Rosalind McFarlane



Rosalind McFarlane and Autumn Royal in as Commissioning Editor and Interviews Editor

Cordite Poetry Review has been down a few people since the departure of Corey Wakeling and Robert Wood last May, though they will be far from missing in future pages of the journal. But I am delighted to announce that Autumn Royal will step into a newfangled Interviews Editor role, one with a specific focus on new writers and artists arcing across (and back and …) the Australian and global scenes. Why have one Commissioning Editor when you can have two? To that, very enthused to announce that Rosalind McFarlane will join the fold as the first.

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Off-Planet

Sell an every-third-day sunset, buy endearing ocean. Live well—the swell. Tides and markets speaking like they know you. Newly entitled ocean cities do not float around just any corner. Each quarter acre beautifully plastic packaged—fish in transparent bags—where the water …

Posted in 75: FUTURE MACHINES | Tagged

Review Short: Nandi Chinna’s Swamp: Walking the Wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain

To introduce Nandi Chinna’s Swamp the reader is presented with the idea of poetic creation through walking. Chinna describes how ‘the legs move through time and space, marking the movement over grass, stones, hills, and through wind’ (8). Indeed many of her poems in this collection engage with just this sense of time, space, and movement as walking becomes a way for Chinna to trace the wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain, those that have been lost, and those that are fragmentary.

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Speaking Geographies: Collaboration Over Distance

When in transit and upon receipt, to whom does a postcard and its contents belong? This is one of the questions at the forefront of Speaking Geographies, a collaborative poetry collection by Siobhan Hodge and Rosalind McFarlane. This collection, composed …

Posted in ESSAYS | Tagged ,

Crossing the Real

Each step is measured in potential thrust rivets twist and divide all strain banks curve away, harshness of lines ascend from hours lung squeeze we span miles all centred floats ghosting ferryways shift territory we revise borders steel shanked and …

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Crossing in Real Time

How should we perform this act of – connection – ? Belief and bridges: ( a journey of suspension but the supports ) are a dissipating concave into this dragon harbour. Can we cantilever ^ this ^ uprising? Or perhaps …

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Place, Palimpsest and the Present Day: Gondwana in Caroline Caddy’s Antarctica

Gondwana and palimpsests appear as largely historical entities as, respectively, a continent that existed millions of years ago and a kind of manuscript from ancient to medieval times. Yet, within Caroline Caddy’s 1996 poetry collection Antarctica, published after a journey to the continent sponsored by the Antarctic Division in 1992, the two are combined in a way that suggests not only their contemporary relevance but also their ongoing influence. Through her use of place, Caddy layers references to India, Australia and Antarctica in ways that form a palimpsest. This layering acknowledges the connections between India, Australia and Antarctica historically but also insists on their continued contemporary relationship. In this way, the combination of two historical entities, Gondwana and palimpsests, allows Caddy to probe present relationships and engage with our contemporary layered existence.

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Review Short: Ellen Hickman and John Ryan’s Two with Nature

As a book quite different to what is usually seen in the poetry sphere, Two with Nature, Fremantle Press’s book combining the poetry of John Ryan with the botanical illustrations of Ellen Hickman, contains some interesting possibilities and contradictions. In his introduction Ryan notes how ‘the term ‘botanical poetry’ might seem an unusual juxtaposition of two quite different practices – science and poetry’ and it is here that the importance of the ‘with’ in the title can be seen as Ryan and Hickman’s aim appears to be with nature through a combination of scientifically accurate illustration and poetry.

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Diaspora

A twice blooming tide in California it was Portuguese sailors who first sailed the Pacific on lilac gardens: a fragrance dripped through history potent as South China dye and the changing colour of Pretoria’s hills. Spring sentinels in order along …

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Rosalind McFarlane Reviews Lesley Synge

This collection of poetry, prose and photographs begins with a full page preface about the author, Lesley Synge, indicative of the very personal narration throughout the book. Synge takes as inspiration her trips to Duncheol (in South Korea) and along the Gold Coast Hinterland Great Walk. This 2011 edition is an expanded version of an earlier work with the same title, including new poems and prose written in Australia and a revision of Synge’s poems written in Korea.

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