Poetry Editorial: Jan Owen
Essays: Silénzio / Scienza: Registering 5 in Joan Retallack’s Errata 5uite by Andrew Carruthers, A Writing Surface of One’s Own by Meredith Wattison and Reasons for Silence by Adam Rivett
Artworks: Celestial Measures in Ferrotype by Fiona Annis
Concrete Sequence: APPEAL IN AIR by Philip Davenport
Translations: Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng translates Gig Ryan into Vietnamese and Phan Nhien Hao into English
Scholarly: Black Stone Poetry: Vanuatu’s Grace Mera Molisa by Selina Tusitala Marsh
New Reviews: Nicholas Birns Reviews Contemporary Russian Poetry: An Anthology, Andrew Fuhrmann Reviews Bruce Dawe’s Plays in Verse: Kevin Almighty and Blind Spots, and Nicholas Jose Reviews Speaking the Earth’s Languages: A Theory for Australian-Chilean Postcolonial Poetics
New Pumpkins: Kirrily Schell adapts ‘The Spider in the Kitchen’ by Andrew Sant and Pat Grant adapts ‘Vibrations’ by Fiona Wright
The mask on the cover of ‘Beyond the Ohlala Mountains’ suggests that there’ll be some odd theatrics inside the book. It’s a plain papier-mâché mask of a slightly jowly head with a bulbous nose and a pair of puckered, pouting, full red lips. What does it express – is it a superior sneer? Is it bourgeois disdain? Is it about to say ‘oh là là’? The mask was made by Sally Rodwell, the now-deceased partner of the New Zealand poet collected here, Alan Brunton. It was made for a theatre work called Cabaret of the Unlikely that was performed three years after Brunton had died at 55, in 2002.
Also gut, nun dies: Vor einigen Jahren war ein Teil meines Hirns voll mit kargem, sprunghaftem MAX/MSP, dronenartigem Zeug. Es ist immer noch so. Auf der ständigen Suche (immerfort mehr! Alles, immer!) nach AGF-Kompositionen (ein Pseudonym der Künstlerin Antje-Greie Fuchs … Recherche lohnt sich). Ich fand live Sets, die sie online gestellt hatte. In einer davon kam eine deutsche Dichterin vor, die auf der Bühne ihre Stimme über den AGFs Malstrom aus Mikro Klicks, Brüchen und Rauschen hinweg lesend, rezitierend, beschwörend live klingen ließ.
