- 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
Phillip Hall
Phillip Hall Reviews Robert Harris’s The Gang of One: Selected Poems
In ‘The Day’, Harris writes a stunning eschatology for Gough Whitlam. For Harris the dismissal was ‘the day of deceit’, ‘the day to lose heart’. As I write this review, I too am demoralized and anxious, despite the beta-blockers.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Phillip Hall, Robert Harris
Judith Bishop Reviews Phillip Hall’s Fume
Phillip Hall’s Fume is rare for the raw, fresh force and integrity of experience that lies behind the poems. Fume was largely written during a period of five years (2011 – 2015) that Hall and his wife Jillian spent in Borroloola in the Gulf of Carpentaria, where Hall worked as a sport and camp teacher in a role focused on activities for local Indigenous kids.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Judith Bishop, Phillip Hall
Phillip Hall Reviews Quinn Eades and Gabrielle Everall
St Ignatius of Loyola is supposed to have said: ‘Give me a boy until the age of seven, and I will own the man’. Well, the Baptists had me for a lot longer than my first seven years, and subsequently, I have lived a most conventional life.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Gabrielle Everall, Phillip Hall, Quinn Eades
From Garden to Gallery
In the Garden I cross the threshold of glasshouses seeking succor with bromeliads whose leaves are banded with scales, like blotting paper, to inhale this morning’s fog: outside I meander amongst upright natives: one is shaped like a pine but …
Posted in 79: EKPHRASTIC
Tagged Phillip Hall
Phillip Hall Reviews Judith Wright, Georgina Arnott and Katie Noonan
When Judith Wright died in 2000, at the height of Prime Minister John Howard’s cultural hegemony, Veronica Brady was called upon to deliver a eulogy at the public memorial held in Canberra. This eloquent and impassioned speech was reprinted in a national newspaper under the headline, ‘Giant in a Land of Pygmies’.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged judith wright, Katie Noonan, Phillip Hall
Phillip Hall Reviews Maggie Walsh
Maggie Walsh is a Bwcolgamon woman from the First Nations community of Palm Island, a tropical paradise located in the Great Barrier Reef only sixty-four kilometres northwest of Townsville. But this is a paradise with a troubled history since European settlement – with a lack of jobs and housing, and a tragic reputation for violence and disadvantage. In 1999, for example, the Guinness Book of Records named Palm Island as the most violent place on earth outside of a combat zone.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Maggie Walsh, Phillip Hall
Phillip Hall Reviews Ink in Her Veins: The Troubled Life of Aileen Palmer by Sylvia Martin
This biography is another powerful testament to the tragedy of difference. Sylvia Martin writes of an idealistic creative pragmatist who was victimised for her gender disphoria and, while loved, never accepted. Aileen Palmer is yet another outspoken and independent woman hounded to the mental hospital and shock treatment.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Aileen Palmer, Phillip Hall, Sylvia Martin
Build-up
The bardibardi call time on mununga slogans of ‘stop the boats’; shaping-up and giggling their Makassan memories of brown bodies coming ashore in a spray of surging sea: for centuries these boat people cultivated tamarind trees in a highlight of …
Posted in 74: NO THEME V
Tagged Phillip Hall
Phillip Hall Reviews Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow
Suzanne Falkiner describes her aim in writing this biography of Randolph Stow as being ‘to contextualise the [literary] works within the broad arc of Stow’s life’. She notes that Stow’s desire for an ‘authorial invisibility – and an accompanying silence – extended to a desire for a chameleon-like camouflage in his personal life’. This camouflage included a retreat from Australia and ‘from the world of published books, in a gradual progression towards silence and into a richer inner landscape’. But, Falkiner shows, this ‘richer’ inner life was always plagued by depression (and one serious suicide attempt), a one-time addiction to prescription drugs, a very complicated (dependency) relationship with alcohol, a fear of madness and a failure to establish long term sexual relationships and to acknowledge and accept his sexuality.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Phillip Hall, Randolph Stow, Suzanne Falkiner
Natural Selection: Ecological Postcolonialism as Bearing on Place
Australian poetry reminds us that we cannot encounter the natural world except by cultural means.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Andrew Lansdown, Caroline Caddy, Charles Birch, David Brooks, David Martin, Eric Beach, Gary Catalano, Jennifer Martiniello, John Kinsella, John Manifold, judith wright, Kevin Roberts, Laurie Duggan, Lionel Fogarty, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Phillip Hall, Romaine Moreton, Rosemary Dobson, Samuel Wagan Watson, Shirley Walker
Talking English
The Gulf’s ancient tongues are hobbled by inherited trauma, gene-crackers sadistically scabrous and burgeoning in the remembered fluency of wire-tipped stockwhips and all those manhandled civilisers of a splendid frontier’s orders. And though munanga were not to prosper in these …
Posted in 72: THE END
Tagged Phillip Hall
New Moon
for my bardibardi kujaka: Gloria Friday, Marjorie Keighran & Clara Roberts This is my recovery road, to follow the bardibardi into the Gulf’s wild pharmacy; I let myself surrender to those hallelujah hands outstretched to a sandalwood’s leafy collection dis …
Posted in 71: TOIL
Tagged Phillip Hall