http://cordite.org.au Australian poetry and poetics Wed, 22 May 2013 06:16:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= http://cordite.org.au/reviews/a-frances-johnson-reviews-jill-jones/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-frances-johnson-reviews-jill-jones http://cordite.org.au/reviews/a-frances-johnson-reviews-jill-jones/#comments Sun, 19 May 2013 20:59:57 +0000 A. Frances Johnson http://cordite.org.au/?p=24898 ‘Why wish for the moon when we have the stars’, Bette Davis famously aspirates to Paul Henreid at the end of the film Now Voyager (1942, dir. Irving Rapper). That, of course, was an iconic, melodramatic story of unrequited love given an optimistic gloss by two lovers sharing last cigarettes. Jill Jones’ ambiguously rendered celestial bodies serve up different ideas of love and loss in this new collection. Jones’ stars, moons, candles, clouds and smoky skies are part of an identifiable romantic lexicon.]]> http://cordite.org.au/reviews/a-frances-johnson-reviews-jill-jones/feed/ 0 http://cordite.org.au/reviews/review-short-toby-davidsons-beast-language/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=review-short-toby-davidsons-beast-language http://cordite.org.au/reviews/review-short-toby-davidsons-beast-language/#comments Mon, 13 May 2013 14:10:12 +0000 Kim Cheng Boey http://cordite.org.au/?p=24873 In the introduction to the collected poems of Francis Webb, Toby Davidson observes that the immediate influences behind Webb’s poems 'do not supersede his locales.' Webb’s poems are informed by a topophilia, a love of place and its ambient lore, a topographical attentiveness to detail that includes not just spatial but also temporal resonances. Davidson has inherited this attentiveness to space and place, and his debut collection, Beast Language, attempts a topo or ecopoetics that traverses a spectrum of geographies, mapping the Australian continent from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific seaboard, attempting not only terrestrial readings but taking cosmological measurements as well.]]> http://cordite.org.au/reviews/review-short-toby-davidsons-beast-language/feed/ 0 http://cordite.org.au/reviews/michael-farrell-reviews-mtc-cronin-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=michael-farrell-reviews-mtc-cronin-2 http://cordite.org.au/reviews/michael-farrell-reviews-mtc-cronin-2/#comments Sat, 04 May 2013 22:36:41 +0000 Michael Farrell http://cordite.org.au/?p=24818 A book as an experience of sampling, and of reading over a long period of time, may be ideal for the writer; but it won’t be that for all readers, especially not reviewers. MTC Cronin has published several highly structured books in the past: Talking to Neruda’s Questions, 1-100 and The Flower, The Thing. Here the double title functions in a looser, more umbrella-like way; the book apparently aims to use death as its guiding concept: the assertion that the poems are themselves metaphors suggesting flexibility in her use of death as her theme.]]> http://cordite.org.au/reviews/michael-farrell-reviews-mtc-cronin-2/feed/ 0 http://cordite.org.au/reviews/justin-clemens-reviews-pam-brown-and-ken-bolton/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=justin-clemens-reviews-pam-brown-and-ken-bolton http://cordite.org.au/reviews/justin-clemens-reviews-pam-brown-and-ken-bolton/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 21:34:45 +0000 Justin Clemens http://cordite.org.au/?p=24657 If there is one true love in the history of Australian verse, it’s perhaps the love of Pam Brown and Ken Bolton. As you should expect, it’s not a normal kind of love at all – or maybe it’s the only normal love, depending on how you’re predisposed to taking the word or the thing (‘normal,’ I mean), and depending whether you think you can tell the difference between the two (‘word’ and ‘thing,’ I mean).]]> http://cordite.org.au/reviews/justin-clemens-reviews-pam-brown-and-ken-bolton/feed/ 0 http://cordite.org.au/reviews/andy-jackson-reviews-kevin-brophy-and-nathan-curnow/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=andy-jackson-reviews-kevin-brophy-and-nathan-curnow http://cordite.org.au/reviews/andy-jackson-reviews-kevin-brophy-and-nathan-curnow/#comments Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:01:34 +0000 Andy Jackson http://cordite.org.au/?p=24816 Radar. Green blips on a black screen. A large and vulnerable craft navigating a changeable world. A technological attempt to locate an invisible danger, or to give shape to darkness. All these associations emerge out of the poetry of Kevin Brophy and Nathan Curnow in their joint collection Radar, albeit in an intimate mode: these poets observe the ways in which we navigate through our lives in the contemporary world and improvise meaning. It is difficult, though, to talk about ‘the book’ because these two poets differ strikingly in their approaches.]]> http://cordite.org.au/reviews/andy-jackson-reviews-kevin-brophy-and-nathan-curnow/feed/ 0 http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/suspensions-of-the-real/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=suspensions-of-the-real http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/suspensions-of-the-real/#comments Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:51:43 +0000 Jacinta Le Plastrier http://cordite.org.au/?p=24852 Ariel poems. Plunkett was unable to uncover these pages in any of the archives made available to her, which were still in the process of being organised. One night, in dream, she ‘receives’ a phone call, made from a black, period-piece telephone, words delivered in Plath’s idiosyncratic trans-Atlantic diction – ‘look in the yellow folder’.]]> http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/suspensions-of-the-real/feed/ 3 http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/too-east-coast/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=too-east-coast http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/too-east-coast/#comments Mon, 08 Apr 2013 02:07:23 +0000 Kent MacCarter http://cordite.org.au/?p=24819 http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/too-east-coast/feed/ 0 http://cordite.org.au/reviews/review-short-lachlan-browns-limited-cities/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=review-short-lachlan-browns-limited-cities http://cordite.org.au/reviews/review-short-lachlan-browns-limited-cities/#comments Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:51:21 +0000 Amy Brown http://cordite.org.au/?p=24747 A meditation on city limits – the literal and figurative limits of cities – and the edges of ‘urban’ definition, Lachlan Brown’s first collection, Limited Cities, conveys the extreme contrasts and contradictions of suburban environments via train-window views. Macquarie Fields, Parisian banlieues and Barcelona street scenes: each keen observation of the space through which he moves contributes to a nuanced description of the poet’s perspective, and in turn the reader’s too. What at first appears to be a collection concerned with the external – landscapes and cityscapes – is, in fact, more personal.]]> http://cordite.org.au/reviews/review-short-lachlan-browns-limited-cities/feed/ 0 http://cordite.org.au/reviews/review-short-toby-fitchs-rawshock/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=review-short-toby-fitchs-rawshock http://cordite.org.au/reviews/review-short-toby-fitchs-rawshock/#comments Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:50:15 +0000 Nicola Themistes http://cordite.org.au/?p=24743 Sydney-based poet Toby Fitch's first book-length collection, Rawshock, is a lively, artful and conceptually engaging excursion into the underworld of a profound poetic imagination; through the eponymous poem sequence, Fitch offers up the viscera and vital organs of the Orpheus myth for the delectation of contemporary readers. Everyday Static' and 'Oscillations' – the two chapbook-length series that accompany this myth – present a sensuous and affable rendering of Fitch's key theme; the relationship of the present to the poetry of the past.]]> http://cordite.org.au/reviews/review-short-toby-fitchs-rawshock/feed/ 0 http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/submissions-to-43/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=submissions-to-43 http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/submissions-to-43/#comments Sun, 31 Mar 2013 13:05:13 +0000 Ann Vickery http://cordite.org.au/?p=24652 This issue is the Masque. It extends an invite to displays of Devices and Mythic Mayhem. It desires to entertain Bold Interiors of Poetic Fancy and Brocaded Rewindings, Lyricised run-ons and flirtatious Kinks in the Narrative. A toying with Masks and Anti-Masks of identity, gender guises and human conceit.]]> http://cordite.org.au/guncotton/submissions-to-43/feed/ 1