Toby Davidson

Toby Davidson is a West Australian poet and scholar now living on Gai-mariagal land in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. He is the author of two poetry collections, Beast Language (Five Islands Press, 2012) and Four Oceans (Puncher & Wattmann, 2020), and the editor of Francis Webb’s Collected Poems (UWA Publishing, 2011). He teaches Australian literature at Macquarie University and his academic titles include Christian Mysticism and Australian Poetry (Cambria Press, 2013) and Good for the Soul: John Curtin’s life with poetry (UWA Publishing, 2021).

Toby Davidson reviews ‘Revenants’ by Adam Aitken

June 2022, no. 443 • 28 April 2022

Since his first collection, Letter to Marco Polo (1985), Adam Aitken has been at the forefront of the diversification of Australian poetry as it moved, slowly but irreversibly, to incorporate multicultural and transnational voices. Aitken has always been a world citizen. He was born in London in 1960 to an Anglo-Australian father and Thai mother, with his childhood thereafter spent between the Uni ... (read more)

'The Sistine Chapel', a poem by Toby Davidson

December 2021, no. 438 • 29 November 2021

Beneath the Creator’s reach, the Golden Ratioof tourist thrum stirs guards to the mike.Silenzio. Silence. No photo. No video. Wonder at what ate the eyes of Michelangelo;anciently capture a spreading darkbeneath the Creator’s reach, the Golden Ratio breathed into brushstrokes of imagini di Dio.The roof is eternity, tongues slowly spike.Silenzio. Silence. No photo. No video. This century’s ... (read more)

Toby Davidson reviews 'Great Australian Eulogies' edited by Richard Walsh

February 2009, no. 308 • 01 February 2009

Richard Walsh – former OZ co-editor, A&R, ACP and PBL director – has proven again that he has keen eye for what fixates Australians. To be remembered is of course an enduring human obsession, while the ability to send off (or send up) a friend or family member is more often an afterthought, a stepping into the breach. Great Australian Eulogies features twenty-eight prominent Australians t ... (read more)