States of Poetry
Sign up to Book of the Week and receive a new review to your inbox every Monday. Always free to read.
Recent:
States of Poetry 2016 - Western Australia | State Editor's Introduction by Lucy Dougan
'Poetry is a necessity of life ... It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.' C.D. Wright
How does Western Australia look or sound to the rest of the country? In this selection, six poets are addressing you from the edge of the Indian Ocean, the edge of the Southern Ocean ...
States of Poetry 2016 - New South Wales | State Editor's Introduction by Elizabeth Allen
Editing an anthology of poets from New South Wales is both a wonderful and confronting task. Wonderful because you get to spend close-reading time with the work of poets that you greatly admire; confronting because of all the excellent poets you might include. However, one can take comfort in the fact that this anthology is going to be an annual occurrence, and in t ...
When I moved to Canberra in 2000, I knew it only by the stories that are told of it: of a place lacking human qualities, but full of government processes. Living here, working in the creative writing program at the University of Canberra, and pursuing my own writing practice, quickly disabused me of that. The ACT I have come to know is filled with people who make, t ...
State Editor's Introduction by Felicity Plunkett | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
Prismatic and dynamic, Australian Book Review's States of Poetry anthologies are about refraction as well as brilliance, shade and trace as much as what is lit. If anthologies generate disagreement, it is because of an illusion that they set or express the fixed amidst a mobile and vibrant set of practices. The recurring, multifarious nature of States of Po ...
States of Poetry 2016 - South Australia | State Editor's Introduction by Peter Goldsworthy
I sometimes think that poetry sits in relation to the great empire of the Novel as precariously as early Christianity in the Roman Empire: small groups of devotees gathering in catacombs to perform their sacred rites. OK, the stakes are not as high (the odd literary lion notwithstanding) and things have changed a little in recent years (new media platforms, performa ...
For its small population, Tasmania has produced, or attracted from elsewhere, a significant number of published poets, past and present. Not all have loved the place. In the case of Gwen Harwood, the island state was her prison, or at least that’s what she told her friends:
... (read more)The ACT – home to fewer than half a million people, and housing less than two per cent of the national population – is a very small community, but one that is interesting, energetic, and creative. It is not particularly representative of Australia; the people are, on average, a bit younger, more likely to be employed, earning a higher annual income, and signific ...