Judith Rodriguez

Every book of poems is to some degree a selection, unless it’s a record of work and gets down among discarded drafts. Anthony Turner’s unpromisingly-titled first book (Musings: A collection of poems, 1965-1977, Hawthorn Press, $4.50 pb, 74 pp) needs so much more editing that it was an unwise venture into covers. Noting against poems ‘oldie’, ‘exercise’, and worse, I found interest in ... (read more)

Pariah Press is a brave new enterprise. A group of Melbourne poets have decided on the often-mentioned but rarely attempted co-operative method of publication. Barbara Giles and Joyce Lee are the first with books under Pariah’s deceptively humble imprint. Giles is well known as the chief Editor, till recently, of Luna magazine, but the author of racy and successful nonsense verse and stories fo ... (read more)

Dimboola's title is a great start to the play that was first performed in 1969. It belongs nowhere but in Australia. At the same time, not many people can claim to have lived there or to know someone from Dimboola. Indigenous? Maybe. And where is Dimboola? You drive through it on your way to somewhere else. It's in Victoria, out where all the roads are signposted 'so many km to Melbourne'. There ... (read more)

If I ask myself why I write about lakes(again and again the task of keeping on course)I think how the lake veers and veers, always left –I start that way, land bulked on my rightfor my abler hand to be sure, eye and the witlessother hand still feeling, open to water,half-trained, shaping and stopping intervals on roundedstrings sounding in the mind till the right handtakes and makes it music. Th ... (read more)