Maria Takolander

Maria Takolander reviews 'Tide' by John Kinsella

December 2013–January 2014, no. 357 • 01 December 2013

Imagine a cross between Tim Winton’s The Turning and Kenneth Cook’s Wake in Fright, and you might very well imagine John Kinsella’s latest collection of fiction, Tide. Kinsella, a Western Australian like Winton, writes of the coast and of the desert, of small-town life and small-town people. However, Kinsella highlights the corruption of those landscapes and people in a way that aligns his v ... (read more)

'Golden Sigi: An Advertisement', a new poem by Maria Takolander

June 2012, no. 342 • 22 May 2012

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Maria Takolander reviews 'Young Poets: An Australian anthology' edited by John Leonard

April 2012, no. 340 • 01 April 2012

John Leonard’s anthology of young Australian poets, showcasing the work of an exclusive septet, comes hot on the heels of Felicity Plunkett’s more accommodating Thirty Australian Poets (reviewed by Fiona Wright in the December 2011–January 2012 issue of ABR). Young Poets: An Australian Anthology also adopts an unfortunately polemical relationship to its predecessor. Leonard provides a Prefac ... (read more)

'Three sisters', a new story by Maria Takolander

March 2012, no. 339 • 01 March 2012

Let us take a look at this place. Marshlands. All the way to the horizon. The land drained, but nevertheless sinking. Sinking into nothing, nothing but itself. Frogs volleying noise in the grass unseen. The hazy movement of mosquitoes low to the ground. On a blade of swamp grass a sleek cricket. Blacker than night and – look closely – its antennae twitching. Just think: there must be more of t ... (read more)

Maria Takolander reviews 'Seasons of doubt & burning: New and selected poems' by Robyn Rowland

February 2011, no. 328 • 04 May 2011

Robyn Rowland writes what could be described as a traditionally feminine, aestheticised mode of lyric poetry. Rowland’s poetic landscape is one that shimmers with moonlight, in which one finds cherry blossom and exotic fruit, waterfalls and peacocks, and sensuality (if not sex), and in which the language is always pleasing. Perhaps it is my cultural background – coming from a dour nation of Fi ... (read more)

Jolley Prize 2010 (Winner): 'A Roānkin philosophy of poetry' by Maria Takolander

December 2010–January 2011, no. 327 • 07 December 2010

I worked for a while with the second cousin of an acquaintance of the notorious Minean nationalist poet, Honoré Tutkanen, whose book The Overall Underling had done little, my colleague and I agreed, to advance sympathy for the pig breeder. This colleague, a lecturer in the faculty of business and law, had initiated an ambivalent friendship with me when he connected the name on my pigeon-hole wi ... (read more)