Judith Beveridge

Judith Beveridge reviews 'Rain Towards Morning: Selected poems and drawings' by Robert Gray

September 2022, no. 446 • 27 August 2022

According to his author’s note, Rain Towards Morning is ‘a definitive book’ of the poems Robert Gray wishes to preserve. Nameless Earth (Carcanet, 2006) is the most generously represented of Gray’s previous eight books. This is followed by his mid-career volume Piano (1988) in which he first began to publish a range of poetry with tight rhyme schemes and controlled rhythms. More than a thi ... (read more)

'Old Jetty', a new poem by Judith Beveridge

June 2022, no. 443 • 23 May 2022

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'Rain', a poem by Judith Beveridge

March 2004, no. 259 • 01 March 2004

Grennan sucks in air along his gums and yellsagain to Davey who is filling the troughof the gunwhale with scrabbling crabs. Far offlightning slips down the sky like a forkfulof buttered sea-worms. The rain works fastcutting with decisive precision acrossthe sea. Grennan pulls in squid, then seversthe slimy cordage of the tentacles, throwsone at Davey who laughs; his voice hard, sharpas a scuttling ... (read more)

Judith Beveridge reviews 'Lost in the Foreground' by Stephen Edgar

May 2003, no. 251 • 01 May 2003

Stephen Edgar’s fifth volume, Lost in the Foreground, is a book of marvels, both technically and in the elegant, magisterial reach of its content. He is wonderfully inventive, and his complex rhyme schemes and forms are achieved with such precision and finesse that one can only conjecture as to how long each piece must have taken to become so lovingly and artfully realised. ... (read more)

'River', a poem by Judith Beveridge

November 2007, no. 296 • 01 November 2007

The mouth of a little fish had just sipped away a starfrom the river, and a lyrebird was opening the day,volunteering to be a bell. We were watching an egret prod at the nutrient dark, its beak one tine of a forkcatching what floats, just as the sun began crackingthe trees awake. The bird’s song reached us, then it sharded into the river’s cold glass. You thought youheard it again in the edd ... (read more)

'The Slaughter', a new poem by Judith Beveridge

December 2020, no. 427 • 25 November 2020

from Suddhodana’s Poems We bent the camels’ legs back at the kneesand bound them with rope, then we tethered themto a tree and left them in the scorching heat.The whole camp aromatic with onion, cardamom,tamarind, cumin – even the dusk seemed spreadwith the crimson marinade we’d mixed for the basting.We could almost taste the slender straps we’d soonlift from the bones, camel meat sweet ... (read more)

'Rain' a poem by Judith Beveridge

June 2009, no. 312 • 01 June 2009

      Rain bubble-wrapping the windows. Rainfalling as though someone ran a blade down the spines   of fish setting those tiny backbones free. Rain            with its squinting glance, rain ... (read more)

'The Boathouse' by Judith Beveridge

April 2018, no. 400 • 27 March 2018

ending on a line by John Burnside No one on the boats, just cats – thin, furtive.There’s the blown cry of terns and the wheedlingembarkations of crows, but you will not slip the knot of your thoughts, what has brought youto this harbour. Rain in the distance, the samecold chant echoing in your steps, in the oars and in the salt-encrusted timbers of the boatspitching by the pier. The smell o ... (read more)

Judith Beveridge reviews 'Creating Poetry' by Ron Pretty

March 2016, no. 379 • 25 February 2016

This updated and revised edition of Creating Poetry – first published by Edward Arnold in 1987, and then by Five Islands Press in 2001 – is one of few poetry guidebooks written by an Australian poet. One of its pleasing features is that it uses the work of Australian poets, including John Tranter, Geoff Page, Kevin Brophy, Meredith Wattison, Judith Wright, and many others. The final chapter gi ... (read more)

Judith Beveridge reviews 'Happiness' by Martin Harrison

December 2015, no. 377 • 25 November 2015

'Happiness' may seem like an odd word for the title of a book of poetry, and given the circumstances of Martin Harrison's final years – his illness, the tragic death of his younger Tunisian lover, Nizar Bouheni – the title is rather ironic, but the poems in this posthumous volume are rich, bountiful, full of the same 'worshipful attention', the same sense of open contemplation and wonderment t ... (read more)