- 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
Melinda Bufton
BABY DOLL PYJAMAS
to even up the more stoic exactitudes – If that is your intent – arcing up the atmos with a little ambient fizz can be the solution. Would you put on a baby doll pyjama? It’s very cute of coarse …
Posted in 111: BABY
Tagged Melinda Bufton
Introduction to Harry Reid’s Leave Me Alone
BUY YOUR COPY HERE In Harry Reid’s Leave Me Alone, we enter a nondescript door down a laneway, casually apply the secret knock, and the door slides open – just enough for us to squeeze through sideways before it shuts …
Posted in INTRODUCTIONS
Tagged Harry Reid, Melinda Bufton, Zoë Sadokierski
Poetry Against Neoliberal Capitalism in Ali Alizadeh and Melinda Bufton
Poetry has a long history of disruption, resistance, and revolution, overlapping the concerns of politics with literature and the boundaries of language.
Posted in ESSAYS, SCHOLARLY
Tagged Ali Alizadeh, Angela McRobbie, John Zilcosky, Julia Clark, Melinda Bufton, michael brennan, Sarah Banet-Weiser
Melinda Bufton Reviews Ursula Robinson-Shaw’s Noonday
Noonday is an intriguingly built set of poems. As a reader, I am looking to be jolted into a new paradigm. I want the poet to raise the stakes and am generally looking for puzzles I cannot solve.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Melinda Bufton, Ursula Robinson-Shaw
‘That is some crafty bite’: Trisha Pender Interviews Melinda Bufton
In her eagerly awaited second collection, Superette (Puncher & Wattman, 2018), Melinda Bufton delivers dramatically on the promise announced in her 2014 debut, Girlery (Inken Publisch, 2014).
Posted in INTERVIEWS
Tagged Melinda Bufton, Trisha Pender
The Possible Dream (Buying Jeans Online)
I don’t know. Does Eileen Myles think this much about her jeans? Probably not. Creating the perfect poetry jeans is not as hard as you think. It requires patience, skill, habitat and armoury. How to be Parisian seems to be …
Posted in 78: CONFESSION
Tagged Melinda Bufton
Review Short: Nathanael O’Reilly’s Distance
Nathanael O’Reilly’s Distance is threaded with daily objects and locations pressed carefully against each other for maximum coverage within minimum space. O’Reilly’s poems can travel whole countries in a couple of phrases, or emotional landscapes that dart from comfort to the homesickness we glimpse via the sparse beats charged with its evocation.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Melinda Bufton, Nathan O'Reilly
Tastemaker Allowables
(15 signs I’ve become middle class) I don’t save anything for good a. I don’t save anything for bad Mind the poorhouse, cantilever side split 60 slow on the know how Berate with the swordfish mouth/kisser Orchestrate Take them down …
Posted in 64: CONSTRAINT
Tagged Melinda Bufton
Review Short: Melinda Smith’s Drag down to unlock or place an emergency call
Melinda Smith’s Drag down to unlock or place an emergency call is her fourth collection, her work including substantial anthologisation and a number of prizes. Smith’s self-described aim is to for her poetry to ‘educate, inform and entertain … but mostly entertain’ (being the subtitle of her blog, Melinda Smith’s Mull and Fiddle).
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Melinda Bufton, Melinda Smith
Review Short: Melinda Bufton’s Girlery
The title of Melinda Bufton’s debut collection, Girlery, asks be read ironically, but is in fact quite apt, bringing to mind a repository of all that is ‘girly,’ in the same way that a reliquary houses relics. Alternatively, it could be a verb: something close to a feminine form of tomfoolery. One imagines a stern injunction to ‘cease this girlery at once!’ With titles such as ‘Dealbreaker,’ ‘Bumper Book for Girls,’ ‘Lollyshop’ and ‘I will call you smitten because it suits your crazy eyes’ among the twenty-three poems collected here, both these associations are appropriate.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Emily Bitto, Melinda Bufton
Continental Hourglass
3pm French service at the church of OMG dear secret vision board I have Franco’d up my stays into pearl restraint There are no zips as zips untrusted And you, my friend, with your hitherto plans your golden irises to …
Posted in 57: MASQUE
Tagged Melinda Bufton
Review Short: Warwick Anderson’s Hard Cases, Brief Lives
The manner in which poets divide their lives is of enduring, perhaps obsessive, interest to me. More specifically, I’m interested in what they choose to reveal or emphasise, and what they let slide to the background of their visible identity.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Melinda Bufton, Warwick Anderson
Review Short: Jo Langdon’s Snowline
It can be argued that one way to begin to make your ‘mark’ is to settle on a theme; in marketing, it’s a handle or a simple angle. In creative realms, it can be an oeuvre or a period, with a descriptor. Ideally, it should never be held too close to its object/subject for fear of typecasting, but for an emergent poet, it may well be the thing that reassures readers and helps them with a doorway into your work. For a first chapbook, a theme can also be the way to find publication. Jo Langdon’s Snowline is the 2011 winner of the Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize, a welcome initiative for emerging poets from the Geelong-based Whitmore Press. It’s a deserving winner, and a pleasure to experience.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Jo Langdon, Melinda Bufton
Ellipsis Getting Bigger
Me: Yeah, no, I write too … Person: Really, great! What do you write? Me: Poetry Person: ‘…’ Sometimes that person actually lowers their eyes, bows their head, as though I have somehow reached too far into their minds and …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged hooch, Kate Fagan, Melinda Bufton, michael farrell
Laird, Bufton and an Interlocutor Prelude
Sadly, I begin this post by announcing the departure of Emily Stewart from GUNCOTTON, and I’d like to thank her for the great posts during her time at Cordite. But the world of editing and publishing calls for Stewart with …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Benjamin Laird, Calliope, Diana Arellano, Emily Stewart, Melinda Bufton
