Revelations In The Quiet Carriage: Devika Brendon reviews ‘The Office Of Literary Endeavours’ by Mark Roberts
This is a jewel of a collection, full of elemental images and resonant engagement with country, history and human feeling.
Publisher
A memoir of things that need to be said: Cassie Hamer launches ‘Letters to Dead People and Others En Route’ by Jennifer Dickerson
Overall, this book tells a story of determination, resilience and survival.
Music, Mechanics & Emotions: Tru S. Dowling launches ‘Chords in the Soundscapes’ by Michael J. Leach
Michael J. Leach’s poetry collection, Chords in the Soundscapes, reads as a love song to generations within a changing world, rooted in personal experience.
The crunch, the rhyme, the echo: Kate Ennals launches ‘Tidal’ by Karen J McDonnell
I can feel Karen’s notions swirl about in all her poems. Each stanza is like a stork landing a bag of words to shape and make a coherent form from a dream or a thought. I like how each poem makes sense of a thought and brings it to life.
Compulsive readability: Bron Bateman Launches ‘Gold Digger’ by Lisa Collyer.
In reading Lisa Collyer’s poetry collection, Gold Digger, I was struck by how she writes poems that are battle-line hardy, staunchly feminist, with a working-class sensibility and a gendered understanding of both out-of-home work and the domestic sphere
A layered sense of place: Anne Caldwell speed launches ‘Otopos’ by Dominique Hecq
Otopos by Dominique Hecq was launched in the UK by y Anne Caldwell as part of the Speed dating launch at the Ekphrasis Symposium organised by Oz Hardwick and Cassandra Atherton at Leeds Trinity University, UK on July 6.
The heights of timelessness: Morgan Yasbincek launches ‘The Grand Reopening’ by Toby Davidson
The title taps us all at those points during the pandemic and in life where, after losing the world as we know it, we walked through all that is gone.
New perspectives and insights: Vaughan Rapatahana and John Gallas introduce ‘Te Purere/The Exodus: The Anthology of Expatriate New Zealand Poets’
Te Pūrere translates approximately into the English language as ‘getaway’ or ‘exodus’ and is an especially appropriate title for this anthology of New Zealand poets who continue to reside or have recently lived overseas as expatriates for lengthy periods. Their rationales are many and varied – ranging from employment, through relationships, to life-choice decisions to remain overseas
The immediacy of the message: Mark Roberts reviews ‘Each Night I Count My Children: Poems From Gaza’
The recently published chapbook, Each Night I Count my Children: Poems from Gaza, is one example of how poetry has survived in the rubble of Gaza and, indeed, how it has become an essential part of the struggle to keep Palestinian society and culture alive.
Rochford Street Review 