Anthony Lynch

Anthony Lynch reviews Westerly Vol. 57, No. 2, edited by Delys Bird and Tony Hughes-d’Aeth

May 2013, no. 351 • 28 April 2013

‘Tell me about it: you can trust me. I’m a writer.’ This ‘cautionary joke’ – one of few in this sober volume – cited in an essay by Frank Moorhouse, could be an epigraph for the latest Westerly. Editors Bird and Hughes-d’Aeth asked a selection of writers to share their thoughts on the ethics of writing. The ensuing essays include depictions of the past and of family in non-fiction, ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'Collusion' by Brook Emery

December 2012–January 2013, no. 347 • 27 November 2012

Brook Emery’s opening poem in Collusion is addressed to ‘Dear K’, an address reprised in the last, movingly lyrical poem in this his fourth collection. We might read the intervening poems as a correspondence with ‘K’, this other who halfway through the collection is referred to as ‘my interlocutor, my conscience’. Emery cleverly anticipates and plays with the possible relation to tha ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'Like a House on Fire' by Cate Kennedy

November 2012, no. 346 • 26 October 2012

Cate Kennedy’s fine second collection of short stories, Like a House on Fire, is of a determinedly realist bent. Metafictional play does not generally form part of Kennedy’s armoury, and the mostly low-rent settings and struggling characters reprise what in the 1980s and early 1990s was briefly known as dirty realism, though Kennedy’s prose is not as resolutely spare as that of some writers ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'Dissonance' by Stephen Orr

September 2012, no. 344 • 28 August 2012

Percy Grainger has been the subject of a number of books (most notably a 1976 biography by John Bird), a play (A Whip Around for Percy Grainger, 1982) by Thérèse Radic, and a feature film, Passion (1999), by Peter Duncan. He was an avid letter-writer, and his correspondence has been anthologised and critiqued. Thanks to his eccentric way of life and sometimes erratic behaviour and opinions – h ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'The Quadrant Book of Poetry 2001-2010' edited by Les Murray

June 2012, no. 342 • 22 May 2012

In his polemical Introduction, Les Murray notes that Quadrant was founded sixty years ago by poet James McAuley, the ‘stern formalist’ who ensured that poetry occupied a prominent place in the magazine. Poetry has continued to be central to Quadrant, its profile not waning under Murray’s stewardship as literary editor since 1990. For this anthology, Murray has collected the best poems publis ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'Island Earth: New and Selected Poems' by S.K. Kelen

May 2012, no. 341 • 20 April 2012

‘Dark satanic mills won the day’, S.K. Kelen tells us in one of his strongest poems, ‘Slouching’. ‘Cold modernity followed, a brooding European / monochrome hinted at worlds passing (the good old days).’ What many critics take to be William Blake’s damning of the Industrial Revolution – ‘And was Jerusalem builded here, / Among these dark Satanic Mills?’ (from ‘And did those f ... (read more)

Anthony Lynch reviews 'This Too Shall Pass' by S.J. Finn

March 2011, no. 329 • 14 April 2011

From Kafka on, we can trace a line of narratives dealing with alienation in the modern workplace, with forces seen and unseen overwhelming individual volition. S.J. Finn’s first novel makes a humorous contribution to this tradition. ... (read more)