Claire Gaskin



The Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Recruitment Methods and Impacts of Cults and Organised Fringe Groups

I crawl into the guts of pain and its glorious   group based coercive control   the carcass on the beach   focused on behavior not beliefs   a submission for the inquiry   a winter rainbow in a gumboot   patterned sustained tactics   do I own selfless   gradual   what is in accordance with targets …

Posted in 118: PRECARIOUS | Tagged

poverty

can I make it up the hill    how saying what you think leads to poverty    I sit to rest among the she oaks             how violence leads to poverty    how saying what you think leads to poverty    she was underwater lying in the middle of …

Posted in 117: NO THEME 14 | Tagged

NO THEME VIII Editorial

Nothing makes me feel my fallibility more than editing a literary journal, marking papers or judging a literary competition. I can be wrong. I can be unclear. I can miss things.

Posted in ESSAYS | Tagged

Submission to Cordite 92: NO THEME VIII

I’m looking for work ‘with head, heart and guts,’ as Bei Dao says.

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged ,

Ismene’s Thirst

in this binary library a murder of fictions crows gather in corners it is work to witness question marks polished apples witnessed by medication one side limp I called an ambulance this memory smells nutty the first line I trusted …

Posted in 86: NO THEME VII | Tagged

Ella O’Keefe Reviews Claire Gaskin

In Paperweight, her third full-length collection, Claire Gaskin shows her talent for observing fluctuations in the state of things – personal, political and environmental. Within this, she does not turn from the darker corners of the human psyche. ‘Just do the best you can’ opens with a frank acknowledgement of mortality: ‘your death keeps growing/or your life keeps contracting’.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Flash Bulbs in the Dark: Women are Dynamite

The poetry canon does women few favours. Over the years, I’ve had to seek out and find my own choice femmes to balance out the bookshelves. Never feeling the pull of Plath or Dickinson, I went from Sappho to Aphra …

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Paul Mitchell Reviews Claire Gaskin

There is no firm ground in Claire Gaskin's new collection, A Bud. If you're looking for poetry that announces itself as a place to have your psychic tremors explained, your yearning reflected or your misappropriations mended, look elsewhere.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

The Way to Intimacy Is to Throw Open the Doors of Your Vulnerability

Summers in slavery I like to throw a curve at people. Do not assume you both want the same degree of intimacy. Two way glass. Followed by a period of apology. I have a perspective on the proposed space.

Posted in 16: SEARCH | Tagged