Journals

Metre: A magazine of international poetry edited by Simon Caterson

November 1997, no. 196

Ann Vickery reviews 'Metre: A magazine of international poetry (No. 2, Spring 1997)' edited by Simon Caterson

With a title like Metre, you know that this magazine is not attracting readers by its chic and sexy appeal. Our own home-grown mags, such as Otis Rush, Salt, and HEAT, at least offer their poetry with a bit more adventure and promise. Furthermore, by combining poetry with a range of fiction, cultural criticism, essays or reviews, such local efforts release poetry from solitary confinement and bring new energies into it. In contrast, Metre seems nostalgic for older times, for days when poetry demanded respectful homage. As the staid European cousin, its conservative title is buoyed only by the overarching gaze of ambition.

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Salt: Volume 10 edited by John Kinsella

by Robert Adamson •

September 1997, no. 194

When a poet reviews a poetry magazine, it can be like walking out over a virtual minefield. I have a few more books to write before they take me out, so let me say straight away, I come in peace. These are cynical times, so maybe nobody will be taken in by this tone. After all, Salt is published and edited by John Kinsella, a highly successful poet who has established himself in record time. Let’s face it, this is poetry as strategy. As Hilary McPhee pointed out, the literary community in this country can be particularly vicious, and if anyone tries to hose that down they are having themselves on – the response McPhee got in relation to what she actually said proves the point really. It doesn’t have to be bland and polite though. There has been a lot of talk about the careerist approach to poetry lately. Ramona Koval noted at the first National Poetry Festival in Melbourne recently that some American poets have taken on this ‘professionalisation’ of poetry even down to their ‘Brooks Brothers suits and leather satchels’. Fay Zwicky replied, ‘I think careerism in poetry is contrary to how a poem comes into existence in the first place.’

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Australian Cultural History, Volume 11: Books, Readers, Reading edited by David Walker, Julia Hornen and Martyn Lyons

by Sue Murray •

September 1992, no. 144

It is refreshing to find an approach to literature that largely avoids traditional methods of discourse. Books, Readers, Reading is a compilation of essays from an Australian Cultural History Conference held in June 1991 and it encompasses subjects as diverse as Bible reading, a history of Australia’s first paperbacks and circulating libraries.

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