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Hiss and spray

A fond sororal memoir
by
April 2025, no. 474

Gutsy Girls: Love, poetry and sisterhood by Josie McSkimming

University of Queensland Press, $34.99 pb, 280 pp

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Hiss and spray

A fond sororal memoir
by
April 2025, no. 474

I lament hearing the late poet Dorothy Porter (1954–2008) read in public only once, having devoured her work voraciously over the years. In the National Portrait Gallery, I once came across Rick Amor’s smallish 2002 portrait of Porter, which shows candid brown eyes framed by hawkish eyebrows inherited from her renowned barrister father, Chester Porter. ‘Chester Porter walks on water’ was her father’s vainglorious self-descriptor when he wasn’t monikered as ‘The Smiling Funnel-web’ at the bar (see Chester Porter, Walking On Water: A life in the law, 2003).

Gutsy Girls: Love, poetry and sisterhood

Gutsy Girls: Love, poetry and sisterhood

by Josie McSkimming

University of Queensland Press, $34.99 pb, 280 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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