicted. This slim collection is a testament to the poet’s ability to express a great deal in few words.
Matt Creighton: 5 Poems
Matt Creighton lived in Mount Druitt for a number of years, and now lives in regional NSW. He is a failed lawyer and barman who has lived a largely uneventful life. His current poetry models would be CK Williams, Derek Mahon and Craig Raine, if he weren’t overcome with feelings of inadequacy every time he reads them.
Following her own breath: Jennifer Harrison launches ‘Remarkable as Breathing’ by Rose Lucas
One of the great gifts of these poems is Lucas’ expertise in making the familiar (such as a zoom meeting, a walk on the beach, seeing whales, a father’s belongings, an exploration of ‘the mind’s cabinet’ with a therapist) take on new clarity, a more generous one.
Michael Witts on The Poetry of Dylan Thomas: A Personal Revision
I fell in love with Thomas’ writing as a teenager. Like Thomas, I was born in Wales. I was born the year he died. In my youth I felt a deep connection with him on many levels, including, a shared Celtic blackness and a liking for grog. In my very small library I have a copy of Deaths and Entrances, two early editions of Collected Poems 1934 – 1952, the definitive The Poems of Dylan Thomas (with a CD of Thomas reading some of his own work), Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas in America and Fitzgibbon’s The Life of Dylan Thomas. I confess to having named my daughter Caitlin after his wife.
Words of wonder, curiosity and awe: Angela Costi launches ‘Stars Like Salt’ by Cathy Altmann
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.
Audrey Molloy: 3 Poems
Audrey Molloy grew up in Ireland and has lived in Sydney since 1998. Her debut collection, The Important Things (The Gallery Press, 2021), won the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize. The Blue Cocktail was published by The Gallery Press and Pitt Street Poetry in 2023.
Vale Eric Beach
Rochford Street Review was saddened to hear of the death of Eric Beach during the week. We will look to publish a full tribute to Eric in the coming weeks but, as an immediate tribute, we are republishing Etic’s poems, as selected by Rae Desmond Jones, which appeared in The Selected Your Friendly Fascist, Rochford Press, 2012.
A significant voice in Australian poetry: Louise Wakeling on Margaret Bradstock’s new poetry collection ‘Alchemy of the Sun’
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.
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