Pete Spence: 2 Postcards (5 & 6)
Postcards 5 & 6 in a an ongoing series by Pete Spence
Reviews
An exquisite subtlety: Annee Lawrence reviews ‘What the river told me’ by Jane Skelton
In Jane Skelton’s What the river told me there is a strong connection to place, landscape, the natural environment, and the human trace on it.
Many of the poems were written during a 2018 writing residency in Northumberland, England; on travels to Scotland where Jane was conducting research on the early life of the colonial entrepreneur Ben Boyd; and then at Boydtown near Eden on the south coast of New South Wales where a tower is testimony to a man’s ambition to build a town.
Texas Fontanella – Erasure 6
Texas Fontanella lives in the broader Sydney area and erases texts to make new poems from them. Along with Brandstifter he published Black Shores (Text collage on photography) with Redfox Press in 2018
Magdalena Ball: Six Poems
Magdalena Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer, interviewer, and is Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader. She is the author of several novels and poetry books, the most recent of which, The Density of Compact Bone, was published in late 2021 by Ginninderra Press.
Level, unsentimental, and persistent: Nicole Rain Sellers reviews ‘Glide’ by Louise Crisp
In this multi-layered collection, poet and activist Louise Crisp details threatened species in the East Gippsland region of Victoria, and in doing so addresses the global environmental crisis. With uncanny clarity, tree gliders, brolgas, and other local creatures draw us into a network of ecological losses.
Entering a liminal space: Denise O’Hagan launches ‘The Density of Compact Bone’ by Magdalena Ball
The Density of Compact Bone is a visionary book by a poet who is also an accomplished novelist, reviewer and interviewer. Structured in four parts, it is a layered and deeply poignant collection, permeated by the twin themes of ecological precariousness and human connectedness.
Texas Fontanella – Erasure 5
Texas Fontanella lives in the broader Sydney area and erases texts to make new poems from them. Along with Brandstifter he published Black Shores (Text collage on photography) with Redfox Press in 2018
A trove of ancestral magic: Leila Lois reviews ‘In the Room with the She Wolf’ by Jelena Dinic
The pathetic fallacy of mined earth sets a precedent for a collection that explores turbidity, extraction and devastation, in multiple forms. At the level of language, the most resonant for a poetry collection, Dinić explores the multiple excavations needed to recapture stolen histories of her past.
Rochford Street Review 