Poetry
Ian Dickson reviews 'Robert Lowell: Setting the river on fire: A study of genius, mania and character' by Kay Redfield Jamison
For no one were Dryden’s partitions thinner than for Robert Lowell, as Kay Redfield Jamison’s exploration of the links between his work and the manic depressive illness which dogged him for most of his life makes clear. Previous biographers have, with varying degrees of compassion and opprobrium, chronicled the chaos and hurt caused by his manic outbursts.
... (read more)After Stephen Edgar’s nine collections of poetry, the last seven of which are distinguished by an extraordinary control over metre and rhyme, a reviewer feels bound to ask how this new book ...
... (read more)Gig Ryan reviews 'Fragments' by Antigone Kefala and 'A House by the River' by Diane Fahey
Antigone Kefala’s Fragments, her fifth book of poems and first since Absence: New and selected poems (1992), is often menaced by the past, like her first collection, The Alien (1973). Here too are some subtly demolishing portraits, as well as buoyant poems such as ‘Metro Cellist’ and the slightly brooding ‘Summer at Derveni’: ‘ ...
Paul Hetherington reviews 'Some Things to Place in a Coffin' by Bill Manhire
Poetry books that focus on memory, recuperation, and loss are common, but it is rare to find poems that speak about such matters as sparely and eloquently as these do. Bill Manhire’s new poems are bony and sinewy, resonating with an awareness of public and personal grief. Although these works often speak by indirection, many of them pack a real punch. As Manhire p ...
Rose Lucas reviews 'Snake Like Charms' by Amanda Joy and 'The Herring Lass' by Michelle Cahill
Michelle Cahill and Amanda Joy have produced two engaging and proficient collections of poetry. In their different ways, each revels in worlds of perception, imagination, and poetic craft.
Amanda Joy’s first full-length collection, Snake Like Charms comes out of UWAP’s new poetry series and marks the emergence of an important voice in Australian ...
Benjamin Madden reviews 'The Poem Is You: 60 contemporary American poems and how to read them' by Stephen Burt
Northrop Frye wrote that ‘No kind of book is easier to attack than an anthology’, as Stephen Burt reminds us in the introduction to ...
... (read more)Geoff Page reviews 'A Personal History of Vision' by Luke Fischer, 'Flute of Milk' by Susan Fealy', and 'Dark Convicts: Ex-slaves on the First Fleet' by Judy Johnson
The UWAP Poetry imprint began in late 2016, and there are already fourteen titles available. To judge from the quality of the three reviewed here, UWAP’s energy and ambition is well-placed ...
... (read more)Jennifer Maiden’s latest book, The Metronome, is essentially part of a series that could be dated to the appearance of Friendly Fire in 2005 ...
... (read more)Susan Sheridan reviews 'New and Selected Poems of Anna Wickham' edited by Nathanael O’Reilly
This manifesto for free verse comes from a poet whose associates at the time included Harold Monro, Richard Aldington, and D.H. Lawrence in London, Harriet Monroe and Louis Untermeyer in New York, Natalie Clifford Barney in Paris. Anna Wickham (1883–1947) mixed with the modernist writers and artists of her time on both sides of the Atlantic and was widely admired for her early books, The Contemplative Quarry (1915), The Man with a Hammer (1916), and The Little Old House (1921).
... (read more)Geoff Page reviews 'The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry' by John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan (eds)
The need for this book is self-evident in a way that a similarly historical anthology for New South Wales or Victorian poetry would not be. From many perspectives, Perth is one of the most remote cities in the world and there is no doubt that the state’s uniqueness is captured in this extensive, though tightly edited, selection. Despite its comparable treatment of ...