A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
I’ve been savouring Small Epiphanies over the last few weeks. Savouring is the perfect word because these poems are intricately layered with sensual detail and richly textured.
David Terelinck’s first book of poetry, Small Epiphanies ( is exactly what the title promises to be: a collection of poems which observes and records daily life. These poems show readers that the examination of the daily is where meaning lies.
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.
Stephanie Green is a versatile and accomplished writer. Not only has she published criticism, screen studies and biography as a university lecturer, she has also written in various genres such as poetry, short fiction, creative non-fiction and travel essays in literary magazines, anthologies and journals, most recently in Live Encounters, StylusLit, Axon, Meniscus and Queensland Review.
Jane’s poems are the paintings and portraits of a person watching the difficult moments of their life happening. There is always a part of every poet that remains an observer, even at the worst extremity, that stands apart to watch what is happening.
The poetry of B. R. Dionysius in Critical State holds continuity and rupture in tension as he explores the encroachments of the Anthropocene on distinctive Queensland regional environments
Cooke wants us to shake us loose from our tired habits of perception, I think, because this is a crucial step towards responding to the challenges of our climate crisis. We have to rethink, and ultimately dissolve, the Man-Nature dichotomy and the implicit sublimation of Nature that shapes every aspect of our interaction with it. And we have to rethink this relationship that is at the very centre of our understanding of being if we are to fashion any kind of meaningful response, or risk losing every speck of brilliance, of imagination, of love and care and growth that has been part of the human experience. That’s not to say these poems are dark and dour, rather they compel urgency by depicting the stakes.
Besides Jena’s, there is work by Judith Wright, 90-year-old Raymond Curtis, and Wangerriburra elder Aunty Ruby Sims. Historical signboards record the efforts of ‘rainforest women’, local naturalists and botanists who have been, for 150 years, guardians of the environment, many authors themselves. And before that, the long-term custodians, Aunty Ruby’s people.
In every poetry collection, there is one aspect, one overwhelming impression, that we are left with which later comes to define it for us. In Frank’s Wide River, it is the poet’s quiet insistence on reawakening us to the essential wonder of our world that stays with us.