- 114: NO THEME 13with J Toledo & C Tse 113: INVISIBLE WALLSwith A Walker & D Disney 112: TREATwith T Dearborn 111: BABYwith S Deo & L Ferney 110: POP!with Z Frost & B Jessen 109: NO THEME 12with C Maling & N Rhook 108: DEDICATIONwith L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik 107: LIMINALwith B Li 106: OPENwith C Lowe & J Langdon 105: NO THEME 11with E Grills & E Stewart 104: KINwith E Shiosaki 103: AMBLEwith E Gomez and S Gory 102: GAMEwith R Green and J Maxwell 101: NO THEME 10with 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
Bonny Cassidy
Not Touching the Void, Listening for the Drip: Witnessing Water Cycles
As I researched the area of ancient volcanic ground along the Loddon and Coliban Rivers in Central Victoria alongside my daughter, poet Bonny Cassidy (incidentally my old home grounds) my thoughts pushed further into the origins and beginnings of water systems and I began to think on how water is born, its actual beginnings in deep time.
Posted in ARTWORKS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, Catherine Cassidy
The Star
I return to the valleys and hills, following channels overland into dips. The ceiling’s low, roof gone. I taste yellow smoke mixing with the roots of a cloudbank. Lichen moves fast and waits to dry. People here talk about the …
Posted in 103: AMBLE
Tagged Bonny Cassidy
Introduction to Prithvi Varatharajan’s Entries
I’ve noticed that Prithvi Varatharajan thinks carefully about offering a true gesture, word or position in every social exchange. I sense that, for him, all communication is an art defined by authenticity rather than decadence. His reflective nature is continuous with the character of the poetics in Entries.
Posted in INTRODUCTIONS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, Prithvi Varatharajan, Zoë Sadokierski
20 Poets, a Free Anthology from Cordite Books
The geographic barriers that can, at times, hinder Australian literature are no longer relevant, and poetry communities around the world must be enlightened by the commanding, demanding and exciting trajectory of contemporary Australian poetics.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Alan Loney, Anne Elvey, Autumn Royal, Bonny Cassidy, Broede Carmody, Chris Mann, Claire Nashar, derek motion, Javant Biarujia, Jeanine Leane, Jen Crawford, John Hawke, Kent MacCarter, Kris Hemensley, Matthew Hall, mez breeze, Natalie Harkin, Omar Sakr, Rachael Briggs, Ross Gibson, Tanya Thaweeskulchai, Tony Birch, Zoë Sadokierski
Bonny Cassidy Reviews The Hatred of Poetry
Reflecting Ben Lerner’s considerable reputation as a novelist and poet, this essay speaks in a voice both sure and self-deprecating. At this level it has already fulfilled a conventional definition of its genre – the effort of rhetoric to explore an idea or problem. The problem that Lerner considers – why is poetry a subject of hatred? – is hardly urgent, and he is quick to admit this. After all, the essay’s topic is an inverted defence of poetry, a tradition with a long history. The pleasures of this contribution, therefore, are Lerner’s unashamed and confident belief in poetic form, and the sympathetic truth to be found in his conclusions.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Allen Grossman, Ben Lerner, Bonny Cassidy, William McGonagall
Unbidden: Settler Poetry in the Presence of Indigenous Sovereignty
Influenced and shaped by some fifty years of Indigenous poetry in English, the last couple of decades of Australian settler poetry have advanced prolific attempts to ‘write (oneself) into the country’ (Van Teeseling 209): producing varied and sometimes radical poetries of regionality, topography, climate, and the histories, narratives and landmarks running through and over them.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, Jen Crawford, John Kinsella, John Mateer, Kim Scott, michael farrell, Nicholas Birns, Stuart Cooke
Bonny Cassidy Reviews Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead
As Feature Reviews Editor and sometime reviewer for Cordite Poetry Review it is an unusual (and therefore fun) privilege to consider a title in which poetry is critically addressed in the company of other forms. Too often it is it either quarantined within poetry-only criticism, or mentioned as an embarrassing aside to discussions of prose.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, John Kinsella, John Mateer, Nicholas Birns, Ouyang Yu, Pam Brown
TRANSTASMAN Editorial
At the close of his poem for this issue, ‘Heaven, Bruny Island’, Ken Bolton writes how the radio ‘seems to have stopped to listen’. As I reflect on the poems constellated here, I feel they are doing similarly; attending to something that is neither absent nor present. They are listening to signs of that abstract ground: transtasman.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy
Bonny Cassidy Interviews Sophie Collins
Based in Belfast, Sophie Collins is co-founder and editor of tender, an online quarterly promoting work by female-identified writers and artists.
Posted in INTERVIEWS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, Sophie Collins
Submission to Cordite 51: TRANSTASMAN Open!
Photo by Nicholas Walton-Healey Poetry for Cordite 51: TRANSTASMAN is guest-edited by Bonny Cassidy I’ll be looking for poems that can swim, fly, float, sail and possibly even skim across the very short and very deep difference between Australia and …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, Kent MacCarter, Robert Sullivan
Reclaimed Land: Australian Urbanisation and Poetry
In the late 1850s, Charles Harpur composed the image of ‘a scanty vine,/ Trailing along some backyard wall’ (‘A Coast View’). It might be forgettable, save for its conspicuousness in Harpur’s bush-obsessed poetry. Whether purple ranges or groaning sea-cliffs, his poems cleave to a more-than-human continent. The scanty vine, however, clings to a different surface: human-made – the craft of a drystone wall, perhaps, or wire strung through posts like the twist of the poetic line – it signals domestic land division. Harpur’s vine of words trails along the vertical edifice of settlement.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, Charles Harpur, Kate Fagan, Laurie Duggan, Lesbia Harford, Martin Harrison, Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng, Peter Boyle
Light on red brick
for Alice define personism you say under the green light of Toto but that’s men’s business I am telling you how it was fine being trapped that time in your courtyard o’night scaling the wall of my first Fitzroy brick …
Posted in 62: MELBOURNE
Tagged Bonny Cassidy
Nightwork
Conveyor belt wriggling into action, cries rubbish rocks rubbish rocks the machine breaks floodlight, its flash a stingray covered, uncovered. The bulldozer rearing— pandanus bows with a shake dissolves drone tyres. From the rocks and rubbish one kid naked, thick-haired …
Posted in PROTEACEAE
Tagged Bonny Cassidy
Nether
It stood, sweating pages of ash. _________ Stretched days stare from stone and grass. I run into their light, regretting everything. _________ My fingers hook and unhook. Listening to voices hover up the wall and long bottles of flame explode. …
Posted in PROTEACEAE
Tagged Bonny Cassidy
Bonny Cassidy Reviews Kelly Pilgrim-Byrne
In her second poetry collection, Domestic Archaeology, Perth-based poet Kelly Pilgrim-Byrne mines a personal narrative with mixed results. While she manages to achieve interesting self-awareness in some of these confessional poems, others lack such clarity and humour.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, Kelly Pilgrim-Byrne
Bonny Cassidy Reviews Rosemary Dobson
Edited by the poet shortly before her death, Rosemary Dobson: Collected reminds us not only that Dobson was one of the last Eurocentric formalists in Australian poetry, but also that her very late poems turn away from that distant, ornate tradition. This ultimate edition contains Dobson’s eleven collections of poetry, poems published but not collected, plus a short selection from her tender and bold translations with David Campbell. Its tour of Dobson’s poetic dwelling is clear and fascinating.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, Rosemary Dobson
More Intensity: Topography of Poetry Outcrops
In April 2012, I published a Guncotton blog post, responding to a paper given by Peter Minter in Melbourne. Specifically I was interested in his proposal that Australian poetry could be viewed as an ‘archipelago’ of ‘psycho-geographic’ poetic activity. With thanks to Cordite Poetry Review for inviting me, and once again to Minter for his potent departure points, I’d like to expand on that post, particularly on seeking an alternative to national/ist and ‘monolithic’ ways of framing the poetry produced in and about this continent. By proposing an ‘archipelagic map’, Minter grants local poetry an appropriate critical framework that steers away from some problematic aspects previously encountered in reading and defining ‘Australian poetry’. In doing so, this framework negotiates a view of local poetry that is properly sensible to the actual, situated ethics of poetic practice and community.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, luke beesley, peter minter
Islanding the Antipodes? Notes on Archipelagic Poetics
The result of this alternative view of Australian poetry, argues Minter, is a ‘more ethical set of metaphors’ to describe the intentions and movements of Australian poets and the affects of their work. Such metaphor would include, for example: distance; poetry as diplomacy; and poetry as survival, among others.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy
Book Teaching
i thought you could tell me how to pick up or something he mumbled, feeding that slim volume to the chute. Outside, he looked back at the Stacks inside the library windows and saw a skirt flutter beside the 2nd …
Posted in 36: MADE
Tagged Bonny Cassidy
Book Learning
This Berryman's a moralistic thing: its jacket has been lit, man rolled back to ma and shot with liverspots like extra moons or doctored film of UFOs – blinked, I think, by a student in the bath who, before Returns, …
Posted in 35: CUSTOM
Tagged Bonny Cassidy
