Tomas Tranströmer



Playing with Light and Dark: Amy Hilhorst Interviews David McCooey

I first became interested in David McCooey’s work while studying an Honours unit at the University of Western Australia, where for an assessment I responded to his essay on Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s poetry, only to learn that he too had taken the same unit some years before.

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Nick Powell Reviews Robert Hass

'Poets are turtles', the American poet William Matthews once remarked, meaning that with few exceptions, the good ones mature slowly, often producing strong verse into their sixties, an age that he, unfortunately, didn't reach. Matthews shared with Robert Hass a rare skill for the long, intricately made, rhythmic lyric, which Hass has been perfecting for over thirty years.

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Experience and Transcendence in the Poetry of Tomas Tranströmer

Someone says, “Poetry is about experience”. Then someone else says, “Poetry is about transcendence”. No sooner are these two statements allowed to engage each other than a vast, complicated world begins to form. Fierce conflicts arise between the advocates of experience and the defenders of transcendence. “Poetry holds a mirror to life”, we are told. “Poetry is no reflection”, we hear in reply, “it is a ‘furious ascension’”.

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