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Virtuosity

New poetry by Anthony Lawrence and Subhash Jaireth
by
April 2022, no. 441

Ken by Anthony Lawrence

Life Before Man, $19.99 pb, 154 pp

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

Aflame by Subhash Jaireth

Life Before Man, $19.99 pb, 134 pp

Virtuosity

New poetry by Anthony Lawrence and Subhash Jaireth
by
April 2022, no. 441

Australia has a stylish new poetry press. The two books reviewed here by Life Before Man, the poetry wing of Gazebo Books, preference book cover art and poem above all the usual paraphernalia: publishing details, barcodes, author notes – even the epigraph – are tucked into a back page, and there are no apparently distracting contents pages or page numbers. Most of the poems sit neatly on the right side of the page with a private blank beige page buffer. There’s orientation in a contents list, and I trust the poets have a choice about whether they want one. That said, there’s a holiday-like liberation in slipping through unmoored. It’s a subtle reading experience, but do these aesthetic somewhat precious innovations justify the use of extra paper?

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