BOOK REVIEWS
Rob Walker Reviews Deb Matthews-Zott
Poetry about erotic desire is fraught with perils. Just look at some of the worst on thousands of teen websites and you'll get some idea of just how bad it can get! Contrast this with Shadow Selves, Deb Matthews-Zott's latest work, and the difference is striking, showing a sophistication that welds the physical to the intellectual. She achieves all this without resorting to anatomical diatribe. But it's still hot.
Bev Braune Reviews Luke Davies
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.
James Stuart Reviews Luke Davies
I'll let you in on a secret: I think Luke Davies is in love. OK. So it's not much of a secret. Still, while descriptions on the jacket refer to it in a variety of glowing terms (‘A sustained aria' — Peter Porter; ‘the great Australian long poem' — Judith Beveridge) what they basically elide is that ‘Totem Poem', and its 40 companion poems are pretty much all about love. And so we pass the microphone to Davies.
Moses Iten Reviews rattapallax 10
I have to admit, I picked up issue 10 of rattapallax for 'The Age of MC SOLAAR' cover story. Although my French is still very limited, I have had quite a few tracks by the Senegal-born, Paris-bred, hip-hop superstar on high rotation for several years. Undoubtedly, his flow alone is dope enough for heads of any language.
Rob Walker Reviews Les Wicks
Iconic Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa (director of The Seven Samurai (1954), remade by Hollywood as The Magnificent Seven; and Yojimbo (1961), remade (or is that ripped off?) as A Fistful of Dollars) is frequently feted as an artist who elevates the common man to hero status in his phenomenal catalogue of work. Reading the work in Stories of the feet made me wonder if Les Wicks is an Australian poetic equivalent of Kurosawa.
Bev Braune Reviews Pam Brown
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.
Bev Braune Reviews Melissa Ashley
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.
DJ Huppatz Reviews No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry
At Changi Airport's arrivals hall, you're greeted by the sound of birds, which is quite disconcerting at 2am. This simulated birdsong is symptomatic of the city-state's attitude to nature. For Singapore, it seems, nature is dangerous and unpredictable, better replaced with more predictable, more aesthetically pleasing technologies. Former Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew once famously asserted that the greatest invention of the 20th century was the air conditioner. Thus it is more than just an urban condition that is constructed in Singapore, it is an aesthetic condition that incorporates all aspects of life.
James Stuart Reviews Robert Adamson
From his earliest involvement, Robert Adamson has been an iconic figure for contemporary Australian poetry, both as a “post-symbolist”, lyrical poet, and as an editor and publisher. His achievements are testament to this, whether one is reflecting upon his 17 odd collections of poetry, and the consequent awards, or his various engagements on ventures such as the editorship of New Poetry and the founding of Paperbark Press.
Brentley Frazer Reviews MTC Cronin
WOW! I had to read beautiful, unfinished 16 times before I had enough courage to even begin thinking about reviewing it. Cronin wields language like an ax with scented blade, its hits your brain with a squishy sounding clunk but it's so pretty you want to make out with it.
Adam Aitken Reviews Philip Hammial
Who is Philip Hammial? If you read Hammial's 16th book of poems, it will strike you as surprisingly biographical without sounding too auto-biographical – after all it's Philip Hammial poetry. Who is Philip Hammial, the poet? What's his world?
Matt Hetherington Reviews Dan Disney
It's reasonable to suggest that we live in somewhat Tragicomic times. A well-known satirist (whose name I forget) recently complained of being completely unable to mock the American government, since those running the country were already effectively satirising themselves by saying and doing things more absurd and laughable than anything he could come up with.
Komninos Zervos Reviews Papertiger #3
The third CD-ROM of poetry has been released by Papertiger Media and yet again presents the work of many of Australia's finest contemporary poets. As well, the Editors have included an eclectic array of international contributors from Canada, Finland, the UK, the USA and Australasia. More interestingly it is the expanded use of the new digital format of this collection i.e. the CD-ROM.
Scott Thouard Reviews Liam Guilar
I'll Howl Before You Bury Me is a title that suggests an emotional reprisal. The poems in this collection protest the repressing of individual vitality in favour of congenial surrender to the beige touchstones of contemporary life.
Kristin Hannaford Reviews Stephen Oliver
The blurb on the back cover cites this as a “challenging miscellany”. What do you make of that? A mixed bag? Poetries that don't fit? Odd socks and whimsy? Well, after puzzling over the collection for a few weeks, I'd say yes to all of the above.'
Moses Iten Reviews Rattapallax 7
Although conceived in the melting pot of New York, a city often described as the capital of the world, Rattapallax Press is produced by Ram Devineni, originally from India. Crucially, as Devineni's first issue released after September 11, 2001, Rattapallax 7 deals with the horrific loss of innocence as seen through the eyes of the diverse populace of New York. While the 'Words of Comfort' benefit poetry event held in October 2001 attracted the faces of Lou Reed and Claire Danes, the most powerful poems that deal with this loss are by Agha Shahid Ali, and those featured in the segment, New Arab Poetry.
Jayne Fenton Keane Reviews Brook Emery
Misplaced Heart showcases Emery's diverse, lyrical voice in a collection that is capable of satisfying a range of tastes. Emery's documentation of familiar, often ordinary scenes, places and circumstances, and his pleasure in a style that fluctuates between the lyrical and the colloquial, is a well recognised feature of his writing.
Brentley Frazer Reviews Justin Lowe
'When reading Justin Lowe, I keep looking over my shoulder, even on the bus, not as though I am being watched, more as if I expect to see someone who looks like a master philosopher from the middle ages who has traveled through time to observe us, here and now, taking down notes.'
Martin Downey Reviews Bruce Dawe
This suite of poems provides a remarkable insight into the troubled times that Australia, and the rest of the world, are only now beginning to realize. It is not the charitable/humanist/philanthropic gesture made by both poet and publisher (see Postscript) through this collection of poems that drives me to speak of Bruce Dawe's latest writings.
Martin Downey Reviews Andrew Zawacki
According to the hyperbole contained on the back cover of this fine-looking book, I was about to embark on a wonderful journey through 'widlerness littered with petrochemical and astrophysical artifacts (sic) -' and with 'the sweep of its cadences, its powers of invention, its amazing subtle intelligence' — amongst other things — set to allow my 'soul' to 'squint' at 'meticulously recorded landscapes'.
Brentley Frazer Reviews Rebecca Edwards
Scar Country contains poems recognisable from Edwards' early Metro Press publication, Eating the Experience. Her editors are to be commended for including these early poems, as they serve as an excellent introduction to the texts of a fine and strong Australian poet, even as we familiarise ourselves with her self-exploratory, anatomical style of writing.
Matt Hetherington Reviews Sea Peach
Someone (not a New Zealander) once told me that there used to be a TV program in the old NZ similar to the Australian show 'That's Amazing!', but which was actually called 'That's Quite Interesting!'. Well, whether that's true or not, that's what I thought after I read this book and listened to the accompanying CD.
Moses Iten Reviews Ian Ferrier
4AM and the walk home laced with an icy rain. This line begins Ian Ferrier's Exploding Head Man, the author's wild, Canadian environment making itself felt right from the outset of this journey that is both physical and philosophical. From Montreal to Baja — Canada to Mexico — Ferrier's work is a road trip of fire and ice, passing under the desert sun and ploughing through snow storms.
Justin Lowe Reviews Chris Mansell
Chris Mansell is a serious poet. She has an agent and a Statement of Intent, and apart from my faithful drinking partner, Tug Dumbly (who just so happens to hail from Ms Mansell's neck of the woods), I don't know any poet with an agent, and certainly none with an S.o.I.
