Australian Poetry
When the talk is of angels
it’s tempting to think of them on the cold lake
small swan-shaped slivers of ice.
... (read more)Because in a foreign city even at eight
he needs the familiar nearby, to hitch
the gaze like the reins of that lacquered
horse to a fixed spot, in order to let loose,
There are some poets whose works only seem to come alive when seen in the light of their other poems. Andrew Sant may well be one of these. A Sant poem, read on its own, can often seem thoughtful but rather lightweight; embedded in one of his books, given a context by the surrounding poems, it becomes animated by a set of consistent themes and obsessions.
... (read more)Under the bathroom light I examine every particle of you.
A taxonomist with a specimen, I trail through
the topography of your naked back, classifying
whorls and curlicues. These signs lie beneath our daily clothing
‘Poetry is a long apprenticeship,’ says Toby Davidson at the start of his first collection. He is certainly a poet who has mastered far more than the basics. Beast Language is only seventy-seven pages long, but feels far more substantial. Davidson has travelled a long way: from west coast to east, from novice to scholar ...
... (read more)What am I going to write here?
Something, I hope. A year
or so since I last launched out
In The Resistance to Poetry (2004), James Longenbach claims that ‘Distrust of poetry (its potential for inconsequence, its pretensions to consequence) is the stuff of poetry.’ The Australian poet Laurie Duggan has based a career on a creative distrust of poetry, or at least a certain kind of attitude to ...
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Writing can bring change. I think of myself as an activist writer. I try to act as witness, and convey and interpret what I see.
... (read more)'Diary Poem: Uses of Frank O’Hara', a new poem by Jennifer Maiden
Years ago when John Forbes praised
my later work, he said my Problem
of Evil was influenced by Tranter’s
Red Movie, and being younger and furiouser,
I rang Forbes and explained P. of E.
It’s simple. A young woman, her love for her partner slipping away, looks at their suburb, and him, and their relationship, and writes bronze-clad poetry about it. Then she takes to the bush, describing its towns and picking at its history with the same clear eye she uses to examine her lost love. She combines a photographic exactness with a resounding turn of phrase and an ability to use a refrain just enough and no more.
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