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Toby Davidson

Toby Davidson

Toby Davidson is the editor of Francis Webb’s Collected Poems (UWA Publishing, 2011) and a senior lecturer at Macquarie University. His third collection, The Grand Reopening, is out in May from Puncher & Wattmann, and he is in the early stages of a new book on Webb’s poetics of mental health.

‘The gold standard: The centenary of Francis Webb’ by Toby Davidson

January–February 2025, no. 472 • 17 December 2024
February 8 will mark the centenary of the birth of Francis Webb (1925-73). Many will ask ‘Francis who?’ as I did at the start of my PhD on Christian mysticism in Australian poetry, when Petra White told me, ‘You have to read Francis Webb.’ I soon found myself reading the 1969 edition of Webb’s Collected Poems in a Richmond café. It was a sturdy, well-thumbed Angus & Robertson hardba ... (read more)

Toby Davidson reviews 'A Slant of Light' by Paul Kane and 'A Tight Circle' by Brendan Ryan

October 2008, no. 305 • 01 October 2008
Anthony Lynch, enterprising editor of the notable but short-lived Space magazine, also produces signed, limited-edition chapbooks under the moniker of Whitmore Press. Paul Kane’s A Slant of Light and Brendan Ryan’s A Tight Circle join a list that features Maria Takolander’s Narcissism and Cameron Lowe’s Throwing Stones at the Sun (both 2005). ... (read more)

Toby Davidson reviews ‘Revenants’ by Adam Aitken

June 2022, no. 443 • 28 April 2022
Since his first collection, Letter to Marco Polo (1985), Adam Aitken has been at the forefront of the diversification of Australian poetry as it moved, slowly but irreversibly, to incorporate multicultural and transnational voices. Aitken has always been a world citizen. He was born in London in 1960 to an Anglo-Australian father and Thai mother, with his childhood thereafter spent between the Uni ... (read more)

'The Sistine Chapel', a poem by Toby Davidson

December 2021, no. 438 • 29 November 2021
Beneath the Creator’s reach, the Golden Ratioof tourist thrum stirs guards to the mike.Silenzio. Silence. No photo. No video. Wonder at what ate the eyes of Michelangelo;anciently capture a spreading darkbeneath the Creator’s reach, the Golden Ratio breathed into brushstrokes of imagini di Dio.The roof is eternity, tongues slowly spike.Silenzio. Silence. No photo. No video. This century’s ... (read more)

Toby Davidson reviews 'Great Australian Eulogies' edited by Richard Walsh

February 2009, no. 308 • 01 February 2009
Richard Walsh – former OZ co-editor, A&R, ACP and PBL director – has proven again that he has keen eye for what fixates Australians. To be remembered is of course an enduring human obsession, while the ability to send off (or send up) a friend or family member is more often an afterthought, a stepping into the breach. Great Australian Eulogies features twenty-eight prominent Australians t ... (read more)