- 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
Peter Boyle
Jennifer Compton Reviews Peter Boyle and Izzy Roberts-Orr
First, I salute Vagabond Press – its progenitors, its long-time toilers in the vineyard of poetry, its patrons, its cheer squad, and those who work in the shadows. Any small press, surely, is a hub of more-or-less willing volunteers. It is very expensive, in all sorts of ways, to make a book. Count the cost. But year after year after year, since 1999, Vagabond Press has been turning aside from the multifarious, ever-present griefs of the world, and privileging poetry.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Izzy Roberts-Orr, Jennifer Compton, Peter Boyle
After reading Ko Hyeong-ryeol’s ‘I am not in Erdene Zuu Monastery’
If every thought has its own melody and some melodies land flat, bouncing back onto the earth, while others launch a little way into the air and linger just slightly beyond us, thoughts expressed in words, even if addressed only …
Posted in INVISIBLE WALLS
Tagged Peter Boyle
Apprenticeship
You had to go far inside the eye of a grasshopper, under tilting polar ice packs, under the taut shoulders of women rushing home, slinging a satchel of rice and vegetables into their haste, and then go further slipping between …
Posted in INVISIBLE WALLS
Tagged Peter Boyle
Five Companions
1. Small spider Next to the strawberries I am cutting on the kitchen counter you step out intent on exploring the world. Gladly I leave you your portion of the visible field and the privacy of your millennial appetites. …
Posted in INVISIBLE WALLS
Tagged Peter Boyle
Awaiting the Death Sentence, Alone in the Pavilion of Lost Swans, the Emperor Plays Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20 in D Minor
Extending from sleeves of pure gold the Emperor’s hands uncurl their fingers across the piano’s darkly chequered counters. The earth is suddenly spinning in fast motion. And the beautiful black androgynous hair sweeps down his back, defying age. How long …
Posted in 93: PEACH
Tagged Peter Boyle
Israel Holas Allimant Reviews Poems of Olga Orozco, Marosa Di Giorgio & Jorge Palma
In 2017, Vagabond Press launched its Americas Poetry Series. This is a brave and much needed venture, one that borders on the quixotic: an Australian editor offering publications from poets from the Americas to the Australian reading public, for the love of poetry and the art of translation. So far, the series has three excellent entries focused on the translation of Spanish language Latin American poets into English.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Israel Holas-Allimant, Jorge Palma, Marosa di Giorgio, Olga Orozco, Peter Boyle
3 Translated Samuel Trigueros Espino Poems
Image courtesy of Festival de Poesía El Salvador PIGS ‘I have seen friends Circe turned into pigs. Her wheel, her diamond. The pigs don’t know my hideouts, mercenaries of shadows.’ –Edilberto Cardona Bulnes I have beheaded pigs, but Circe insists …
Posted in TRANSLATIONS
Tagged Peter Boyle, Samuel Trigueros Espino
Gabriel García Ochoa Reviews Poems of Mijail Lamas, Mario Bojórques & Alí Calderón
This second volume in the series, Poems of Mijail Lamas, Mario Bojórquez & Alí Calderón, focuses on contemporary Mexican poetry. It is translated by Sydney-based, Mexican-born Mario Licón Cabrera, a seasoned poet and translator. Licón Cabrera translates into both English and Spanish.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Alí Calderón, Gabriel García Ochoa, Mario Bojórques, Mario Licón Cabrera, Mijail Lamas, Octavio Paz, Peter Boyle
Prithvi Varatharajan Reviews Peter Boyle
Peter Boyle’s Ghostspeaking belongs to a relatively rare poetic tradition, in which the poet creates heteronyms through which he or she writes. Indeed, the cover blurb of Ghostspeaking announces that the book contains ‘eleven fictive poets from Latin America, France and Québec. Their poems, interviews, biographies and letters weave images of diverse lives and poetics.’ As opposed to the pseudonym, which is merely a false name that allows the poet anonymity, the heteronym entails the creation of an entire life: not only distinctive poetic works, but also a biography for the poet that embeds them in real history.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Peter Boyle, Prithvi Varatharajan
Border Crossing
When you get there. At the frontier. It is very dangerous. Invisible precipices. Water sharp as knives. There are children playing between rocks. Many guns scan the bodies of the children. Suitcases tear open. A play of hands taking out …
Posted in 77: EXPLODE
Tagged Peter Boyle
2 Poems by Olga Orozco
Cartomancy The dogs that sniff out the lineage of ghosts, listen to them barking, listen to them tear apart the drawing of the omen. Listen. Someone approaches: the floorboards are creaking under your feet as if you will never stop …
Posted in TRANSLATIONS
Tagged Olga Orozco, Peter Boyle
from Marosa di Giorgio’s Funeral carriages laden with watermelons
What a strange species is the species angel. When I was born I heard them say “Angel”, “Angels”, or other names. “Spikenard”, “Iris”. Foam that grows on branches, the most delicate porcelain increasing all by itself. Spikenard. Iris.
Posted in TRANSLATIONS
Tagged Marosa di Giorgio, Peter Boyle
Discovered in a Rock Pool
A star-shaped object rising up out of the water – five wavering arms, five spokes of a chariot wheel, five curved cylinders, at their centre a cluster of grey barnacles, small pearls, a silver light, the water that drips from …
Posted in 71: TOIL
Tagged Peter Boyle
Reclaimed Land: Australian Urbanisation and Poetry
In the late 1850s, Charles Harpur composed the image of ‘a scanty vine,/ Trailing along some backyard wall’ (‘A Coast View’). It might be forgettable, save for its conspicuousness in Harpur’s bush-obsessed poetry. Whether purple ranges or groaning sea-cliffs, his poems cleave to a more-than-human continent. The scanty vine, however, clings to a different surface: human-made – the craft of a drystone wall, perhaps, or wire strung through posts like the twist of the poetic line – it signals domestic land division. Harpur’s vine of words trails along the vertical edifice of settlement.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, Charles Harpur, Kate Fagan, Laurie Duggan, Lesbia Harford, Martin Harrison, Nguyễn Tiên Hoàng, Peter Boyle
José Kozer’s ‘Wherein it is seen how buried always inside me is a Jew’ in English and Spanish
Wherein it is seen how buried always inside me is a Jew To howl out ballads, to hear plainchant up ahead, constantly, right to the end. To tread ears of corn on Judgement Day, and see wholegrain bread emerge from …
Posted in TRANSLATIONS
Tagged José Kozer, Peter Boyle
Jack Gilbert Gets ‘Foeted’
Anonymously they came for his bones hoping they would still hang with some flesh. ‘Blah blah’ said one, and ‘Yes yes’ said the other. Little too-mortal teeth ripping into the poems they knew were not the truth of it. ‘Oh …
Posted in 63: COLLABORATION
Tagged MTC Cronin, Peter Boyle
8 Poems by Gastón Baquero
Gastón Baquero by Eduardo Margareto Born in Banes, Cuba, in 1916, Gastón Baqero grew up in the countryside, a rural beginning that figures as one element in his, in many ways very urbane, poetry. He was part of the Orígenes …
Posted in TRANSLATIONS
Tagged Gastón Baquero, Peter Boyle
“A hundred mute gods”
(A hundred mute gods, their eyes all put out, crowd together on a stone altar. Starved of blood. Lingering on in their hunger for one more sunset. A Sybil dozing lightly in an iron lung prophesies.) It may be a …
Posted in 47: NO THEME!
Tagged Peter Boyle
Peter Boyle Reviews Yasuhiro Yotsumoto and Shuntaro Tanikawa
At the outset I will say that, though my own latest book Apocrypha was published by Vagabond Press, I hold no financial interest in the press nor any motivation to promote these two books other than the merits I find in them. The first collection under review, Yotsumoto’s Family Room, masterfully transcends the opposition between tradition and experiment; and Watashi, Tanikawa’s 20th collection to be published in English translation, certainly confirms this reviewer’s impression of being in the presence of a major poet.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged japan, Peter Boyle, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Yasuhiro Yotsumoto
John Jenkins Reviews Peter Boyle
“No one can count the number of people we have been in a single / life. One death is never enough.” These lines from Apocrypha sum up a theme that resurfaces through the poetic fragments which make up this fabulous cache of texts: fragments which survive from certain lost books by real and re-discovered authors of the ancient world, including Herodotus, Longinus, Theophrastus, Catullus, Plato and others.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged John Jenkins, Peter Boyle
Bev Braune Reviews Peter Boyle
Peter Boyle strikes me as a poet who likes the air, much as Peter Minter likes water; Robert Adamson, leaves; Jordie Albiston, defined/confined spaces; John Tranter, lines or, rather, the lineage of the cursive. Boyle most reminds me of Robert Adamson with his gentle, probing style, his yearning approach to all that should be desirable–an understanding of ourselves in space and time, wherein we point all our limitations.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bev Braune, Peter Boyle
My soul is wet with the tears of impossible things
“My soul is wet with the tears of impossible things” — Federico Garcia Lorca, ‘Todo será el corazón’ On the surface of the eternal soul hundreds of verses moistened with our lives that have grown sick and weary. I carry …
Posted in 07: NORTHERN TERRITORY
Tagged Juan Garrido-Salgado, Peter Boyle
The dark has taken root on all four walls
Translated with Peter Boyle “The dark has taken root on all four walls” — Kevin Hart, ‘Room’ Holding fast to this line of Kevin Hart through their deep roots I enter the experience of those prison days. Once more I …
Posted in 07: NORTHERN TERRITORY
Tagged Juan Garrido-Salgado, Peter Boyle
