A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
Over 45 years Les Wicks has performed widely across the globe. Published in over 450 different magazines, anthologies & newspapers across 36 countries in 15 languages. Les conducts workshops & runs Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects like poetry on buses & poetry published on the surface of a river. His 15th book of poetry is Time Taken – New & Selected (Puncher & Wattmann, 2022).
4
unpublished
visual poems
by Pete Spence
The Wisdom of Infants. A suite of 6 pictures (enamel on timber construction) by Tony Twigg
with poetry by Mike Ladd
Devotional is a difficult collection to read. It is dark and pessimistic. But many lines glint with beauty.
David Adès is the author of Mapping the World, Afloat in Light, and the chapbook Only the Questions Are Eternal. David won the Wirra Wirra Vineyards Short Story Prize 2005. Mapping the World was commended for the FAW Anne Elder Award 2008. David’s poems have been read on the Australian radio poetry program Poetica and on the U.S. radio poetry program Prosody. David’s poetry has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has won the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and has been twice shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize.
What I really love about Nawid’s poems is the way in which he follows his ‘own heart’s language’ – to use a phrase by Jane Hirshfield. Perhaps one of the dangers of writing poetry which explores the spiritual quest is to fall back on the old cliches, but Mal is such a skilful poet that he finds unique metaphors and analogies to articulate Nawid’s feelings and thinking.
An utter delight in language propels so many of the poems. Josh has such a natural fluency and feeling for how to let a poem become itself – it all feels effortless! – and he combines this with much wit and delightful leaps of thought.
Earlier is an immersive composite of free verse and lyric found in condensed stanzas and in cascading spaces with intermittent words. This is a collection adept at employing the requisite form for the subject or theme of the poem.
Andrew Taylor is the author of nineteen books of poetry, the most recent being Impossible Preludes (Margaret River Press, 2016), the chapbook Coogee Poems Plus with art work by Travis Taylor (Baden Press 2021) and Shore Lines (Pitt Street Poetry 2023).
Rochford Street Review 