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.
This extraordinary trilogy comprises: the memoir of her life-changing experiences there, ‘Breaking Into Pentridge Prison: Memories of Darkness and Light’; the re-released anthology of prisoners’ poetry created in those workshops, ‘Blood From Stone’; and a chapbook of Rosemary’s own poems and prose-poems, revealing for the first time the most personal aspect of that story, ‘Letters to a Dead Man’.
Colleen Keating is a Sydney poet. Her writing explores the wonder and paradox of nature with the harsh realities of life, justice, equality and the increasing threat to our natural environment.
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.
Matt Creighton lived in Mount Druitt for a number of years, and now lives in regional NSW. He is a failed lawyer and barman who has lived a largely uneventful life. His current poetry models would be CK Williams, Derek Mahon and Craig Raine, if he weren’t overcome with feelings of inadequacy every time he reads them.
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 fell in love with Thomas’ writing as a teenager. Like Thomas, I was born in Wales. I was born the year he died. In my youth I felt a deep connection with him on many levels, including, a shared Celtic blackness and a liking for grog. In my very small library I have a copy of Deaths and Entrances, two early editions of Collected Poems 1934 – 1952, the definitive The Poems of Dylan Thomas (with a CD of Thomas reading some of his own work), Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas in America and Fitzgibbon’s The Life of Dylan Thomas. I confess to having named my daughter Caitlin after his wife.
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.
Rochford Street Review 