A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
Alan is what Judy Johnson would call ‘a meaning poet’ – someone who writes for understanding and clarity rather than stylistic effect. Alan’s work is simply worded; but never light. Adjectives are sparing, metaphors few. Emotions are, as they should be, of the air.
When the poetry book inãianei/now by Vaughan Rapatahana was given to me to review the cover, by Pauline Canlas Wu, not only intrigued me but also surprised me. Why? Because it portrays a group of men showing anger and two women with a resigned look on their faces and a hand expression that I interpreted as “What can we do?”. Once I read the book the cover made sense to me.
Brian has always been a poet, but he is one of those people who also has a wide variety of artistic interests: he was lead singer for the post-industrial band, Distant Locust, together with being their lyricist – there is an earlier book of song lyrics; he is a painter (as you can see from the cover) and a photographer.
Rhymes with Hyenas fills me with joy. For so many reasons. I can guarantee it will be unlike anything you have read before. It’s more than a poetry collection. More than an epistolary novel. More than a feminist reclamation of literary history. More than an ode to sisterhood. Yes, it is all these things. But it is so much more.
Disassembling A Dancer is a moving, visceral and beautiful chapbook collection from Canadian Australian writer Kyeren Regehr. It paints the tragic landscape of a dancer’s body, the pain, torment and passion and draws us into the sublime drama of ballet. The artwork by Monica Piloni and Lindsay Beal, as well as the woven ballet ribbon for binding, make this book an exquisite visual as well as literary work of art.
A Fickle Pendulum has five parts to its labyrinth of sites and the movement is a progressive shift from the ancient word to the future perfect. Beginning with Part 1, ‘A Tensile Faith’, I find myself unavoidably wrapped up in an image of a stretched out architectural form that is temporary and unimposing
Never heavy, Rose Lucas’s voice is measured, paced – on the page and in the ear – with the rhythms of heartbeat or walking. The ‘murk’ of human obsessions and cruelty are suggested subtly, but in such a way that her poetics affirms a kind of grace. Despite its sometime pious or religious overtones, in Lucas’s poetry ‘grace’ itself is a word that the poet risks effectively.
The Density of Compact Bone will grab readers and take them like on a magic carpet to places known and unknown, it will lead them to thinking and imagining, to seeing themselves reflected in the poems. I am sure they will enjoy every poem, every sentence, every line …
I want to go straight to the title “In the Room with the She Wolf”. We see here, straight away, the dynamic tensions in Jelena’s writing. Room – domestic, interior, protection. She Wolf – wild, exterior, danger. But it’s not as simple as that. The she wolf in East European symbolism also represents family, the matriarch, the pack leader, the protector.
Rochford Street Review 