- 114: NO THEME 13with J Toledo & C Tse 113: INVISIBLE WALLSwith A Walker & D Disney 112: TREATwith T Dearborn 111: BABYwith S Deo & L Ferney 110: POP!with Z Frost & B Jessen 109: NO THEME 12with C Maling & N Rhook 108: DEDICATIONwith L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik 107: LIMINALwith B Li 106: OPENwith C Lowe & J Langdon 105: NO THEME 11with E Grills & E Stewart 104: KINwith E Shiosaki 103: AMBLEwith E Gomez and S Gory 102: GAMEwith R Green and J Maxwell 101: NO THEME 10with 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
Alan Wearne
Alan Wearne Reviews Ross Gibson
This is a volume of (mainly) prose poems, derived by its compiler/adaptor/author Ross Gibson, from a large dossier of New South Wales Police records. If these can be described as ‘found’ poems (even if they have been edited) it would be as likely to refer to them as ‘accidental’.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Alan Wearne, Ross Gibson
Mixed Business
The speaker is… Reliable as anyone I’ve known, Bob Arnold is the kind of man for whom life works because (please excuse my sentimental aphorisms) he loves life’s work; he’s lucky too, since he makes his luck: wife, two girls, …
Posted in 62: MELBOURNE
Tagged Alan Wearne
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.
Review Short: Alan Wearne’s Prepare the Cabin for Landing
Prepare the Cabin for Landing, as with much of Alan Wearne’s poetry, draws on popular culture, social observations and the Australian vernacular. I recall reading a review of an earlier Wearne collection which warned the reader that they would require a Wearne dictionary in order to understand the cultural references being made. Of course, no such dictionary exists, and as Adam Ford has argued previously in Cordite Poetry Review, Wearne’s poems can be difficult unless you are ‘either amazingly well-read or precisely of Alan Wearne’s generation (and interested in the same things as him) to have the right combination of knowledge, memory and experiences to understand or empathise with every poem in this book.’
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Alan Wearne, Fiona Scotney
Jessica Wilkinson Reviews Lisa Jacobson
The verse novel is a peculiar organism: descended from the sweeping epics that chronicled the birth of nations and the misadventures of wayward heroes, we can still find characters struggling on their ‘grand’ journey – likely to be a personal, emotional and/or psychological journey – with the occasional battle scene (though, this is more likely to take place on a much smaller, personal level). As a distinctly modern form, there is certainly much less aggrandisement of the natural world via mythical and magical hyperbole in the verse novel.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Alan Wearne, dorothy porter, Jessica L. Wilkinson, john tranter, Lisa Jacobson, Pi O
NO THEME Editorial
The young PhD was applying for a ‘Theory for Practising Writers’ teaching position in a Creative Writing degree. He had devised a three year course, the first year of readings, lectures, tutorials and essays which though extending as far back …
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Alan Wearne
Walker Norris: Magicked Away
“When D’arcy Niland’s novel The Shiralee came out in the mid-fifties, the Australian film industry was in its twenty-five year coma, but such was the book’s popularity that film rights were quickly snapped up by overseas interests and the film …
Posted in 42: CHILDREN OF MALLEY II
Tagged Alan Wearne
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'.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Alan Wearne, anthologies, robert adamson
Adam Ford Reviews Alan Wearne
It seems to me that a poem should – in general – be a self-contained unit, either easily understood or a puzzle that contains the key to its solution. I'm happy to make exceptions for poems written in different eras or countries – such poems might need annotations to compensate for unfamiliar historical or cultural contexts.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Adam Ford, Alan Wearne
Ballade for Alan Gould
Alan Wearne is one of Australia's most important poets. He is one of the foremost exponents of the verse novel in the world. His works include The Nightmarkets and The Lovemakers: Volume 1 &2.
Posted in 19: ANTI/HEROES
Tagged Alan Wearne
Girls on the Avenue
Read Alan Wearne's “My Old Man's A Groovy Old Man”, from our Driver issue.
Posted in 18: ROOTS
Tagged Alan Wearne
My Old Man’s a Groovy Old Man
Alan Wearne is an internationally renowned poet and verse novelist. His book The Lovemakers won Book of the Year and the Kenneth Slessor Prize for poetry at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards in 2002. Part Two of The Lovemakers is being published in 2004. He is a Melbourne poet who lives and works in the Illawara & Fremantle.
Posted in 17: DRIVER
Tagged Alan Wearne
