- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with 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
Cassandra Atherton
‘The poem in progress is molten, malleable’: Cassandra Atherton in Conversation with DeWitt Henry
I met DeWitt Henry on an online poetry reading series, LitBalm. I’d read his book Sweet Marjoram: Notes and Essays (2018), and I knew he had founded the famous literary journal Ploughshares, and was an emeritus professor at Emerson College.
Posted in INTERVIEWS
Tagged Cassandra Atherton, DeWitt Henry, William Shakespeare
Childhood Playmate | 童年玩伴
Translated by Gu Yiwei and Cassandra Atherton Death, is another child, with a thin face Occasionally he comes to play with me, knocks three times, moderate and regular, forming a habit Like the scar on his forehead that is uncovered …
Posted in HOMINGS & DEPARTURES
Tagged Cassandra Atherton, Gu Yiwei, Si Rongyun
Snow
The snow turns our year into white noise. Like the echo chamber in your noise cancelling earphones, the bliss is whitewashed with flurries of snow. My body becomes powdered chalk; your touch is desiccated. On First Night, I watch the …
Posted in 86: NO THEME VII
Tagged Cassandra Atherton
EKPHRASTIC Editorial: Poetry that Sees
In ancient Greece ekphrasis was understood more broadly than in the contemporary world, indicating a complex genealogy for this term that encompasses so much fine poetry as well as many other forms of writing.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Cassandra Atherton, Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux, Ezra Pound, Homer, Paul Hetherington, Paul Munden, William Carlos Williams
‘The atomic landscape … does not allow me to rest’: Kurihara Sadako and the Hibakusha Poet as Public Intellectual
The 70th anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima was marked by a solemn ceremony in the Hiroshima Peace Park on 6 August, 2015.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Cassandra Atherton, Kurihara Sadako
EXPLODE Editorial: Awfully Passionate Egregious Demagogueries … reflections on absolutes, straying, anguish and bees
If poets are in the business of cultivating ‘voice’ then, logically enough, to which ends? Is there an onus not only to learn how to speak but to also become versed in what to speak of?
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Ali Alizadeh, Cassandra Atherton, Dan Disney, Kim Cheng Boey
X-Codes, or Katrina Crosses
You survive the flooding of the Lower Ninth Ward by taking cover in the bottom quadrant of my heart. Body count zero, I scrawl, to let people know you are safe. I’m your search squad, your protection against natural hazards, …
Posted in 77: EXPLODE
Tagged Cassandra Atherton
Submission to Cordite 56.1: EKPHRASTIC
Poetry for Cordite 56.1: EKPHRASTIC is guest-edited by Paul Hetherington and Cassandra Atherton. NOTE: due to the nature of what we’re seeking, we’re going to be accepting submissions to this special issue for a considerable amount of time; submissions close …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Cassandra Atherton, Kent MacCarter, Paul Hetherington
Review Short: Clive James’s Sentenced to Life: Poems 2011-2014
Clive James’s Sentenced to Life is a poetic autopathography outlining his years living with emphysema and leukemia. While illness biographies ‘present information about diagnosis, treatment and outcome trajectories’, more importantly, they ‘share how the illness has affected the sufferer’s wider life course, social network and views of health care institutions.’, as Rachel Hall-Clifford puts it in her Autopathographies: How ‘Sick Lit’ Shapes Knowledge of the Illness Experience. However, James’s poetry is most often centred on his personal discomfort, regrets and ultimately his quest for reassurance that his writing and memory will survive his death.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Cassandra Atherton, Clive James
Duncan Hose Reviews Best Australian Poems 2014
Being in and of one’s time (in favour of it, in fact) means producing work that is sensitive to the discursive furies of the day – the atmosphere of mutating code that the poet must stick to poems in new and strange forms. All else is nostalgia and denial. No-one knows what it means that Australia’s imperial republic, whose god has finally been revealed as cosmopolitan capitalism, is, in the history of colonies, still in its infancy yet so impressively seems to be approaching an end of days. If you’ve got burnt chaps and a warm six-shooter (cowgirl), these are exciting times.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Cassandra Atherton, Duncan Hose, Geoff Page, Judith Beveridge, michael farrell, Samuel Wagan Watson
Cassandra Atherton Reviews Anne Elvey
The kinship Elvey forges between her poems and ecological criticism lends both rigour and reverence to her first full-length collection of poetry. There is a radiant stasis at the core of her poems that encourages the reader to listen to the susurration of multiple, overlapping conversations to which Elvey is contributing.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Anne Elvey, Cassandra Atherton
Review Short: Cath Kenneally’s eaten cold
In The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, T. S. Eliot famously wrote, ‘Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.’
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Cassandra Atherton, Cath Kenneally, Janet Charman
Midnight
after ‘Midday’ by So˘ Cho˘ngju. When you leave me, part of your heart will still beat in the empty space between my sheets. When you go, the imprint of your body will throb in the darkness on the mattress next …
Posted in 43: OZ-KO (ENVOY)
Tagged Cassandra Atherton