Des Cowley

2014 Wangaratta Jazz and Blues Festival

10 November 2014

There was a genuinely celebratory air to this year’s Wangaratta Jazz and Blues Festival, and why not, given that the Festival was marking its twenty-fifth birthday. When the city first hit upon jazz as the basis for a festival back in 1989 – a somewhat arbitrary decision, based on the fact that most other musical forms had already been snapped up – few could h ...

Australian Poetry Journal: Vol. 3, No. 2 edited by Bronwyn Lea

by Des Cowley •

June–July 2014, no. 362

Des Cowley reviews 'Australian Poetry Journal', vol. 3 no. 2 edited by Bronwyn Lea

My first encounter with concrete poetry came via Apollinaire’s Calligrammes (1918), specifically his eye-catching poem ‘Il Pleut’. With its gently cascading words falling down the page, it was immediately clear that the typographic arrangement of the poem was of far greater import than its semantic content.

Although the term was not coined until the 1950s, concrete poetry draws upon traditions as diverse as ancient Greek shaped poems, Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Mouse’s Tale’, and the typographic experiments found in early twentieth-century Dada and Futurist publications. Despite this, concrete poetry has historically fallen between the cracks of various critical discourses. Is it art or is it poetry?

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The World of the Book by Des Cowley and Clare Williamson

by Ian Morrison •

December 2007–January 2008, no. 297

Ian Morrison reviews 'The World of the Book' by Des Cowley and Clare Williamson

The World Of The Book is an offshoot of the State Library of Victoria’s permanent ‘Mirror of the World’ exhibition, which uses major works from the SLV’s collections to present a global history of books and ideas. The exhibition itself is a testament to the depth and diversity of the SLV’s collections, and the book is thus part exhibition catalogue, part ‘Treasures’ book.

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