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Judith Beveridge

Film  |  Theatre  |  Art  |  Opera  |  Music  |  Television  |  Festivals

Welcome to ABR Arts, home to some of Australia's best arts journalism. We review film, theatre, opera, music, television, art exhibitions – and more. To read ABR Arts articles in full, subscribe to ABR or take out an ABR Arts subscription. Both packages give full access to our arts reviews the moment they are published online and to our extensive arts archive.

Meanwhile, the ABR Arts e-newsletter, published every second Tuesday, will keep you up-to-date as to our recent arts reviews.

 

Recent reviews

'The Boathouse' by Judith Beveridge

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April 2018, no. 400

ending on a line by John Burnside

No one on the boats, just cats – thin, furtive.
There’s the blown cry of terns and the wheedling
embarkations of crows, but you will not slip

... (read more)

Creating Poetry by Ron Pretty

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March 2016, no. 379
Judith Beveridge reviews 'Creating Poetry' by Ron Pretty

This updated and revised edition of Creating Poetry – first published by Edward Arnold in 1987, and then by Five Islands Press in 2001 – is one of few poetry guidebooks written by an Australian poet. One of its pleasing features is that it uses the work of Australian poets, including John Tranter, Geoff Page, Kevin Brophy, Meredith Wattison, Judith Wrig ...

Falling and Flying: Poems on Ageing edited by Judith Beveridge and Susan Ogle

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March 2016, no. 379
David McCooey reviews 'Falling and Flying' edited by Judith Beveridge and Susan Ogle

Ever since the baby boomers hit middle age, the supposed gerontophobia of their youth has been sent back to them with interest. One-liners from the 1960s – such as Pete Townshend's 'I hope I die before I get old' and Jack Weinberg's 'Don't trust anyone over thirty' – have circulated in popular culture like ghostly refrains haunting an entire generation. Fall ...

Bonus Episode - Judith Beveridge and Stephen Edgar in Conversation with Peter Rose

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Poem of the Week

In this bonus episode of Poem of the Week Peter Rose interviews two past winners of the Peter Porter Poetry Prize – husband and wife Stephen Edgar and Judith Beveridge – about what it is like being poets in a marriage.

... (read more)

Happiness by Martin Harrison

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December 2015, no. 377
Judith Beveridge reviews 'Happiness' by Martin Harrison

'Happiness' may seem like an odd word for the title of a book of poetry, and given the circumstances of Martin Harrison's final years – his illness, the tragic death of his younger Tunisian lover, Nizar Bouheni – the title is rather ironic, but the poems in this posthumous volume are rich, bountiful, full of the same 'worshipful attention', the same sense of ope ...

Poem of the Week - 'As Wasps Fly Upwards' by Judith Beveridge (2015 Peter Porter Poetry Prize Winner)

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May 2015, no. 371

In ABR's sixth 'Poem of the Week' Judith Beveridge discusses and reads her poem 'As Wasps Fly Upwards'

... (read more)

Books of the Year 2014

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December 2014, no. 367

Books of the Year is always one our most popular features. Find out what our 41 contributors liked most this year – and why.

... (read more)

'Young Male Lyrebird at the Illawarra Treetop Fly', a new poem by Judith Beveridge

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November 2014, no. 366

He has his medley nearly ready. He has pieced together
his own fantasia, even if just from the sound of an owl
regurgitating a pellet of bat fur, a park ranger’s
jangling keys, the creak of cable strain when bored,

... (read more)

Devadatta’s Poems by Judith Beveridge

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August 2014, no. 363
Peter Kenneally reviews 'Devadatta’s Poems' by Judith Beveridge

Seeking perfection or ‘enlightenment’ requires a monastic devotion to the life of the spirit and a rejection of material comforts. Judith Beveridge’s writings about the young Buddha and his cousin Devadatta bring out all the intricacies and contradictions inherent in such a quest.

This new volume, Devadatta’s Poems, holds up a kind of mirror to ‘Between the Palace and the Bodhi Tree’, the middle section of her book Wolf Notes (2003), which depicted Siddhārtha Gautama’s travels and contemplations before he became the Buddha. The earlier work is marked by its quiet determination, matching Siddhārtha’s, to look precisely, without wanting, and to be simply an existence among all the others.

... (read more)

'The Blind Soothsayer', a new poem by Judith Beveridge

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June 2012, no. 342

He tells me a woman more exquisite, more exotic
than any of the luminous objects found in the zodiac,
will come into my life. Yasodhara, I ask? He stays
silent, turns to a farmer and tells him he’ll lose

... (read more)
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