Linda Weste



Review Short: Nhã Thuyên’s words breathe, creatures of elsewhere

The relation of place to identity and self-making is central to much poetry, indeed to writing more generally. It won’t be lost on the reader, therefore, that Nhã Thuyên, writing from Hanoi (‘river within / inside’) – a city built on lowlands; a city of lakes situated in the Red River delta, where rainfall is high – makes an impassioned plea for poetry (and thinking) that is fluid, unbounded, borderless.

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Review Short: Linda Weste’s Nothing Sacred

Linda Weste’s Nothing Sacred provides an eclectic, erotic and sometimes profane insight into the private and public lives of Republican Rome. The combination of historicity with sensory poetics provides an immersive, visceral reading experience. And there is immediacy about the submersion in place – the reader is there from the first line, walking through the ‘peat bog haze’ and ‘streamers of blood’ of the eternal city.

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