- 102: GAMESUBMIT with J Maxwell and R Green 101: NO THEME 10COMING SOON with J Kinsella and J Leanne 100: BROWNFACE with W S Dunn 99: SINGAPOREwith J Ip and A Pang 97 & 98: PROPAGANDAwith M Breeze and S Groth 96: NO THEME IXwith M Gill and J Thayil 95: EARTHwith M Takolander 94: BAYTwith Z Hashem Beck 93: PEACHwith L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong 92: NO THEME VIIIwith C Gaskin 91: MONSTERwith N Curnow 90: AFRICAN DIASPORAwith S Umar 89: DOMESTICwith N Harkin 88: TRANSQUEERwith S Barnes and Q Eades 87: DIFFICULTwith O Schwartz & H Isemonger 86: NO THEME VIIwith L Gorton 85: PHILIPPINESwith Mookie L and S Lua 84: SUBURBIAwith L Brown and N O'Reilly 83: MATHEMATICSwith F Hile 82: LANDwith J Stuart and J Gibian 81: NEW CARIBBEANwith V Lucien 80: NO THEME VIwith J Beveridge 57.1: EKPHRASTICwith C Atherton and P Hetherington 57: CONFESSIONwith K Glastonbury 56: EXPLODE with D Disney 55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUSwith M Chakraborty and K MacCarter 55: FUTURE MACHINES with Bella Li 54: NO THEME V with F Wright and O Sakr 53.0: THE END with P Brown 52.0: TOIL with C Jenkins 51.1: UMAMI with L Davies and Lifted Brow 51.0: TRANSTASMAN with B Cassidy 50.0: NO THEME IV with J Tranter 49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH with M Hall and S Seita 49.0: OBSOLETE with T Ryan 48.1: CANADA with K MacCarter and S Rhodes 48.0: CONSTRAINT with C Wakeling 47.0: COLLABORATION with L Armand and H Lambert 46.1: MELBOURNE with M Farrell 46.0: NO THEME III with F Plunkett 45.0: SILENCE with J Owen 44.0: GONDWANALAND with D Motion 43.1: PUMPKIN with K MacCarter 43.0: MASQUE with A Vickery 42.0: NO THEME II with G Ryan 41.1: RATBAGGERY with D Hose 41.0: TRANSPACIFIC with J Rowe and M Nardone 40.1: INDONESIA with K MacCarter 40.0: INTERLOCUTOR with L Hart 39.1: GIBBERBIRD with S Gory 39.0: JACKPOT! with S Wagan Watson 38.0: SYDNEY with A Lorange 37.1: NEBRASKA with S Whalen 37.0: NO THEME! with A Wearne 36.0: ELECTRONICA with J Jones
CONTRIBUTORS
Bev Braune
Review Short: Jordie Albiston’s XIII Poems
XIII Poems might be seen as a snapshot of what Albiston’s main concerns have been since Botany Bay Document (1996) appeared culminating with, I think, Vertigo (2007). Her publications since the mid-2000s reflect on similar concerns but with more biographical tones. Albiston’s main interests have been history, limitations or framed lives, their voices and interpretations of them, often using easily located words to tie groups of poems (‘heart,’ ‘black,’ and ‘white’ feature in XIII Poems).
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bev Braune, Jordie Albiston
Essentially Human
In the Southern Highlands I think I’ve made a friend on the ground. She tells me the baby inside her has not moved. Her husband doesn’t know how not to smile anymore. The baby is dead but she does not …
Posted in 60: SILENCE
Tagged Bev Braune
Bev Braune Reviews Kate Lilley
Kate Lilley’s second collection, Ladylike, is a tightly constructed and complex work on love and language. Reminding me of Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis’ wry, poignant words concerned with Welsh language, use of English and meaning-frauds, Kate Lilley enlivens her readers to assumptions, contradictions and the various erections of judging behaviour that surround the definition of a woman today or in any recent age.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bev Braune, Kate Lilley
The Geography Lesson
from Skulváði Úlfr: Legends Skulváði challenges Fossiker in ‘the simple game’1 to win a compass sought after by Sultans They faced the cups. They sowed. They winnowed. Four cards moved. They tilled. Amulets danced. Hunter drew. The Wolf dodged. Less …
Posted in 52: INTERLOCUTOR
Tagged Bev Braune
Supra-text Sequences
Image: A series of frames require me to shade some of the evenly-distributed sets-of-3, black or blank. How I apply notions of form (actual space) and appearance (virtual space) to my experience in the world is very much like my …
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Bev Braune
So the story goes: Glámis, the bride
So the story goes: Glámis, the bride was a sad one when he was found by the tide veiled seaspray, dead urchins daughter of ambition, queen of blood sickened by the dark fate of her deepest love Sickened with herself. …
Posted in 38: POST-EPIC
Tagged Bev Braune
from Skulváði Úlfr: The Legend of the Son of Nadlan the Rus’
So the story goes: Glámis, the bride
Posted in 37: EPIC
Tagged Bev Braune
Bev Braune Reviews David Malouf
width=150 class=”alignleft” vspace=5 hspace=5 />Revolving Days: Selected Poems by David Malouf
University of Queensland Press, 2008
In the very appropriately titled Revolving Days, David Malouf has put together a selection of poems that addresses the past, place and its importance to self-definition, the memory of houses emptied of family and objects yet full of what's left behind and filling up the present. The poems exhibit a quality which, with political comments more subtle than Les Murray's and longings less romanticised than Robert Adamson's, declares that the places where the emotions taken from another world rendezvous are always present and clear in comprehending the discrepancy between place-and-mind and feeling-and-emotion.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bev Braune, David Malouf
Concentrate on the Utensils’ Constructions
It is not uncommon to accept dinner invitations here. An evening with a Chinese ambassador, a Chef and a Snake Charmer is unexpected. The dates are closely timed. Each man wants me for himself. A tour bus arrives to cheer …
Posted in 31: SECRET CITIES
Tagged Bev Braune
Bev Braune Reviews Angela Gardner
Parts of Speech by Angela Gardner
University of Queensland Press, 2007
Angela Gardner's Parts of Speech shows what a substantial first book of poetry is all about. Gardner has responded, above all, to an ideal opportunity to show what excites her thoughts and propels her into action as a poet. Her ability to turn that initial energy into a form of words both excites and challenges the reader. In this regard, Gardner seems urged to speak about what small actions may be worth pursuing to maintain or re-create a natural and preferred order of events.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Angela Gardner, Bev Braune
Bev Braune reviews Peter Minter and Nathan Shepherdson
blue grass by Peter Minter
Salt Publishing, 2006
Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror by Nathan Shepherdson
University of Queensland Press, 2006
Peter Minter's latest book blue grass and Nathan Shepherdson's début collection Sweeping the Light Back into the Mirror work with extraordinary images to convey the demands made on memory for accuracy in its language. Both poets set out, deliberately, to interrogate such a language and its subsets – naming, recognition, and the calculation and politics of categories. For while as writers and readers, we have limitations on the material claims we can make to increase emotional satisfaction in our lives, we have an unlimited capacity to request answers from what appears to be immaterial – the memory of words spoken by both loved ones in absentia and barely remembered friends. We not only demand these words, but also try to challenge their immateriality with concrete language.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bev Braune, nathan shepherdson, peter minter
Bev Braune reviews Peter Boyle
Museum of space by Peter Boyle
University of Queensland Press, 2004
Peter Boyle strikes me as a poet who likes the air, much as Peter Minter likes water; Robert Adamson, leaves; Jordie Albiston, defined/confined spaces; John Tranter, lines or, rather, the lineage of the cursive. Boyle most reminds me of Robert Adamson with his gentle, probing style, his yearning approach to all that should be desirable–an understanding of ourselves in space and time, wherein we point all our limitations. In this context, Boyle holds his place very well as a watchful observer of the world (e.g. the wind, sunlight, birds, music, reflections, waves) and other writers (e.g. Rilke, Saint-John Perse, Jabès).
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bev Braune, Peter Boyle
Bev Braune reviews Luke Davies
Totem by Luke Davies
Allen and Unwin, 2004
The efficacy and strength of Luke Davies' Totem lie in its drawing on a long familiar tradition of mythological narratives as a vehicle for romantic verse-tellers – from Publius Ovidius Naso (known to us as Ovid), to Giovanni Boccaccio, to John Milton. Davies' tastes are eclectic; he even tries a poem in Jamaican English, such as it is generally recognised in reggae songs, in one in the series entitled '40 Love Poems' following his 'Totem Poem'.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bev Braune, Luke Davies
Bev Braune reviews Pam Brown
text thing, by Pam Brown
Little Esther Books 2002
My topic is local. The poems rarely leave whatever street I'm on. They are as mobile and as mutable as my daily life. (from Pam Brown's Statements on poetics) [1]
The art of looking for the text, the thing it's in and re-thinking it, is Pam Brown's forte. In reading this collection, I find myself thinking of Brown's development. She is a poet who reads, travels, observes and re-thinks her own backyard.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bev Braune, Pam Brown
Bev Braune reviews Melissa Ashley
the hospital for dolls (2003) by Melissa Ashley
Post Pressed.
Melissa Ashley brings us a collection of stories considering realities, mythology and personal experience. While a veneer of the strange wraps her images, the translucence of their reality is distinctly prominent. This is a book about definition, about who defines what and how. The poems in Ashley's first volume of poetry are seriously concerned with corporeal actualities and female self-definition. Readers are called on to understand that the happenings referred to are relevant and real. We are asked to see, feel, talk-about and (perhaps) understand. She takes a Lacanian approach–comprehending experience is a slippery rhetorical matter.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bev Braune, Melissa Ashley
