AUSTRALIAN POETRY BOOK REVIEWS
Scuffins, Ryan, Cronin, Kelen, Cahill, Dean, Lloyd, Harrex, Young, Owen, Hart, Fahey
By Liz Hall-Downs and Justin Lowe
Litmus by Kerry Scuffins
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This is Kerry Scuffins' sixth collection since the late 1980s; more playful than her previous, often dark, poetic visions, this poetry recalls joy, camaraderie, family affection, a country town childhood, and the joys of motherhood. Scuffins has never been afraid to unflinchingly represent the real world of Australia's bars and streets, and her astute eye provides honest portraits of flawed humanity - its chaos, its pathos, and its irony. I laughed out loud at 'The Aussie Nicknames Poem' (p.22), which hilariously lists dozens of barroom nicknames, (all ... |
Rainswayed Night by Max Ryan
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I first met Max Ryan while running a Council of Adult Education poetry workshop in Mullumbimby in the early 1990s, and was immediately struck by the easy lyricism of his early poems. I recall thinking at the time, 'This man truly has the heart of a poet'. Rainswayed Night, Ryan's long-awaited first collection is solid evidence of over a decade's work crafting those first heartfelt lines into strong poems that are arresting in their imagery, moving in their emotional honesty, and crafted to the point where not a single word seems out of place. It's heartening to know ... |
The Flower, The Thing by MTC Cronin
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MTC Cronin's The Flower, The Thing is subtitled 'a book of flowers and dedications'. It's an elegant idea - a series of 121 poems dedicated to friends and family, as well as to literary, academic and artistic figures that have inspired or otherwise influenced the poet, with each poem named after a type of flower. This idea appealed to the publisher, whose PR states: 'becasue everyone loves flowers, The Flower, The Thing is the perfect gift book to indulge not only those special people in your life but also yourself'. Cronin has a marvellous gift for both ... |
Earthly Delights by S.K.Kelen
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This is a beautifully presented book, an observation made poignant by the knowledge that the publisher Pandanus Books has had to close down as a result of mounting debt and a withdrawal of support from the Australian National University. Academic publisher Pandanus, launched in 2001, specialised in books relating to Asia and the Pacific, but in an eclectic fashion that saw works of fiction, poetry and memoir produced as well as 'scholarly texts relating to the region'. Pandanus's founder, Ian Templeman, has been reported as claiming that the university's ... |
The Accidental Cage by Michelle Cahill
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Michelle Cahill's collection, The Accidental Cage, was the winner of the IP Picks Best First Book Award for 2006, and has subsequently been published as part of Interactive Press' Emerging Author Series. These are very mature and well-realised poems for a first book; on first reading some of them seemed to me almost too subtle, too imagistic, losing their punch along the way. But, like a lot of good poetry, on subsequent readings many of them seemed to unfold, revealing depths and meanings that at first were not readily apparent. Cahill has a sure ... |
Subterranean Radio Songs by Joel Deane
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Joel Deane's free verse is direct and seemingly simple. What layers it possesses are of the emotional type. He doesn't hit us over the head with grim reality; rather he insinuates it into the reader's psyche in a way so artful that it appears artless. Deane is no clever-clever writer, obfuscating meaning behind obscure metaphors in a vain attempt to appear more erudite than the floundering reader. His goal is to communicate the things that matter to him, and this he does well. The collection is described on the cover blurb as a 'travelogue - following him ... |
About the Reviewer Liz Hall-Downs
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Liz has been reading and performing poetry on stage, on TV and radio in Australia and the USA, and publishing in journals, since 1983. Liz also writes fiction and essays and works variously as a community artist, writer-in-residence, editor, singer, proof reader, and manuscript assessor of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Deakin University (VIC) with major studies in Professional Writing & Literature and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of QLD. Her most recent collection is My Arthritic Heart (PostPressed, 2006). Previous collections include, Girl with Green Hair (Papyrus, 2000), Writers of the Storm: 5 East Coast Poets (Tyagarah consultants, Lismore, 1993), and Conscious Razing: Combustible Poems (1986). She is currently working on a realist novel, The Death of Jimi Hendrix, and singing and playing bush bass with the trio 'Cathouse Creek'. |
[Above] Photo of Liz Hall-Downs and Alice by Kim Downs, 2001.
a fingerpost for Rembrandt by Peter Lloyd
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Peter Lloyd's previous collection, "Collage" (2002), landed on my desk a couple of years ago, and to my great shame I let it somehow slip through the cracks. For fistulas and death - enter/ the red mouth of the whale - a matchless/ beached howl exploding gross blood and messages/ in a Mars-coloured sea, electric grandeurs slippy with sperm/ and flame:/ enter the slaughterhouse scream,/ bearing the lethal waters of spilt images and madness./ (from 'Dit-da-dit' Collage 2002). "Collage" was dedicated to the poet's wife Rosa, who sadly passed away just as this ... |
Under a Medlar Tree by Syd Harrex
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Syd Harrex's is a far more lyrical and bucolic temperament than Peter Lloyd's, although we still get glimpses of where the poet sits on the time line, a wider, less balanced world butting in: There where dodge tide tempests strafe the stubborn/ girth of cliffs, flute fractured,/ earth disappears/ so slowly only a life-time detects/ the difference, and yet these vernaculars/ of destruction - nouns bashed beyond recall,/ verbs sliced by holocaust waves, crushed shells/ of adjectives/ (from About Islands) But such glimpses are rare. This is a far tamer collection ... |
The Yugoslav Women and their Pickled Herrings by Cathy Young
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There must be something in the water down there in Adelaide (sorry, bad joke). In fact it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't as many poetry titles produced in the Festival state each year as the rest of the country put together. Maybe it's all those churches cajoling people to lift their eyes from the ground. This collection stands a little apart, however, from the usual crow-eater fare. In fact it reminds me somewhat of the LA poets of the 80's and 90's. They, like Young, seem little concerned with lyrical nuances. Their one and only concern is for clear ... |
Living Room (Poems from the Centre) Edited by Jan Owen
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There is an interesting book titled "Hunting the Snark (American poetry at century's end)" that John Millett sent me around century's end for reasons too myriad to go into here. It is in effect a dictionary of terms, compiled by the American poet Robert Peters, a man who I sense was at his wit's end by century's end. It was not a good century for poets, all in all, the utilitarian spirit taking the ascendancy, and towards the end of this barbed, elegaic compendium, we find Workshop Poems. "This malady is difficult to pin down", our friend Robert begins, ... |
Fresh News from the Arctic by Libby Hart
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Strong writing seldom wins prizes. That should be news to no-one, the very strength of the artist's vision countermanding what is, after all, merely an elaborate exercise in establishing the mean. There is always the exception to prove the rule, however, and Libby Hart's poetic suite, the title poem of this all-too-brief collection, was exactly that for the Somerset Prize last year. It is an epic, multi-layered piece full of tone and nuance that left this reviewer a little breathless at the end. In fact I had to keep catching myself up and asking what was really ... |
The Sixth Swan by Diane Fahey
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The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm are the creation myths of European capitalism. There, I've done my bit for the literary retro movement. In almost every story a slinking creature - whether winged, biped or quadruped or a combination of all three - encounters someone in a fix and offers to help in return for a reward so imaginative it dazzles the reader. My personal favourite is the child-coveting, gold-spinning Rumplestiltskin who just can't keep his mouth shut and pays the price. "Then in his fury he seized his left foot with both hands and tore ... |
About the Reviewer Justin Lowe
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Justin spent much of his formative years on the Spanish island of Minorca, an experience around which he is busy shaping a novel. After completing his studies, Justin moved to England before settling back in Newtown for the duration of the 90's. There he edited the seminal Homebrew journal and published two collections of poetry, as well as penning songs for such diverse musical outfits such as The Whitlams and The Impossibles and Sydney jazz diva Lily Dior and composing dithyrambic text for the annual Mascon Festival. |
[Above] Photo of Justin Lowe by photographer unknown, year unknown.
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Thylazine No.12 (March, 2005) |
