Peter Minter

Macquarie PEN anthology of Aboriginal literature edited by Anita Heiss and Peter Minter

May 2008, no. 301

In 1938, the year of Australia’s sesquicentennial celebrations, trade unionist William Ferguson and former boxer John Patten helped to organise the first Aboriginal Day of Mourning and Protest on January 26; later that year, they co-wrote the pamphlet from which the above excerpt is taken, on behalf of the nascent Aborigines Progressive Association ...

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Blue grass by Peter Minter

by Chris Wallace-Crabbe •

September 2006, no. 284

Approaching a new book by Sydney’s Peter Minter, we are afforded the opportunity to see where a maturing poet is headed. A few years ago, he was very much identified with cutting-edge poetics. More interested in the epistemology of language than most of our poets, he could be seen as an experimental ally of, say, Michael Farrell and the American, Andrew Zawacki. Yet there was sometimes a whiff of the academy about his projects, a certain cerebral coldness. The poems kept holding us at a slippery arms’ length. Cunningly though, he opens the main flow of his new book with Ed Dorn’s concise observation that ‘All academics are hopeless’.

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Minyung Woolah Binnung by Lionel Fogarty & Smoke Encrypted Whispers by Samuel Wagan Watson

by Peter Minter •

February 2005, no. 268

Peter Minter reviews ‘Minyung Woolah Binnung: What Saying Says’ by Lionel Fogarty and ‘Smoke Encrypted Whispers’ by Samuel Wagan Watson

These two exceptional books should be sent to every household in Australia free of charge. They would be a perfect curative after the federal election. The campaigns of the conventional parties demonstrated how far indigenous Australia has fallen off the political radar screen. Fortunately, the independent creative work of Aboriginal thinkers, writers and artists continues to set high standards and often leads the way in the exploration of social, political and philosophical issues that many in mainstream culture are still unable to face.

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Other Worlds: Poems 1997–2001 by Dorothy Porter

by Peter Minter •

September 2001, no. 234

Peter Minter reviews 'Other Worlds: Poems 1997–2001' by Dorothy Porter

Without the slightest hint of irony, Jewel Kilcher, the young Alaskan poet and singer whose first volume of free verse, A Night without Armor, was published to popular acclaim a year or two ago, quotes Dylan Thomas in her preface: ‘A good poem is a contribution to reality.’ Thomas, thankfully, was right, and although we might argue, as poets often do, about the shape reality might take, it remains true to this day that good poetry contributes more to what we know, as individuals and as communities, and helps provide the ground for knowing what our realities can become.

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Ivor Indyk reviews poetry by Karen Attard, M.T.C. Cronin, Lisa Jacobson, Peter Minter, Sue L. Nicholls, and Mark Reid

by Ivor Indyk •

April 1996, no. 179

These six poetry titles represent the third series of New Poets to be published by Five Islands Press. Each title runs to exactly thirty two pages – no more, no less. It is, in a sense, a mini-collection, or a semi-collection, midway between a reading and a book. The series as a whole is therefore like a showcase of new talent – you applaud some of the poems, and get impatient with others, much as you do with the poets themselves. This is a good thing – it presents poetry as the provisional affair it really is, most of the time, for poet and reader alike.

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