Jennifer Strauss

Jennifer Strauss reviews 'Chemical Bodies' by Rhyll McMaster

December 1996–January 1997, no. 187 • 01 January 1997

There are two reasons for celebrating this chastely elegant slim volume. One is the arrival of a publisher prepared, when major firms are retreating from the field, to declare that poetry is central to a flourishing literary culture, and to match that declaration by commitment to a new series, Brandl & Schlesinger Poetry. The other is the appearance of a new and striking collection from that f ... (read more)

Jennifer Strauss reviews 'The Best Australian Poetry 2006' edited by Judith Beveridge and 'The Best Australian Poems 2006' edited by Dorothy Porter

February 2007, no. 288 • 01 February 2007

Seeing these two anthologies side by side in that obscure corner allocated to poetry by so many bookshops, a casual browser might note that both begin with Robert Adamson’s ‘A Visitation’ and conclude that uniformity rules and one volume will suffice. Not so: a full savouring of the past year’s poetic crop requires both. In fact, ‘A Visitation’ is the only poem common to both selection ... (read more)

Jennifer Strauss reviews 'Wolf Notes' by Judith Beveridge

March 2004, no. 259 • 01 March 2004

Admirer’s of Judith Beveridge’s distinctive talent have had a long wait between collections (it’s eight years since Accidental Grace), although she has been published consistently in anthologies and journals, and poems from the central sequence of this collection, ‘Between the Palace and the Bodhi Tree’, won the 2003 Josephine Ulrick National Poetry Prize. Patience is rewarded: this is a ... (read more)

Jennifer Strauss reviews 'Flashing Eyes and Floating Hair: A reading of Gwen Harwood’s pseudonymous poetry' by Cassandra L. Atherton

July–August 2007, no. 293 • 01 July 2007

Literary criticism is a rara avis in Australia’s publishing world, perhaps only to be hoped for under an imprint such as Australian Scholarly Publishing. Yet a search of its recent publications shows that among nineteen titles this is the only instance – and one facilitated by a Melbourne University publishing grant. Rightly so, for Cassandra L. Atherton’s is academic writing in the best sen ... (read more)

Jennifer Strauss reviews 'New Zealand Love Poems: An Oxford anthology' edited by Lauris Edmond

May 2001, no. 230 • 01 May 2001

For those who haven’t yet discovered the riches of New Zealand poetry, this anthology should provide an appetite-whetting introduction. Edited by one of New Zealand’s finest poets, the late Lauris Edmond (1924–2000), it bears the stamp of a thoughtful mind and a judiciously discriminating sensibility, evident in her own work as in her selection from that of others. For she has neither lost h ... (read more)

Jennifer Strauss reviews 'True Thoughts' by Pam Brown

June 2009, no. 312 • 01 June 2009

Since her début in 1971, Pam Brown has been a consistently intelligent and engaging presence in Australian poetry, if too often under-represented in those reputation-establishers, the anthologies. One pragmatic reason for this may lie in a further element of consistency, the formal structure of her poems. Poems that spin their way down the page, resolutely short-lined, or ones that fragment lines ... (read more)

Jennifer Strauss reviews 'The Feather Boy & Other Poems' by Judith Rodriguez

March 2019, no. 409 • 25 February 2019

Judith Rodriguez, who died in November 2018, was a champion of other people’s causes: the right to be heard, the right to freedom from persecution, the right to refuge when such freedom is denied. She was also a champion of poetry and gave generously of her time and energy to fighting its corner. Generations of fledgling poets profited from her mentoring; generations of students were introduced ... (read more)

Jennifer Strauss reviews 'The Best Australian Poems 2014' edited by Geoff Page

January-February 2015, no. 368 • 01 January 2015

‘Lending printed eloquence to a poem’ comes from ‘Alas’, Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s elegiac tribute to Seamus Heaney. There is eloquence aplenty in this fine collection of more than a hundred and twenty poems edited by poet Geoff Page, someone who understands that eloquence speaks in many tones and in various formal structures. This variety is generously represented here, even if, as a resul ... (read more)