Richard King

Richard King reviews ‘A Cold Touch’ by Lawrence Bourke, ‘All Day, All Night’ by Cath Kenneally and ‘Corrugations’ by Ann Nadge

February 2004, no. 258 • 01 February 2004

Lawrence Bourke’s A Cold Touch begins with a poem called ‘Advice to a Failure’. Expressed with such force as to render grammar a secondary consideration, its argument is hard to grasp al first, but the poem is only technically meaningless: it contains, I think, an important truth: The committee can sticktheir mate with medals until the man’s all brassbut his brilliant chest will never h ... (read more)

Richard King reviews 'Techno' by Marcus Smith

September 2024, no. 468 • 17 July 2024

For those of us who would like to see a revival of the ‘techno-critical’ tradition in public debate (the tradition of Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Ellul, Neil Postman, and Langdon Winner, inter many alia), it is a cause of some irritation that the hegemonic view of technology remains the instrumental one. Here, technology is deemed to be neutral, in a way that precludes any serious analysis of it ... (read more)

Richard King reviews ‘The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets’ edited by Geoff Page

November 2003, no. 256 • 01 November 2003

This book (The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets edited by Geoff Page, Indigo, $20 pb, 112 pp), says Geoff Page in his introduction, should ‘cheer up those who are prone to lament the passing of “form” from contemporary poetry’. Speaking as one who does employ the f-word now and again, I’m very glad to hear it, though I catch the note of sardonicism and think that Page rather miss ... (read more)

Richard King reviews 'New Poets Series 8' from Five Islands Press

November 2001, no. 236 • 01 November 2001

and you think ofthe statements you have lost,all the things unlearnt,the words you no longer say.It has all been one long giving away. (David Kirkby, ‘Water’) The six books in Series 8 of the Five Islands Press New Poets Program come highly recommended, if only by the blurbs on their own back covers. These blurbs border on the hysterical. Cate Kennedy has ‘her heart in her eyes’, whi ... (read more)

Richard King reviews 'The Meaning of Recognition: New Essays 2001–2005' by Clive James

April 2006, no. 280 • 01 April 2006

Clive James once said that the problem with being famous is that you begin by being loved for what you do and end up thinking that you are loved for who you are. Quite possibly, it is to avoid such a fate that James has returned in the past few years to the thing that got him noticed in the first place – writing dazzling prose. Absenting himself from the Crystal Bucket, he has become once more a ... (read more)