- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with 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
Shastra Deo
HYPERTHYROIDISM: Lucy Van Reviews Shastra Deo and Dominic Symes
I spent much of 2023 inadvertently giving Shastra Deo’s The Exclusion Zone the silent treatment. I felt, for reasons now irrelevant, consigned to my own bathetic exclusion zone, as if the book were a forbidden, inaccessible text. So exclusive: as if to read The Exclusion Zone would be in violation of the text’s manifest function.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Dominic Symes, Lucy Van, Shastra Deo
BABY editorial
We released the call-out for BABY on 30 May 2023. We were thinking of baby projects, the spark of something new, thinking of the person who we call ‘baby’, thinking of Liam Ferney, bard of the bubs, who writes the best baby poems this side of town.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged liam ferney, Shastra Deo
Saturday Night in the City of the Dead
Last night, after I said I was just passing through. After we stole away from other sapphics. After I said you’re going to die and I can’t stop it. Last night in San Junipero when the sky blushed lilac, horizon …
Posted in 110: POP
Tagged Shastra Deo
Submission to Cordite 111: BABY
Send us your babies. Nobody puts poems in a corner.
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Kent MacCarter, liam ferney, Shastra Deo
The Hanging On
First day. My father tracking one axis deer. Tomorrow morning a fallow. Come evening I’ll make fire and char the meat for eating. My hands are good at that now. Turning one thing to another. I want to describe how …
Posted in 107: LIMINAL
Tagged Shastra Deo
Walkthrough
Find a centuries-old oak. To walk there will be slow work. Listen. Kill three wolves. There will always be wolves. Kill the man who wears a wolf pelt on his back. Enter the cave mouth and follow the flooded dirt …
Posted in 102: GAME
Tagged Shastra Deo
Love Carefully
Studies have been done on the impulse found within children to wave off morning trains south bound to elsewhere goodbye, you were here for only a moment, and by noon we’ll have forgotten you, goodbye, goodbye I want to know …
Posted in TMLYMI v4
Tagged Shastra Deo
Tell Me Like You Mean It 4
With the glorious task of commissioning writers for a new collection of sincere, heartfelt writing for Tell Me Like You Mean It volume 4, I found it took longer than usual.
Posted in CHAPBOOKS
Tagged Amelia Zhou, Anita Solak, Arben Dzika, Bobuq Sayed, Dominic Symes, Emma Rayward, Hannah Donnelly, Holly Friedlander Liddicoat, Kaya Lattimore, Kiki Amberber, Lily Cameron, Lucy Van, Mitch Tomas Cave, Panda Wong, Rickiesha Deegan, Riley Daisy Frances, Shastra Deo, Sophie Rasic, Susie Anderson
Concerning Divination (2)
For most of my life I’ve been right about omens. Salt, ravens. Red skies at morning. Rocks thrown against the wind. A six pack ring found in the vicinity of a sparrow’s nest suggests three loves before marriage. A robin’s …
Posted in 95: EARTH
Tagged Shastra Deo
Review Short: Shastra Deo’s The Agonist
Shastra Deo’s first volume of poetry, The Agonist contains many poems about corporeal life, and about the separation of bodies, problematising the connections between body and thought. The poems often turn the inside out, as it were, opening up a poetic anatomy of internal organs and interior life.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Paul Hetherington, Shastra Deo
गुम; or, Lexical Gaps
सपना /sapna/ My dreams, in colour. My skin drips melanin and no one tells me I have a beautiful name. I have no country of origin and I cannot be accused of being articulate. याद /yaad/ My childhood, remembered: mouths …
Posted in 78: CONFESSION
Tagged Shastra Deo
