A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
There were three things that took my attention before I had even cracked this book, as I held it in my hand and turned it this way and that. Firstly, there was no author name or title on the frontispiece. Unusual. Even rare.
Undercurrents by Jane Williams’, Ginninderra Press 2023, was launched by Adrienne Eberhard at The Hobart Bookshop on Thursday 29 June 2023.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The overall impact of reading Bradstock’s deft, mature work is of a poetic finesse and clarity in poems engaging with the overriding importance of time – as different manifestations of time – and of place and exploration.
As Audrey Lorde writes, ‘Poetry is not a Luxury’, for Morgan Yasbincek poetry is a tool for survival of living agency and a means of deep enquiry into the foundational.
Devotional is a difficult collection to read. It is dark and pessimistic. But many lines glint with beauty.
Rochford Street Review 