John Mateer

John Mateer reviews 'Secrets Need Words' edited and translated by Harry Aveling

December 2001–January 2002, no. 237 • 01 December 2001

In Australia, despite having Indonesian as one of the languages commonly available to students in primary and secondary school, and despite having departments of Indonesian Studies in all the major universities, the literature of the world’s third most populous country and ‘our closest neighbour’ is not well known. It is mostly the province of academic specialists, not general readers. The r ... (read more)

'Letter From Durban' by John Mateer

August 2001, no. 233 • 01 August 2001

On the second last day of the weeklong Poetry Africa 2001 international festival in Durban, South Africa, an interview with me appeared in one of the national newspapers. The text presented me as a returned exile. I was asked questions such as: ‘Have you lost your South Africanness, or do you still need it?’ Since my return to South Africa – I was last here in 1995, just after the first ‘f ... (read more)

'The Postponement of Judgment' by John Mateer

October 2000, no. 225 • 01 October 2000

On the last day of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, I attended a session titled ‘Hope and Wright Remembered’, a presentation intended as a memorial for those two well-known figures of Australian poetry, A.D. Hope and Judith Wright. For a panel on poetry, it was exceptionally well attended, the Merlyn Theatre being nearly full. I had the impression that the session would be one of two things: ... (read more)

John Mateer reviews 'New and Selected Poems' by Anthony Lawrence

June 1998, no. 201 • 01 June 1998

If presence in literary journals, anthologies and at writers’ festivals may be taken as an indication of a poet’s importance, Anthony Lawrence has for some time been regarded as one of Australia’s foremost poets of the post­’68 generation. He has published five books of poetry, all of which to my knowledge have been well received, and he has also been the recipient of many prizes, most ... (read more)

John Mateer reviews 'Ultra: 25 poems' by John Tranter

June 2001, no. 231 • 01 June 2001

Many see John Tranter as an important, if slightly peripheral, figure in contemporary Australian poetry. He is well known for his long involvement in the Sydney poetry scene, as well as for his role as an editor, particularly for his editing, with Philip Mead, of the Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1991) and, more recently, of the internet poetry journal Jacket. Tranter’s prominence i ... (read more)