Vale Antigone Kefala
Rochford Street Review was saddened to learn of the death of Antigone Kefala a week after winning the 2022 Patrick White Award. We were looking to published an account of her award win, instead we are now honouring her life.
Reviews
Larry Buttrose 3 Poems
Larry Buttrose is something of a fringe dweller in the landscape of Australian poetry. He was co-editor of two poetry magazines in the 1970s, Dharma and Real Poetry, and published poems in literary magazines, journals and anthologies. He branched out into fiction and nonfiction (ghost-writing the book upon which the film Lion was based) and writing for the stage and screen. His Selected Poems was published in 2017 by BryshaWilson Press in Melbourne.
The cynical and the hopeful: Deirdre Hines reviews ‘The Love Poetry of Judas Iscariot’ by Mick Corrigan
There is something about the name a poet chooses to title their collection that will either attract or repel a reader. Most poets nowadays opt for a short and catchy title, something that doesn’t give away too much.Something that proclaims eruditon and an understanding of the zeitgeist. Not to do so is risky, if one wnats to court favour and aplomb. Mick Corrigan goes against the current grain by choosing The Love Poetry of Judas Iscariot as title for his debut.
Finding Jesse of Newnes – an industrial ghost town on unceded Wiradjuri and Dharug lands: an exhibition by Linda Adair.
Finding Jesse of Newnes – an industrial ghost town on unceded Wiradjuri and Dharug lands by Linda Adair. An exhibition at the Darlington Installation Project (DIP), in association with intelligent animal, from 19 September 2022 to 16.October 2022.
2 Poems from Finding Jesse of Newnes by Linda Adair
Linda Adair is a (re)emerging artist (having stopped art making as worklife and family took up her time) and is a poet, writer and a publisher of Rochford Press, and co-editor of the online Rochford Street Review. Her debut poetry collection The Unintended Consequences of the Shattering was published in 2020 by Melbourne Poets Union and her work has been the anthologised in the following collections: To End All Wars, Messages from The Embers, Poetry for the Planet, Pure Slush Volume 25 and the Volume on Work. She has been published in various online and print journals, both in Australia and internationally. She has read her poems at festivals, conferences and venues around the country and has been a featured poet in Cuplet, Newcastle, Live Poets at Don Banks, and will be reading in Poetry at the Pub in Newcastle in late October.
Shaking us loose from our tired habits of perception: Liam Ferney launches ‘Land Art’ by Stuart Cooke
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.
Les Wicks: Five Poems
Les Wicks has toured widely and seen publication in over 400 different magazines, anthologies & newspapers across 36 countries in 15 languages. His 15th book of poetry is Time Taken – New & Selected (Puncher & Wattmann, 2022). His Spanish bilingual e-book is available from the Rochford Cottage Bookshop. He can found on-line at http://leswicks.tripod.com/lw.htm
Picaresque Encounters: Martin Langford launches ‘Time Taken’ by Les Wicks
I am sure, when Les started writing, that he didn’t really know what he would end up producing. Well now he has written it: a further contribution to the ongoing album of Sydney, a keen-eyed portrait gallery, a record of travels far and wide – and with the whole lot framed by questions we haven’t resolved yet, and almost certainly won’t, but which it’s essential to keep on asking.
Grappling with science and faith: Dr Robyn Rowland reviews ‘Dancing with Stephen Hawking’ by John Foulcher
As this book is dedicated to John Foulcher’s brother, Ian, nothing can be underestimated about the tinge of grief as each poem flutters in and out of a sense of religious faith and that’s faith’s challenges. The moon landing, the paintings of Crewdson, and physical love, the body is paramount as our capsule and here it is presented in its ragged faults and its skin passion.
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