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- 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
robert adamson
Essential Gossip: Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan and U.S.-Australian Poetics
In 1985, when the bulky anthology Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Oceania (first published in 1968) was printed in a new edition, it was advertised with the curious dust jacket recommendation: ‘hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the hundred most recommended American books of the last thirty-five years’.
Introduction to Teena McCarthy’s Bush Mary
When Teena McCarthy told me she had constructed this book from poems, lines, phrases and images that she had written on odd-sized pieces of paper and had gathered them until they formed a manuscript, I immediately thought of Emily Dickinson, who also wrote many of her poems on the backs of envelopes and scraps that had been used as shopping lists.
Posted in INTRODUCTIONS
Tagged robert adamson, Teena McCarthy, Zoë Sadokierski
J S Harry’s ‘tunnel vision’, Vicious Sydney and The Car Story
As I began this essay on J S Harry’s poem ‘Tunnel Vision’ several years ago (2006) the radio drive shows in Sydney were full of opinions, mainly angry, concerning a report that a male teacher, in an English class, encouraging students to find as many words in ‘Australia’ as they could, had led the way by showing them how it contains the word ‘slut’, and then, when asked what that meant – it must have been a young primary-school class – had told them that it was a word used to describe women.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged David Brooks, J S Harry, Jack Hibberd, John Scott, john tranter, robert adamson
Ekphrasis as ‘Event’: Poets Paint Words and the ‘Performance’ of Ekphrasis in Australia
To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Newcastle Region Art Gallery (NRAG) in 2007, Lisa Slade and Peter Minter co-curated the exhibition Poets Paint Words. The two curators commissioned some of Australia’s best poets to write poems in response to a selection of paintings held in the NRAG archive.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Dominic Symes, Ivy Ireland, Jill Jones, Kate Fagan, Lisa Slade, Martin Harrison, peter minter, Peter Steele, robert adamson
Review Short: Robert Adamson’s Net Needle
Net Needle begins with the thoughtful interlacing of seven poems. The first poem, ‘Listening to Cuckoos’, highlights the bird’s ‘two unchanging notes’ during the start of spring. Then, ‘Summer’, with its ‘pallid cuckoo call’ through the poet’s garden threads into ‘Garden Poem’ and how sunlight spans the course of a day until ‘patches of moonlight’ travel into the next poem, ‘Dorothy Wordsworth’. Here, we find the Romantic poet’s sister ruminating near a window where the moon moves ‘across the star-decked dark’.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Libby Hart, robert adamson
Adam Aitken Interviews Martin Harrison
I’ve known Martin Harrison since 1985, when I first met him in Newtown, New South Wales. I had been an undergraduate and aspiring poet at the University of Sydney, and we were neighbours.
Posted in INTERVIEWS
Tagged Adam Aitken, Ezra Pound, Martin Harrison, robert adamson
Shining Worlds: On the Artist’s Book of Robert Adamson and Peter Kingston
I’m sitting in the Rare Books room of the State Library of Victoria, lost in time and strangely joyous as I encounter one of its new acquisitions, the late 2012 ‘artist’s book’ and collaboration between poet Robert Adamson and well-known Australian artist Peter Kingston, Shark-net Seahorses of Balmoral: A Harbour Memoir.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Des Cowley, Jacinta Le Plastrier, Nicholas Pounder, Peter Kingston, robert adamson
The River Caves
We were keen young cubs, members of 3rd Mosman Bay Sea Scouts. Twelve years old and full of excitement, collecting donations for the club house charity. On bob-a-job week we walked up and down steep streets around the harbour, mowing …
Posted in POETRY
Tagged robert adamson
Three Poems and Webb Lecture by the Inaugural CAL Chair of Poetry
Robert Adamson began his post as the inaugural CAL Chair in Australian Poetry at UTS in February 2012. Funded by the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) for three years, the Chair in Australian Poetry is the first of its kind in Australia.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Juno Gemes, Martin Harrison, Michael Griffiths, robert adamson, Toby Davidson, Zoe Rodriguez
Internal Weather, for Randolph Stow
I dwell in this bone-cave rocking cup of skull histories constantly re-writing themselves weaving ‘brain-waves’ thoughts drift out from a fatty backwash veins crawl with grainy information blood-cells pushed into the white country in multiples of ten you know nothing is lost we remembered sand streamed …
Posted in 50: JACKPOT!
Tagged robert adamson
Wombats
Driving through Kangaroo Valley I glimpsed a low slung animal in my headlights; pulled over and recognized a wombat — fog lifted its gauze, a clump of ferns moved apart. Another animal trundled out, then a third came into view, …
Posted in 50: JACKPOT!
Tagged robert adamson
Listening To Cuckoos
Two unchanging notes; to us, words—always those high elongated notes. Red-eyed koels with feathered ear-muffs, downward ending notes that pour through a falling of night coming over the distances, words that don’t change. The two notes remain, a split phrase, …
Posted in 50: JACKPOT!
Tagged robert adamson
Chair Insider: An Intimate Access in Photo Narratives
Andrew Sayers, director of the National Portrait Gallery, wrote of my work, ‘Trust is an important quality in portraiture. Trust is self evident in Juno Gemes’ photographic portraits’. The portraits published here were created in trust with literary friends.
Posted in ARTWORKS
Tagged David Gilbey, Gig Ryan, Jennifer Maiden, John Dale, Juno Gemes, Martin Harrison, Michael Griffiths, Neil Astley, Peter Robb, robert adamson, Toby Davidson, Vicki Viidikas
Jal Nicholl Reviews Best Australian Poems 2010
It’s hard to write about a collection as diverse as this. It has no theme really except what Adamson mentions in his introduction, quoting Baudelaire’s poem ‘Correspondances’, a poem, to paraphrase blandly, about mysterious relations between things of different kinds. Anything can be compared to anything else, but is there a “ténébreuse et profonde unité” (“dark and deep unity”) in this collection, as Adamson seems to imply?
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged anthologies, robert adamson
Ryan Scott Reviews The Best Australian Poetry 2009 and The Best Australian Poems 2009
If we seek a division in Australian poetry, we will not find it represented among the poems in these two anthologies. Wearne puts it adroitly in his introduction when he says about the Poetry Wars, ‘for all the legendary brouhaha it may have all happened at one party (and perhaps that's how the eventual movie will see it). If some of us played for different teams (and still may) remember the operative words are 'play' and 'teams'.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Alan Wearne, anthologies, robert adamson
Mulloway (Envoi)
Welcome to the dreamy village of Mulloway, population 28.1, set in the backblocks of the Hawkesbury, somewhere in the vicinity of Sandy Bay, Peat Island and the Angler's Rest. The place is awash with ribbon-fish shaped streamers and the sound of a parade of Customlines passing down the main street toward the water, all to a sound track of late-period Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris …
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Greg McLaren, robert adamson
From River Cuts: Letters to Robert Adamson
canberra raining & the flight was shit / in the sticks somewhere off majura avenue (dickson) 19:39 0646 abstract & bearded hovering on a twelve foot cushion of evil / a still from eisenstein's ivan the terrible, mutation of reading …
Posted in 23: EDITORIAL INTERVENTION
Tagged paul hardacre, robert adamson
James Stuart Reviews Robert Adamson
From his earliest involvement, Robert Adamson has been an iconic figure for contemporary Australian poetry, both as a “post-symbolist”, lyrical poet, and as an editor and publisher. His achievements are testament to this, whether one is reflecting upon his 17 odd collections of poetry, and the consequent awards, or his various engagements on ventures such as the editorship of New Poetry and the founding of Paperbark Press.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged autobiography, James Stuart, robert adamson
Eurydice In Sydney
What did he think, while I was gone he’d done time in his head, was he still a mirror did he waste his brain dancing in the abstract darkness? Pain comes and goes, I notice things I hadn’t before, in …
Posted in 08: FESTIVAL
Tagged robert adamson
The Speaking Page
When the tide moves again comes up over the point here and spills into Parsley Bay, goes over the river’s torn entrails – your breath becomes tidal atmosphere, it heals deeply thoroughly then you begin to understand that the river …
Posted in 01: UNTHEMED
Tagged robert adamson
