joanne burns



When Poets Write Prose: Daniela Brozek Cordier Reviews Recent Collections by Joanne Burns, Stephanie Green and Jane Williams

This is a review of three collections of poetry by women, two published in 2019, and one, Jane Williams’s Parts of the Main, in 2017. Of the two more recent volumes, Stephanie Green consistently uses prose in Breathing in Stormy Seasons, whereas Joanne Burns writes in prose in only one section of her collection, that which bestows its title, apparently, on the collection.

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rim

you cup your hands. hold and press them to your face. waiting for something to appear – a voice, an image suggesting what to do next – like a child hiding her face in the warmth of her own hands. …

Posted in 95: EARTH | Tagged

snob

don’t think i’ll hear a fly buzz when i die more likely a voice booming instructions on where to queue for the official passage there being a jam in the tunnel some spirits rushing to cross the river others determined …

Posted in 86: NO THEME VII | Tagged

Lee Cataldi: New Poems with an Introduction by Joanne Burns

In this selection of poems, Lee Cataldi writes in a spare, lean, direct way, steered by an aesthetic of restraint. She often uses internal spacing and short stanzas to re-enforce her measure. A sense of loss inhabits a number of the poems.

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sting-along

there’s no point to owning a country if you can’t look after your own hair the tv burped the weeks broke up like packets of biscuits we swept through them on the way to the bus stop holidays were full …

Posted in 80: NO THEME VI | Tagged

confit

although we might have chewed on the same page we never lived on the same continent my new revised atlas confirms that i am not of the same stock cube as you i filched those cubes to add flavour to …

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Review Short: Joanne Burns’s Brush

Brush, the latest collection of poetry from Joanne Burns consists of layers juxtaposed in a profuse and generous abundance, styles not fused so much as flipped over and filed into an album as much as an anthology. What may appear to be random sections and selections on closer inspection consist of a gathering that implies a duty of care, assembling shared cultural and oneiric artefacts stripped of extraneous affects and putting on record that which is weird and wonderful and way out there.

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pennant

world politics gone queasy the oligarch skates through reclaimed savannah in his alopecia jumpsuit, improvisation shrewd as a hoodwinker monk − time to hoist the vinyl archived at the alpine sanatorium, all night jam sessions over lake bassoon; eventually treaties …

Posted in 64: CONSTRAINT | Tagged

amble

travel in the paganini canoe and you’ll never become punctual feed that sort of salad to your favorite shark and it will be pissing beetroot, and set off an alarm i finally located your power of attorney doc [so unreadable …

Posted in 64: CONSTRAINT | Tagged

lip

the reticent comic sprawls across the numb linoleum considering a loud tennis career pow-whoosh-slam but no one loves me anymore; delphic teapots leak like hushed puppies who believes in loud prophecies these days mountain tops prefer to sleep like blank …

Posted in 60: SILENCE | Tagged

it grows on you

you lift a hand to sweep away the cobwebs a rubber spider is about to infiltrate your best eye so entertain it with sweet valentines the people in the park may still be there even if you dare not think …

Posted in 56: NO THEME II | Tagged

bluff

i. equity bring a plate to the global table brands are set to translate into something more than sulkiness tim tams will soon greet the aurora borealis the farm gate is not as rubbery as it looks the bone density …

Posted in 55: RATBAGGERY | 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 …

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Corey Wakeling Reviews joanne burns

joanne burns has been publishing experimental poetry in Australia for over four decades, and amphora is her thirteenth collection. At 135 pages, it is substantial and generous, of a breadth that allows for the prose poems burns is best known for along with a number of spectacular short poems and some longer series.

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Ethelred Malley: Soil: A Nocturne

for my late cousin Ernest A bleat of lambs on Junee’s naïve hills, a kind of white foam in the dark; the clash and slam of locomotive carriages: stubborn cymbals of the Gods or an ordinary torment? Such hyperbolic music, …

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Custom/Made Editorial

The production line has not been idle at the Cordite Industrial Park on Bespoke Drive. Here are 44 poems that engage with the rubric of Custom/Made in a diverse range of text and articulations – poems that have often been 'made' by employing quirky and sprightly strategies in response to the subject.

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joanne burns: lure

she wasn't to be found in the list. his eyes darted down the long line of the 'c's : chevron barracuda chimaera cigar wrasse clown toby comet convict surgeon fish coronation cod. he even ventured into the 'd's in case …

Posted in 32: MULLOWAY | Tagged

joanne burns: no disguises

i. god laughs on as his mulberry shoes skylark down george street misunderstanding shreds the air like a flaming galah, the skate boarders flash by in mercurial currents loud as the rocks of thrace     ii. he sang to …

Posted in 32: MULLOWAY | Tagged

textile

the tram lingered in another century locked in hearts betrothed to other echoes more exquisite than a hamburger's flip they had exchanged tickets for heart beats what if the absence of encyclopaedias were an impediment they would sway in the …

Posted in 30: EXPERIENCE | Tagged

pasture

the buffet bar had only iced corned beef and pickle sandwiches it was a boring novel it needed a better murder and more full stops the ticket inspector carried a blue rubbish bag in his other hand, and heated pasties …

Posted in 30: EXPERIENCE | Tagged

road

i have nothing exciting to tell you mostly they were friendly but some people looked through me the juice of the lime is no longer fresh i have never before seen myself as a window when the bus travels this …

Posted in 30: EXPERIENCE | Tagged

Sylvia Malley: bestseller

Sylvia Malley is a cousin of the late Australian poet Ern Malley. She is the daughter of Ern's cousin, Morris Malley. The Ern Malley literary scandal caused the Malley family to fear poetry for many decades. However, Sylvia, a Malley inheritrix, could not avoid the family's innovative poetic genes, and one lunchtime while browsing through the Australian Poetry shelf in Dymock's Bookstore, George Street Sydney, she discovered Ern's poetic oeuvre in the Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry [ed.Tranter/Mead]. Since then she has become an avid reader of contemporary Australian Poetry and a closet poet herself. Through her internet browsings she discovered that the on-line poetry journal 'cordite' was seeking submissions for a 'Children of Ern Malley' issue, so she decided to take a chance with one of her recent poems. Sylvia works as an optometrist in the business district of Sydney. In recent years she has become a keen harbour ferry spotter. She lives in Manly.

Posted in 24: CHILDREN OF MALLEY | Tagged

pluck

that's my last master hanging on the wall he had it framed one week before, i pressed the button and the photo slid out from my side, a slit like the one made in jesus on the day he died …

Posted in 22: ROBO | Tagged

perspex at noon

joanne burns is a sydney writer. her latest collection of poetry is 'footnotes of a hammock' [Five Islands Press 2004].

Posted in 20: SUBMERGED | Tagged