CONTRIBUTORS

Ryan Scott

Ryan Scott lives in the Czech Republic. His poems have appeared in journals and on websites from Australia, USA, UK and Switzerland.

Ryan Scott Reviews Louis Armand

To say Louis Armand is a thoughtful poet is both obvious and an understatement. His reach extends beyond the expression of an idea to capture the sensation of the thought itself. He gives thought its heft, urgency and gravity and thus separates himself from being a mere poet of ideas. In his latest collection, Letters from Ausland, he finds that elusive ground between intellect and artistry.

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Ryan Scott reviews Robert Drewe and John Kinsella

Sand is a substance which suggests abundant contradictions. Abundance and scarcity is one; others are leisure and hardship, isolation and revelry, and most starkly the infinitely small and the infinite. Yet, it is rarely held up as something sacred. It is not often treasured for its feel and its ubiquity.

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Ryan Scott Reviews The Return of Král Majáles

This book positively brims. With words, with pictures, with experiments and experiences. At eight hundred pages plus, it is as a definitive testament to Prague’s so-called International Literary Renaissance. Apart from the prose and poetry, there are photos of those involved and an extensive bibliography of journals, zines and newspapers which have been published in Prague over the last two decades.

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Ryan Scott Reviews The Best Australian Poetry 2009 and The Best Australian Poems 2009

If we seek a division in Australian poetry, we will not find it represented among the poems in these two anthologies. Wearne puts it adroitly in his introduction when he says about the Poetry Wars, ‘for all the legendary brouhaha it may have all happened at one party (and perhaps that's how the eventual movie will see it). If some of us played for different teams (and still may) remember the operative words are 'play' and 'teams'.

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Ryan Scott Reviews Nicholson Baker

Paul Chowder, poet and narrator of Nicholson Baker's novel The Anthologist, is trying to write an introduction to his forthcoming anthology of poetry Only Rhyme. Unfortunately, he is unable to say exactly why rhyme is important, and so like anyone with a seemingly impossible task, he procrastinates.

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Ryan Scott Reviews New European Poets

The editors of New European Poets have made their intentions quite clear. They aim to reinvigorate the transatlantic conversation between American and European poets. Such an ambitious task is not without compromise. In order to achieve their aim, the editors have had to set some constraints, some they admit are arbitrary.

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Mick’s Coos

I. all over again the crescent curve of his back written on your lips   II. he'd idle behind spilling over glistening stones sometimes, not enough   III. someone imagined him inside the shell of a car it looks nothing …

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Ryan Scott Reviews Petr Borkovec

Petr Borkovec has been referred to as the leading poet in the next generation of Czech poets. But who are this next generation? How do they relate to the old? And what is Borkovec's place among them? The most general answer to the first two questions, which the translator Justin Quinn addresses in his insightful introduction to From the Interior: Poems 1995-2005, is that Borkovec differentiates himself from earlier poets in that he is not obviously political.

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Small Man with a White Shirt and Black Trousers in the Museum der Bildenen Künste, Leipzig

I didn't mean to be an artwork, going about my business on the platz. Coffee slurped smoke in-out shirt tail wedged down one last time. Okay, okay, white shirt into back trousers, But he could've chosen one of the other …

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Ryan Scott Reviews The Best Australian Poems 2008

When an anthology purports to represent the best poetry of a time or region, it's fair to assume someone will question the validity of its publication. 'On what criteria is this judged?' some readers might wonder. 'Can poetry really have a best?' others will ask. 'Why wasn't I included?' a few may dare voice aloud.

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Ryan Scott Reviews David Prater and MTC Cronin

It would be unfair to David Prater and MTC Cronin to construct some tenuous link between their new collections for the sake of this review: each volume is stylistically unique, showcasing two skilled, albeit different, voices on the Australian poetry scene. While in Prater we have a poet for the digital age who can twist its soundscapes and textures and still retain an artistic core, in Cronin we have an author who demonstrates again her understanding of timeless themes such as pain, loss and love, and attests to their permanence.

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