- 118: PRECARIOUSwith A Jackson 117: NO THEME 14with A Creece 116: REMEMBERwith M Sahhar and A Te Whiu 115: SPACEwith A Sometimes 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
Kent MacCarter
Submission to Cordite 101: NO THEME 10
Images courtesy of Jeanine Leane and John Kinsella. From now, and throughout 2021, we’re celebrating 25 years of publishing. Milestones include the publication of Cordite Poetry Review’s 100th issue in February, Cordite Books’ 40th print title, and the new free …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Jeanine Leane, John Kinsella, Kent MacCarter
Submission to Cordite 100: BROWNFACE
The brownface caricature of Jonah Takalua – as created and played by comedian Chris Lilley in the television show Jonah from Tonga – has been haunting Australia for twelve years.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Kent MacCarter, Winnie Siulolovao Dunn
Introduction to Em König’s Breathing Plural
Will we miss nature, asks Em König in Breathing Plural? In ‘dreams of stale breath’, maybe. Or ‘in another life, on another planet … maybe’ (echoing The Only Ones’ only hit). Glenn Albrecht says in Earth Emotions, ‘It [nature] effectively no longer exists’.
Posted in INTRODUCTIONS
Tagged Em König, Jill Jones, Kent MacCarter, Zoë Sadokierski
Submission to Cordite 97: PROPAGANDA
Information can be propagated to divide or to unite. It doesn’t have to lie, it doesn’t even have to frame the truth.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Kent MacCarter, mez breeze, Simon Groth
Tell Me Like You Mean It 3
In curating this chapbook I’m not sure I feel closer to answering these questions: certainly they are never stagnant … But I do feel closer to poetry’s resistance to answer these questions, which does circle back to some kind of answer to my last question – we return to poetry not because we have an answer, but instead return in a process of regeneration.
Posted in CHAPBOOKS
Tagged Alex Creece, Bonnie Reid, Bridget Gilmartin, Claire Albrech, Freya Daly Sadgrove, Gian Manik, Grace Heyer, Harriet McInerney, Jacinta Le Plastrier, Janet Jiahui Wu, Jonno Révanche, Julie Jedda Janson, Kent MacCarter, Manisha Anjali, Melody Paloma, Neika Lehman, Prithvi Varatharajan, Rory Dufficy, Sam Langer, Stella Maynard, Timmah Ball, Ursula Robinson-Shaw, Will Druce, Zoe Kingsley
Submission to Cordite 96: NO THEME IX
No theme, no rules, except for one: send us your best poems.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Jeet Thayil, Kent MacCarter, Mindy Gill
Submission to Cordite 94: EARTH
Why EARTH? Because we are of it, because we are destroying it, because there is nowhere else.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Kent MacCarter, Maria Takolander
Submission to Cordite 93: PEACH
A ripe peach may seem the embodiment of the good life, but in this issue, PEACH also stands for the bitterness of brutality as well as the richness of resistance.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged George Mouratidis, Kent MacCarter, Ling Toong, Lucy Van
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 Claire Gaskin, Kent MacCarter
Bella Li on as Associate Publisher
I’m honoured to announce that Bella Li will be joining Cordite Books as Associate Publisher. There is much activity with the books, and her masterful eye, publishing nous, and creativity will be a welcome and necessary addition.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Bella Li, Kent MacCarter
Alex Creece on as Production Editor
I’m honoured to announce that Alex Creece is joining the Cordite Poetry Review fold as Production Editor, joining us from her time in the Cordite / Monash University Summer Term Internship Program.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Alex Creece, Kent MacCarter
Submission to Cordite 91: MONSTER
Kanye West said it himself – everybody knows – then Nicki Minaj out-rapped him … then Nicki Minaj vs Cardi B. Give me monster feuds and battles. Give me Conor McGregor attacking a bus. Give me monsters in the Oval …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Kent MacCarter, Nathan Curnow
Submission to Cordite 89: DOMESTIC
I invite you to lean into this DOMESTIC sphere in all its homely undoing. Use words like beautiful bait to seduce hearts with razor-sharp decolonising intent and rupture the masquerading shape of cosy bliss, as only a poem can.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Kent MacCarter, Natalie Harkin
Introduction to Helen Lambert’s Echoland
Helen Lambert’s work is as new to me as it will be to others – she has been operating away from Australian poetry for some time, with long periods in Ireland and, lately, Russia. One approaches a new poet warily. Yet the inventive and capable intelligence behind the poems here is immediately apparent. It is wonderful to be able to drop one’s guard, to forget it – and to enter a wonderful world.
Posted in INTRODUCTIONS
Tagged Helen Lambert, ken bolton, Kent MacCarter, Zoë Sadokierski
Introduction to Siobhan Hodge’s Justice for Romeo
Justice for Romeo, as a title, will seem both accurate and misleading for most readers; this is a book decidedly concerned with justice, and Siobhan Hodge’s sense of ethical responsibility pervades the poems. Hodge’s book includes as epigraph the exchange between Romeo and a servant in Act I, Scene ii of the most famous love story of all time; the servant asks, ‘I pray, can you read any thing you see?’, to which Romeo replies, ‘Ay, if I know the letters and the language.’
Posted in INTRODUCTIONS
Tagged Dennis Haskell, Kent MacCarter, Siobhan Hodge, Zoë Sadokierski
Introduction to Lindsay Tuggle’s Calenture
Lindsay Tuggle’s poetry is uncomfortable to read: the discomforts one feels in reading her work are the very thing that make it memorable. At once immensely personal, ornate, and unapologetically embedded in female experience, it is a style unconcerned with irony or terseness. It is a verse informed by the still-alive alternative histories of the American South and haunted by the Southern Gothic literature that these histories inform.
Posted in INTRODUCTIONS
Tagged Kate Middleton, Kent MacCarter, Lindsay Tuggle, Zoë Sadokierski
Introduction to Pascalle Burton’s About the Author Is Dead
Pascalle Burton’s About the Author is Dead refers to, and opens with an epigraph from, Roland Barthes’s seminal essay, ‘The Death of the Author’. Inside the collection, we find not one author but many: David Byrne and Grace Jones, Miranda July and Jacques Derrida; authors who are filmmakers, authors who are poets, philosophers and musicians.
Posted in INTRODUCTIONS
Tagged Bella Li, Kent MacCarter, Pascalle Burton, Zoë Sadokierski
The 2018 Event Horizon of Micro Press Poetry Publishing in Australia
I begin with cosmic censorship conjecture, a formally observed tête-à-tête that coils between astrophysicists whenever they get worked up over space and matter. Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts that matter can cataclysmically implode to a state where a given density and the space-time curvature split towards infinite values.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Kent MacCarter
Dale and Fleming on as Commissioning Editors
Cordite is chuffed (once again) to announce that, joining Rosalind McFarlane as Commissioning Editor, Collaborations, Amelia Dale and Joan Fleming are joining the Cordite Poetry Review fold as Commissioning Editor, Experimental Literature and Commissioning Editor, New Zealand Literature respectively.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Amelia Dale, Joan Fleming, Kent MacCarter
20 Poets, a Free Anthology from Cordite Books
The geographic barriers that can, at times, hinder Australian literature are no longer relevant, and poetry communities around the world must be enlightened by the commanding, demanding and exciting trajectory of contemporary Australian poetics.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Alan Loney, Anne Elvey, Autumn Royal, Bonny Cassidy, Broede Carmody, Chris Mann, Claire Nashar, derek motion, Javant Biarujia, Jeanine Leane, Jen Crawford, John Hawke, Kent MacCarter, Kris Hemensley, Matthew Hall, mez breeze, Natalie Harkin, Omar Sakr, Rachael Briggs, Ross Gibson, Tanya Thaweeskulchai, Tony Birch, Zoë Sadokierski
Submission to Cordite 84: SUBURBIA
Send us your latest and greatest poems about the suburbs, the immense variety of life therein, and whether your suburban experience is inner, outer, middle-belt, beachside, exclusive, inclusive, multicultural, bogan, hipster or something else together.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Kent MacCarter, Lachlan Brown, Nathanael O'Reilly
Submission to Cordite 83: MATHEMATICS
The invention of transfinite set theory by the 19th Century German mathematician, Georg Cantor, hinges the romantic conception of a boundless infinite to a post-Cantorian description of an infinity of infinities.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Fiona Hile, Georg Cantor, Kent MacCarter
Submission to Cordite 82: LAND
Disturbed land. Conserved land.
Whose land? Yours, mine, the landlady’s?
Landlocked.
Land unlocked.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged James Stuart, Jane Gibian, Kent MacCarter
TRANSQUEER is a call for you to say something that maybe you haven’t been able to say before. It asks you to find poetry in / between lines, binaries and stultifying categorisations; from the life of flesh, from inside the bleating, many-chambered heart of gender and sexuality.