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Judith Beveridge

Ever since the baby boomers hit middle age, the supposed gerontophobia of their youth has been sent back to them with interest. One-liners from the 1960s – such as Pete Townshend's 'I hope I die before I get old' and Jack Weinberg's 'Don't trust anyone over thirty' – have circulated in popular culture like ghostly refrains haunting an entire generation. Fall ...

Published in March 2016, no. 379

In this bonus episode of Poem of the Week Peter Rose interviews two past winners of the Peter Porter Poetry Prize – husband and wife Stephen Edgar and Judith Beveridge – about what it is like being poets in a marriage.

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Published in Poem of the Week

Judith Beveridge reviews 'Happiness' by Martin Harrison

Judith Beveridge
Wednesday, 25 November 2015

'Happiness' may seem like an odd word for the title of a book of poetry, and given the circumstances of Martin Harrison's final years – his illness, the tragic death of his younger Tunisian lover, Nizar Bouheni – the title is rather ironic, but the poems in this posthumous volume are rich, bountiful, full of the same 'worshipful attention', the same sense of ope ...

Published in December 2015, no. 377

In ABR's sixth 'Poem of the Week' Judith Beveridge discusses and reads her poem 'As Wasps Fly Upwards'

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Published in May 2015, no. 371

Books of the Year 2014

Robert Adamson et al.
Monday, 01 December 2014

Books of the Year is always one our most popular features. Find out what our 41 contributors liked most this year – and why.

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Published in December 2014, no. 367

He has his medley nearly ready. He has pieced together
his own fantasia, even if just from the sound of an owl
regurgitating a pellet of bat fur, a park ranger’s
jangling keys, the creak of cable strain when bored,

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Published in November 2014, no. 366

Seeking perfection or ‘enlightenment’ requires a monastic devotion to the life of the spirit and a rejection of material comforts. Judith Beveridge’s writings about the young Buddha and his cousin Devadatta bring out all the intricacies and contradictions inherent in such a quest.

This new volume, Devadatta’s Poems, holds up a kind of mirror to ‘Between the Palace and the Bodhi Tree’, the middle section of her book Wolf Notes (2003), which depicted Siddhārtha Gautama’s travels and contemplations before he became the Buddha. The earlier work is marked by its quiet determination, matching Siddhārtha’s, to look precisely, without wanting, and to be simply an existence among all the others.

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Published in August 2014, no. 363

'The Blind Soothsayer', a new poem by Judith Beveridge

Judith Beveridge
Tuesday, 22 May 2012

He tells me a woman more exquisite, more exotic
than any of the luminous objects found in the zodiac,
will come into my life. Yasodhara, I ask? He stays
silent, turns to a farmer and tells him he’ll lose

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Published in June 2012, no. 342

Open Page with Judith Beveridge

Saturday, 26 March 2011

I wish we had critics reviewing books who weren’t writers or academics but who were simply passionate readers involved in various walks of life. At present, criticism seems a mixed bag. Some reviewers are terrific, others seem to merely describe rather than come to grips adequately with what they are reviewing.

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Published in April 2011, no. 330

'At Rajkote', a new poem by Judith Beveridge

Judith Beveridge
Thursday, 24 March 2011

I had just walked out of the reeds at the confluence
of two rivers. Brown frogs stuck in my hair like gouts
of flung mud, my skin was whip-stitched, lacerated
with leeches. I was walking a path hazardous

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Published in April 2011, no. 330
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