Future tense: speculation and magic in recent Australian poetry
Last year, around the release of Lisa Gorton’s Hotel Hyperion, it occurred to me that a speculative tradition had quietly become established within recent…
How Soon is Now?
How soon is now? Published in last Saturday's Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, Andrew Riemer’s review of The Best Australian Poems 2013 is…
Poetry with strangers
In the cramped back room of the bar, a group of about thirty people appear to be quietly sitting on one another’s laps. Though…
The Thick … and Thin of it
Narrowness (and Breadth) There can never be any agreed-upon set of standards or values in the wide-ranging and contested poetics at any particular time.…
Thick Markets for Poets
Competitions are for horses, not artists. – Bela Bartok Following from my last blog post are the further questions of sincerity as a poetics…
Being serious about sincerity
I don't meant mere seriousness, which might be common to both great and very poor writing. I mean a deep sincerity of intent, and…
Plagiarism now playing
Well, the plagiarism thing is playing in full costume. Andrew Slattery and Graham Nunn have been named and the details of their plagiarism have…
Why publish stuff which no one reads?
I thought that heading might catch your eye. People outside of the poetry world often express surprise that I devote such a large amount…
On Mooing at Poetry Readings
One of my biggest gripes about the poetry scene is how audiences behave, specifically the way they moo when a poet reads out a…