Jordie Albiston’s seventh poetry collection—the Book of Ethel—is a woman’s life journey delicately and diligently distilled into a slim volume of verse. Ethel is Albiston’s great grandmother, who immigrated to Australia from Cornwall with her family in the late 1800s at the age of fifteen. measles diphtheria di- arrhoea words I hear thro the Night …
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When reading a poetry collection, if I’m lucky, there might be one or two moments that catch my breath—when a poet’s particular insight or phrasing is so profound that it invokes a special kind of magic—delivering a rush of emotion that makes me gasp. I might describe this sensation as a literary orgasm, and David…
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Ali Cobby Eckermann was too afraid to cry, and I was too afraid to put down her memoir till I had come to the end and knew that she was going to be okay. This is the extraordinary true story of Eckermann’s upbringing as a child of the stolen generation—taken from her Indigenous family at…
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This month we revisit the work of Gwen Harwood (1920–1995), a great Australian poet who wrote many astounding pieces, a number of them feminist, which continue to resonate today. Harwood’s poetry criticized idealised concepts of motherhood and exposed the frustration and isolation faced by women, especially young women with children. She wrote under a variety…
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I feel privileged to review this unassuming little gem of a chapbook. It’s a debut collection from a young poet and, as such, it has received reviews that are positive while at the same time mildly condescending, with some reviewers noting that the poet’s voice ‘is still developing’. I’m sure the same could be said…
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Tracy Ryan’s The Argument is a profoundly thoughtful and sensitive volume of poems. It won the 2011 Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Poetry, which was announced in September last year, and it is the poet’s sixth collection. More than anything, it’s the domesticity that appeals to me about this book. The poems often point…
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A few years ago, Melbourne Books began compiling the country’s prize-winning stories and publishing them in an annual collection called, Award Winning Australian Writing (AWAW). Last year, they added poems to the mix. It’s such a wonderful idea I don’t know why it wasn’t done sooner. The series is now in its fifth year. There are…
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There are some prize-winning books, which, to be honest, after reading, I haven’t felt any wiser as to why they received the accolades emblazoned on their covers. But it’s hard to miss what’s extraordinary about Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. It blew me away with Big Bang impact. It’s clear why this book won…
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It’s like the Australian poetry scene’s twelve-monthly check-up; the so-called “best” of the year’s poems, as chosen from around three thousand submissions, with a little over one hundred making the cut. It is John Tranter’s second and final year as editor of the series, which changes editors regularly to keep the collections fresh. In his…
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An important part of achieving an ambitious goal is taking time out to rest. As God rested on the seventh day of creating the world, I am going to rest on the seventh of 99 tips for a better world. I’m going somewhere quiet to sleep in, read books and go for long wandering walks…
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By Bronwyn Lovell ‘His words stand alone as poetry’, says Ray Purvis from The West Australian on the first page, and the blurb on the back cover claims ‘Don’t Start Me Talking comprises some of the finest poetry written in Australia’. I both agree and disagree with these statements. The way the lyrics appear on…
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The Sunlit Zone refers to that layer of ocean where the light penetrates, above the dark depths. Lisa Jacobson’s verse novel is aptly named. It is lilting and tidal. Its lyric language is lively, playful, and yet dares to dip into the darkness that dwells under the surface of ordinary lives. This is an incredibly…
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Writing is often seen, and used, as a healing process for people who have endured traumatic experiences in their lives. By expressing what they have been through on paper, it has been found that this enables people to process what has happened to them and start to move forward. Stepping into the Sunshine is a…
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My first experience reading a verse novel was with Dorothy Porter’s El Dorado, which I was forced to read for uni. I was pretty intrigued by the concept at the time, yet while I was reading the book, I couldn’t quite fathom why that particular story couldn’t have been written in prose. Thankfully, I’ve now…
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