Review by Lucy Alexander David Stavanger is also Ghostboy… or Ghostboy is also David Stavanger — whichever way you like to approach it, they are both responsible for the poems …
WHAT SPARK IGNITES AN ACTIVIST? khulud khamis’s Haifa Fragments
Review by Amanda Hickey What is the spark that ignites an activist? Is it an event, a family grievance, a brush stroke of history? Or an undeniable truth that breaks …
On the Importance of Fighting Violence Against Women: Melissa Blais’s "I hate feminists!"
Review by Camilla Patini On December 6, 1989, a 25-year-old man burst into an engineering school, the École Polytechnique de Montréal, in Canada. Declaring ‘You’re all a bunch of feminists, …
Species, Specimens and Stuffing: Kristin Hannaford’s Curio
Review by Benjamin Dodds Increasingly viewed today as kitsch and ‘creepy’ — a lazy, catch-all expression — taxidermy was once regarded as equal parts art and science. Before photography, the …
What Lies at the Core of a Successful Family: Nigel Featherstone’s The Beach Volcano
Review by Amanda Hickey The Albury family of Sydney’s Elizabeth Bay are about money and social standing, and although they appear prickly and self-absorbed, it is the father’s eightieth birthday …
A deeply felt love of land and the possible activist: John Kinsella’s The Vision of Error
Review by Robyn Cadwallader John Kinsella’s latest collection of poetry, The Vision of Error: A Sextet of Activist Poems is, as Kinsella says in a speech on video link to …
A Monster Mash of Genres: Lloyd Shepherd’s The English Monster
Review by Robert Goodman At first blush The English Monster comes across as yet another historical criminal procedural. These are crime genre novels set in a historical era and usually …
Panache and Bravado and Extraordinary Luminosity: Omar Musa’s Parang and Judy Johnson’s Stone, Scar, Air, Water
Review by Lucy Alexander It’s striking that the works of hip-hop artist and Australian Poetry Slam champion Omar Musa and prize-winning contemporary poet and novelist Judy Johnson reflect so well …
Change and Damage Beyond Belief: Judith Wright’s The Coral Battleground
Review by Tristan Foster Let’s talk, briefly, about fights. Humans love a fight – fighting is among the first things we do: the fight for breath, for attention, the fight …
Gathering Experience, Thought, Love and Craft: Janet Galbraith’s re-membering
Review by Robyn Cadwallader On the second page of Janet Galbraith’s first poetry collection, re-membering, there is a definition, a kind of sub-title: ‘to both remember what has been and …