Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
Skip to main content
Jezz Day Out - MPAC

Anthology

The Best Australian Essays 2017 edited by Anna Goldsworthy

by •
March 2018, no. 399
Lucas Thompson reviews 'The Best Australian Essays 2017' edited by Anna Goldsworthy

It takes only five months for a newt to regrow a lost limb. Skittles and Tic Tacs both made public statements denouncing Donald Trump during the 2016 Presidential race. Psychologists have learned that whenever we believe that a problem – like addiction, domestic abuse, or climate change – is intractable, our brains appear ...

... (read more)

The Best Australian Science Writing 2017 edited by Michael Slezak

by •
March 2018, no. 399
Rachael Mead reviews 'The Best Australian Science Writing 2017' edited by Michael Slezak

It is a common misconception that scientists are not writers. As Professor Emma Johnston states in her foreword, writing is a fundamental part of the scientific process and innumerable volumes of scientific journals are published each year. These papers often employ dry, opaque language ...

... (read more)

The Best of The Lifted Brow: Volume Two edited by Alexander Bennetts

by •
January–February 2018, no. 398
Dan Dixon review 'The Best of The Lifted Brow: Volume Two' edited by Alexander Bennetts

A collection organised around ‘the best’ of anything invites a particular kind of evaluation, a seeking of the criteria that such an elastic adjective might imply. The criteria employed for the selection of essays, fiction, and poetry appearing in ...

... (read more)

The Best Australian Poems 2017 edited by Sarah Holland-Batt

by •
December 2017, no. 397
Gregory Day reviews 'The Best Australian Poems 2017' edited by Sarah Holland-Batt

When W.H. Auden took the cue for his poem ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ from Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus, he did not presume the reader’s knowledge of the iconography of the painting but rather sprang open its central and universal theme, which touches all our lives: how ‘dreadful martyrdom must run its course’. It is easy to think our lurid times are perhaps ...

... (read more)

The Poem Is You: 60 contemporary American poems and how to read them by Stephen Burt

by •
May 2017, no. 391
Benjamin Madden reviews 'The Poem Is You: 60 contemporary American poems and how to read them' by Stephen Burt

Northrop Frye wrote that ‘No kind of book is easier to attack than an anthology’, as Stephen Burt reminds us in the introduction to ...

... (read more)

The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry edited by John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan

by •
April 2017, no. 390
Geoff Page reviews 'The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry' edited by John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan

The need for this book is self-evident in a way that a similarly historical anthology for New South Wales or Victorian poetry would not be. From many perspectives, Perth is one of the most remote cities in the world and there is no doubt that the state’s uniqueness is captured in this extensive, though tightly edited, selection. Despite its comparable treatment of ...

Contemporary Australian Poetry edited by Martin Langford et. al.

by •
March 2017, no. 389
John Hawke reviews 'Contemporary Australian Poetry' edited by Martin Langford et. al. and 'The Best Australian Poems 2016' edited by Sarah Holland-Batt

According to The Magic Pudding, Bunyip Bluegum’s erudition is established through his ability to ‘converse on a great variety of subjects, having read all the best Australian poets’, a questionable achievement in Norman Lindsay’s day. A glance through the Annals of Australian Literature reveals the paucity of quality Australian poetry volum ...

The Best Australian Essays 2016 edited by Geordie Williamson

by •
March 2017, no. 389
Glyn Davis reviews 'The Best Australian Essays 2016' edited by Geordie Williamson

An annual challenge: how to select essays which capture the moment but live beyond the immediate?

For some, rigour matters. The series editor for The Best American Essays invites magazine editors and writers to submit contributions to a Boston postal address. The rules are strict: an essay is a literary work that shows ‘an awareness of craft and f ...

The New Yorker Book of the 60s: Story of a decade edited by Henry Finder

by •
March 2017, no. 389
Diana Bagnall reviews 'The New Yorker Book of the 60s: Story of a decade' edited by Henry Finder

Journalism is on the back foot. That’s putting it kindly. Hundreds of newspapers and thousands of careers have been consigned to the great media burial ground since the dawning of the digital age. Those still standing operate in a climate of deepening mistrust. From Trump’s America to Erdoğan’s Turkey, demagogues saddled with democratic political systems trum ...

Union: 15 Years of Drunken Boat, 50 Years of Writing from Singapore edited by Alvin Pang and Ravi Shankar

by •
March 2016, no. 379
Sara Savage reviews 'Union' edited by Alvin Pang and Ravi Shankar

In 2015 it was virtually impossible to set foot in Singapore without being exposed to the government-led 'SG50' campaign commemorating the island nation's fiftieth year of independence. All over the country the 'little red dot' logo appeared on everything from double-decker buses and A380s to festive Chinese moon cakes and special-edition Tiger Beer bottles. In real ...

Page 4 of 17