Australian Poetry
Robert Adamson is Poet of the Month
Wednesday, 01 October 2014
Poetry is song, every word in every line must work, each word transcribed like a note, each line connected to a breath. Fine prose is song, too; each word in the sentence must earn its existence. Thought is both a god and a devil to the line’s ability to sing.
... (read more)Nathanael Pree reviews 'Sputnik's Cousin: New poems' by Kent MacCarter
Kent MacCarter’s third collection of poems comprises a patchwork of forms and phenomena, in parts influenced by and dedicated to poets of the New York School and the ‘Generation of 1968’. MacCarter’s own cosmopolitan greetings share the offbeat tones and imagery of precursors, including Frank O’Hara and John Forbes. Touches of the former’s dry humour permeate Sputnik’s Cousin, alongside edgier local presences apparent in the poetry.
... (read more)Feel it even now: such stillness
and yet – there
they are, again:
lights in blue
air, daylight
Kin, Anne Elvey’s first full collection of poetry, brings together a wide range of poems full of light and the acuity of close attention. These poems focus on a world of inter-relationships where tree and water, creature and human, air and breathing, coexist – suggestive of an underlying philo-sophy of humility and acceptance. This is a world which envisions at least the potential of balance and a non-hierarchical sharing, where self and other, the natural world, and the devices and desires of the human might recognise each other.
... (read more)The pots are still dropped and pulled at 4 am,
but no-one fishes near seal rock for weeks, out where the shadows
of sharks and seals are interchangeable.
in the presence of a photo of
your mother, aged twenty three
her hands folded and covered in glitter
her hair long and black
Between 1889 and 1892, young Australian poet Bernard O’Dowd corresponded with the ageing Walt Whitman. Leaves of Glass, David Prater’s second collection, vividly imagines this long-distance relationship. This is not, however, a historical novel in verse. It refracts the correspondence through a perpetually shifting series of voices and forms, from heavily ...
Todd Turner’s first collection, Woodsmoke, evolves intriguingly. It starts in the ‘anti-pastoral’ mode founded by Philip Hodgins. Here the poet, long since relocated to the city, looks back with tellingly evocative detail but a divided sensibility on the life he (it’s normally a ‘he’) has now abandoned.
...
In ‘Painting’s Flatness’, Paul Magee ruefully observes the following: ‘If only surfaces were possible / here in the imagination / just to walk and to touch sincerely the ground.’ This, as the title of the poetry collection suggests, is the essence of Stone Postcard: a poet’s search for stability in the face of exquisite and inscrutable change.
... (read more)Rose Lucas reviews 'Workshopping the Heart: New and selected poems' by Jeri Kroll
In Workshopping the Heart, Jeri Kroll brings us a feast of poetry: selections from her seven previous collections, poems from 2005 to 2012, and excerpts from her forthcoming verse novel, Vanishing Point. From 1982 to the present we are able to witness an evolution towards a mature poetic voice as Kroll negotiates her way through life’s various traverses and the poetic explorations that both describe and reflect upon them.
... (read more)