- 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
Reviews
Angela Meyer reviews Alison Croggon and Lucy Holt
Ash by Alison Croggon Cusp Books, 2006 Stories of Bird by Lucy Holt Poets Union Inc., 2005 Of the two chapbooks under review, Lucy Holt's exquisitely crafted poetry in Stories of Bird pecks at single moments, both from an intimate …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Alison Croggon, Lucy Holt
Heather Taylor Johnson reviews Luis Gonzalez Serrano and Ali Alizadeh
Cities with Moveable Parts by Luis Gonzalez Serrano Poets Union Inc., 2005 Eyes in Times of War by Ali Alizadeh Salt Publishing, 2006 If Australian poetry is meant to reflect the lives and times of the people who inhabit this …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Ali Alizadeh, Luis Gonzalez Serrano
Heather Taylor Johnson reviews The Best Australian Poems 2006
The Best Australian Poems 2006 edited by Dorothy Porter Black Inc., 2006 I've long been a fan of Dorothy Porter, the poet, and I can now say loudly and proudly that I am a fan of Dorothy Porter, the editor. …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged anthologies, dorothy porter
Heather Taylor Johnson reviews Ken Bolton
At the Flash & at the Baci by Ken Bolton Wakefield Press, 2006 The best way to read Ken Bolton's poetry is to sit down and read Ken Bolton's poetry. Trying to decipher or even appreciate his style can be …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged ken bolton
Ashley Brown reviews LeAnne Howe
Evidence of Red by LeAnne Howe Salt Publishing, 2005 Huksuba, or chaos occurs when Indians and Non-Indians bang their heads together in search of cross-cultural understanding. The sound is often a dull thud, and the lesson leaves us all with …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged First Peoples, LeAnne Howe
Andrew Craig reviews Louise Waller and Kristin Hannaford
Swelter by Louise Waller and Kristin Hannaford Interactive Press, 2004 It was with anticipation and trepidation that I approached Swelter, an audio and text CD compilation of Louise Waller's Slipway and Kristin Hannaford's Inhale. At first I expected some type …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Kristin Hannaford, Louise Waller, spoken word
Scott Thornton reviews Liam Ferney
Popular Mechanics by Liam Ferney Interactive Press, 2004 Liam Ferney's Popular Mechanics is a collection of poetry that transforms words into a quick moving train of images and syntax. The author changes tense and pace rapidly and this causes the …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged liam ferney
Magdalena Ball reviews Adrienne Eberhard
Jane, Lady Franklin by Adrienne Eberhard Black Pepper, 2004 Adrienne Eberhard's collection Jane, Lady Franklin can almost be described as a poetic novel. It contains a clear storyline, based partly on the real life voyage of Lady Jane Franklin, who …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Adrienne Eberhard
Steven Farry reviews Amy King
Antidotes for an Alibi by Amy King BlazeVOX books, 2004 Antidotes for an Alibi is at once intriguing and irritating. The surrealist poems are complex, evocative, and a danger to review: am I overlooking something? Is there an obvious reference …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Amy King
Magdalena Ball reviews Mike Ladd
Rooms and Sequences by Mike Ladd Salt Publishing, 2003 Mike Ladd's poetry works best when it traverses the line between prose and poetry, creating meaning in the face of irony. Simultaneously satiric and poignant, Rooms and Sequences takes the reader …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Mike Ladd
Ashley Brown reviews Angela Costi
Prayers For The Wicked by Angela Costi Sunshine and Text Studio, 2005 To begin with, it should be noted that Angela Costi's Prayers For The Wicked – a CD of “spoken word, song, music and sound” – tells a tale …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Angela Costi
Ela Fornalska reviews Andy Jackson
aperture by Andy Jackson Self published, 2003 Andy Jackson writes with immense skill. His poetry seems effortless, yet it is haunting, requiring contemplation. That is not to say that it is inaccessible. On first reading of a Jackson poem you …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Andy Jackson
Jess Star reviews Cate Kennedy
Joyflight by Cate Kennedy Interactive Press, 2004 Cate Kennedy's Joyflight is distilled memory. It is a manifestation of time, place and history, both intensely personal and instantly recognisable. Joyflight is a book divided. It begins with `that pure torn-open moment': …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Cate Kennedy
Michael Aiken reviews Louis Armand
malice in underland by Louis Armand Textbase, 2003 The title of this book is an early manifestation of its endless intertextual referencing, as well as one example of the author's restrained penchant for relatively silly puns. It is also an …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Louis Armand
Ian MacNeill reviews John Kinsella
Peripheral Light: Selected and New Poems, Selected and Introduced by Harold Bloom by John Kinsella Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2003 With his appearances on ABC TV's 'Critical Mass' program John Kinsella is becoming something of a public intellectual. His severe demeanour …
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged John Kinsella
Will Day: Richard Frankland’s Charcoal Club / My Deconstruction Fatigue
What came home to me during the Charcoal Club was that regardless of my tribe's on-going conscious or unconscious genocide, the generous indigenous spirit was coming to get me whether I liked it or not, was infiltrating me bit by bit because, like the indigenous Australians I too had been up-rooted, bleached and taken for a fool.
Posted in FEATURES
Tagged indigenous Australia, Richard Frankland
Claire Stewart reviews Benito di Fonzo
What is particularly remarkable about this poem is Di Fonzo's successful recreation of the atmospheric scenery of the early nineties without descending into clich?�s and making the dialogue seem contrived and vacuous.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Benito di Fonzo
Claire Stewart reviews Paul Mitchell
I remember once hearing that the late Sidney Nolan had said that it took him a few years to paint like an adult but that it had taken him several years to paint like a child. Mitchell also shares that ability to place himself in another perspective, particularly that of a child, so accurately and compassionately.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged paul mitchell
Michael Brown reviews Paul Hardacre
Hardacre, it seems, is sharing the lessons of the ?´school of junk'; that is, he is using drug poetry in the same way Dransfield did to illuminate a kind of bruised humanity.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged paul hardacre
Diana Young reviews Sean M. Whelan
Whelan dances back and forth in multiple perspectives, switching fluidly from experiencing to observing, from self to other, from ordinary to absurd, magically traversing all barriers in between. Invoking fantasy and manipulating the artifice of persona allows Whelan to populate an expanding universe with charming (and not so charming) caricatures that both impersonate and ridicule a variety of social situations and scenarios.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged sean m. whelan
Maria Christoforatos reviews Jill Jones
The striking consistency in these poems is the subtle authority of the narrator. Reading and re-reading these poems, I increasingly gained a sense of the speaker and beheld a measured, composed voice, an unwavering character amid turmoil and modern refractions. Although I personally do not subscribe to the theories of post modernism, I perceived that the speaker approaches the poeticised world in such a manner. For those who are so inclined, there will be plenty to ruminate upon and empathise with in this volume.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Jill Jones
John De Laine reviews John Tranter
The poet eases his reader into the collection. The first five titles unsettle, with their short snapshots of nobodies overwhelmed by the bigness and badness of the modern world. Tranter resists falling, however, into a pattern and quickly moves on to critique the weight of devoted political activism on personal wellbeing with ?´Memoirs of a Forty-Year-Old Revolutionary'. It laments loss of both cause and worth. It wounds, like a fourth term of John Howard. It scolds, in its treatment of the fading Marxist dream.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged john tranter
Scott Thornton reviews John Jenkins
There is ultimately something gaudy about this collection — and I quite like it. Even Jenkins' failures are only caused by his endless ambition and these are easily offset by the brilliance of his more focused works.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged John Jenkins