GUNCOTTON
Feature Poem with Judith Beveridge: At Willabah
I forget who it was who said that the writer needs to be ‘holy in small things’, but I think there is a great deal of truth in that. That’s one reason why I’m attracted by Todd Turner’s poem ‘At Willabah’. Here, the poet guides us through the details of the landscape in a not dissimilar way to the deep engagement with particulars in such poems as Seamus Heaney’s ‘Death of a Naturalist’ or Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘At the Fishhouses’.
Submission to Cordite 50: NO THEME IV Open!
John Tranter, Sydney, 2009, photo by Anders Hallengren. Poetry for Cordite 50: NO THEME IV is guest-edited by John Tranter Zounds! We’ve made it to issue 50 in the year that Cordite Poetry Review turns 18. Bust out the Passion …
Arc 75: The Arc-Cordite Poetry Special Issue
Cover art by Ian Friend My plumbing? Not exactly. But, well, after 14 months in the planning, making, mulling, and editing, it’s finally here: Arc Poetry Magazine 75: The Arc-Cordite Poetry Special Issue. Shane Rhodes and I (Kent MacCarter) co-wrote …
When the Wind Stopped
I read somewhere that the words ‘ekphrasis’ and ‘ekphrastic’ had at one stage a reference only in the Oxford dictionary, but nowadays these words are very much part of poets’ vocabularies and practices and most poets at some stage write …
Notes on her ‘Gibson’s Folly (Tambo River)’
The Benambra mine is located on the headwaters of the Tambo River which flows into the Ramsar listed Gippsland Lakes. See Louise Crisp’s poem ‘Gibson’s Folly (Tambo River)‘. The Wilga ore body was mined by Denehurst Ltd. from 1992-1996. The …
Feature Poem with Judith Beveridge: Myrrh
Pablo Neruda said this: It’s the words that sing, they soar and descend… I bow to them… I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down. I love words so much… The unexpected …
Three Poems by Martin Harrison
On 24 July, 2014, Martin Harrison sent along three poems to me. Two were recently published, one was new and hasn’t been read widely yet. I had asked Martin if he wanted to contribute a few works to a small …
By the River
Parked under trees on the other side of the dusty area where trailers often get abandoned a few days by truckies who don’t want to pick up far from the freeway and, yes, there’s a gap in the tree-cover opening …
Cloud
Smaller than gnats, almost imperceptible, glistening flies hovering in their edgeless clusters shaping and reshaping sideways through winter sun’s white light – mid-air thrips emanating between shadow and light-ray – thirty centimetres above damp long grass, matted weeds, cool earth, …
White Flowers
The air the wind the outside and outsize of what’s possible and imaginable clear and clean endeavour into the atmosphere of light on dark and glittering spaces where crimson rosellas swerve sideways into cascades of down-hanging white flowers they land …
Submission to Cordite 49: OBSOLETE Open!
Tracy Ryan in Western Australia Submission to this issue is now closed. Cordite 50: NO THEME IV with John Tranter is now open. Poetry for Cordite 49: OBSOLETE is guest-edited by Tracy Ryan What is obsolete? Are you obsolete … …
Feature Poem with Judith Beveridge: Laneway Tom
With a distant glance and nod to Alfred, Lord Noyes’s poem, ‘The Highwayman’, Paul Scully in ‘Laneway Tom’ creates a very modern tale, one that could be playing out in the lanes and backstreets of any contemporary city. The imagery …
2014 Val Vallis Award Winner: ‘Not Fox Nor Axe’
Chloe Wilson’s poem ‘Not Fox Nor Axe’ has won the 2014 Val Vallis Award. Part-travelogue, part-mosaic of memento mori, ‘Not Fox Nor Axe’ provokes the reader with an extravaganza of multi-layered detail as it elides historical and actual Central American …
In Collaboration
‘We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.’ – Orson Welles First and foremost, my collaborations are a record of friendships. …
Feature Poem with Judith Beveridge: Cocky Farming
Robert Frost once said about writing poetry, ‘You gotta get dramatic’. Caroline Ross’s poem, ‘Cocky Farming’ dramatically enacts the hardship, fight and struggle that can beset Australian farmers, the worst foes being harsh weather and unsympathetic banks. I enjoyed the …
Cordite Ave vs. Electric Ave
I rediscovered these images from the Cordite vault this morning. Real photographs printed on photo paper. These were taken by David Prater in the final gasps of the 1990s I believe. Although the Cordite Ave (as threaded through Melbourne’s outer …
The Long and Short of It and That: Some Thoughts on Book Reviews
This post is in reply to John Dale’s recent piece in The Conversation, Here they are: the rules for book reviewing, and Peter Rose’s evisceration of it In defence of book reviewers in Australia, also in The Conversation. Dale airs …
Analogue Bodies: A Conversation with Tom Lee and Zoë Sadokierski
Analogue Bodies is a collection of essays by Tom Lee, materialised as set of illustrated books by Zoë Sadokierski. The project looks at different parts of, and events within, the human body and historical ways of depicting and making sense of them. It aims to humour and, on its day, to educate. It was presented as part of the recent Emerging Writers’ Festival 2014 at the Wheeler Centre.
Feature Poem with Judith Beveridge: Calyptorhynchus funereus
I know bird poems have become almost a cliché in Australian poetry, but I have a great fondness for the topic and so I couldn’t resist Dimitra Harvey’s evocatively brocaded poem about yellow-tailed black cockatoos, Calyptorhynchus funereus. Astute observation is …
Feature Poem with Judith Beveridge: Sunflowers
What strikes me in Andrew Stuckgold’s poem ‘Sunflowers’ are the graceful curves of the syntax, and the way he has masterfully employed sound. Reading the first sentence, which runs over three and a half lines, we hear that the ‘o’ …
DAS GEDICHT + Cordite = Deutsch Poems of Campbell, Chong, Fischer, Leber, Skovron, Vickery and Wright
Cordite Poetry Review has teamed up with venerable German literary magazine, DAS GEDICHT, to publish translations of Australian works into German. These translations are directly aimed for German readership (this is to say that the English originals are not on …
Submission to Cordite 48: CONSTRAINT Open!
Poetry for Cordite 48: CONSTRAINT is guest-edited by Corey Wakeling. Submission is now closed for this issue, but open for Tracy Ryan’s Cordite 49: OBSOLETE. That poetry be raised to a pulpit of freedom and then celebrated as a picaresque …
Cassidy on with Feature Reviews and Future Themes
The bad news first … I am sorry to see the departure of Lisa Gorton as Cordite’s Feature Reviews Editor. Over the past 18 months, her astute eye, impeccable judgement and gracious style has produced – and leaves us with – a superb legacy of robust and engaging feature reviews. Gorton’s work is testament to what can happen with excellent writing from reviewers and an engaged editorial acumen.
Trans-Tasman: Book Reviews and Best New Zealand Poetry 2013
It’s 2014. Time to expand / add to the Trans-Tasman conversation on poetics between Australia and New Zealand. The Best New Zealand Poems 2013 has now been published. Online only. Check it out. Congratulation to Murray Edmond, Anne Kennedy and …
