In Bock’s alternate universe, the reader is immersed in a carnival ride that questions and interprets how our current reality could easily follow a much darker timeline. In this world of monsters and chaos, happening “after the extinction of whales”, in which trees as nourishers become murderous “flame trees”, the reader is instantly and viscerally reminded of the fires that have ravaged Australia, the Amazon, and much of the western United States.
Tag: poetry
A review of The Crumbling Mansion by Charles Freyberg
Some of the poems in The Crumbling Mansion are reprinted from Dining at the Edge, but in this new context the work picks up on the theme, highlighting the entropy that is always undoing: mansions crumble, trees fall, makeup runs, love dissolves, animals become extinct, and great poets and playwrights die, leaving us bereft and struggling for meaning. What The Crumbling Mansion shows is is how beautiful the struggle is.
A review of The Collection Plate by Kendra Allen
The poem, “Let’s leave” is even more of a departure from conventional verse-on-the-page, with words literally overlapping other text (unfortunately, this cannot be reproduced here), presumably suggesting emotional complexity/density, but also for sheer aesthetic effect. “Solace by earl” is another example, and, significantly, this poem highlights another of Allen’s themes, the reverence with which she regards her female elders, womanhood in general.
A review of Focal Point by Jenny Qi
But then comes this marvellous book where she finally succeeds in pulling us toward her so we may join her in this painful experience. We feel we are with her, those who have suffered the death of a loved one and even those who haven’t yet. With the speaker, and to the extent possible—and risking an assumption—we feel we are with Jenny Qi.
A Review of Alleys are Filled with Future Alphabets by Gopal Lahiri
This is a brilliant collection of 110 poems which take us on a meaningful journey as if on a spacecraft, where we sometimes get a rollercoaster ride of negotiating the past with the present, sometimes on a straight ride through scudding clouds where cogitations on the transitory struggle with meditations on the everlasting, sometimes there is a pining for the worldly charms negated by the search for the unknown, the summum bonum.
A review of The Sauna is Full of Maids by Cheryl J. Fish
One poem stands out as really bringing in many layers, from personal, national and nature. “Origin & Motion, “a top poem in this collection, merges Finnish literary and creation myths, sauna culture, and Finnish food and uses those elements to interpret an aging American mother “a widow, [who] grows old in a hot place.” This mother though far away is felt close: “My mother’s voice cuts through woods like the earth/in dark rye bread.” The poem moves from Finland’s epic poem and piece of national pride, the Kalevala, where “a barren water-mother’s knee is the place/where birds lay eggs.
A review of Olive Muriel Pink by Colleen Keating
I would like to congratulate Colleen Keating not only for writing this incredible book but also for honouring a woman from the past which like many other Australian heroines are often forgotten or not given credit for their achievements. Reading about Olive Muriel Pink will inspire you and give you strength to struggle to achieve your aims.
A review of Take Care by Eunice Andrada
Within the seventy one pages, Andrada delves (as she characteristically does) straight to the heart of what it means to be a young woman of diaspora, in a system bound to the prevailing iniquity of colonialism, which is ‘a structure, not an event’. In so doing, her poetry illustrates the attention, work and ‘care’ that urgently needs to be taken at a personal and structural level to avoid perpetuating this juggernaut of harm. Interspersed with poems that at once depict crisis and inspire bravery,
A review of Planetary Motions by William Seaton
Poetic truth is as open to interpretation as the movements of the planets. We add our own perceptions and perturbations which are subject to the fragmentations of an ultimately unknowable universe. Seaton accepts this and continues on his international travels with a universal perspective. He is now inter-galactic in his observations, pulling us out into the cosmos from our earth-tethered and more insular points of view. As a fully integrated inhabitant of the world, he has the weight of history in his pocket and cosmic, unbounded access. He seeks not to answer questions but to keep asking them.
A review of Come the Bones by KA Rees
The book has an eco-poetic quality, immersed in nature which is both subject and object – not as something ‘other’ but as an inherent part of the same life. The ocean where the “sea mist rolls/and the tide folds in” is a critical part of this book, but other habitats too—the forest with its spiders and caterpillars or the city streets with cockatoos and miscreants. From a raindrop to the universe, the work moves through the micro to the macro and as it becomes clear that these are part of a single, unified system