Thomas Shapcott

Thomas Shapcott reviews 'To the Islands' and 'Tourmaline' by Randolph Stow

December 2002-January 2003, no. 247 • 01 December 2002

Before the age of thirty, Randolph Stow had published five novels and a prize-winning collection of poetry. In Australia, only Kenneth Mackenzie, another Sandgroper, had made a similar youthful impact. Mackenzie’s first book, The Young Desire It, was published in 1937, though I believe drafted some time before that. Stow’s The Haunted Land (1956) was written when he was only seventeen. When an ... (read more)

Thomas Shapcott reviews 'Collected Poems' by Ern Malley

September 1993, no. 154 • 01 September 1993

The poems of Ern Malley must be on the way to becoming the most reprinted collection of twentieth-century Australian poetry. As Max Harris says in his essay, one of the pivots of this book: More than forty years on, after his death from Graves’ disease and his burial at Rookwood Cemetery in 1944, after twelve editions of his collected poetry in the intervening years, Ern Malley is alive and w ... (read more)

'Commonwealth Writer’s Week, Brisbane, 1982' by Thomas Shapcott

November 1982, no. 46 • 01 November 1982

For the previous Commonwealth Writers’ Week associated with the Commonwealth Games at Edmonton, a large if not necessarily lively anthology of writing from all countries of the Commonwealth was produced. Brisbane produced a twelve page ‘Guide to Participants’ which showed that only eighteen of the sixty-three listed participants were not Australian or Australian born. Not all of the eighteen ... (read more)

'Smell', a new poem by Thomas Shapcott

March 2014, no. 359 • 27 February 2014

Underneath everything we touch is the smellOf something too obvious to expressAnd yet we say there is nothing, nothing at all. We have learned to live with a multitude of smells,They simply do not bother us, they are everydayAnd part of the natural world we have inherited. There is nothing more obvious than the smell of living,It is like movement, and, like movement, it is everywhere.Like sweat ... (read more)

'Laugh', a new poem by Thomas Shapcott

October 2013, no. 355 • 27 September 2013

What is it about laughter that makes us lift As if the burden might be gone or the weight Be somehow alleviated? Laughter is just noise. ... (read more)