Poetry Information

Attention! ExStanza Bloggers if you are keen to find out about poetry in the press. There have been some very interesting articles on poets and poetry in some recent copies of the Age. I found them very informative, sufficiently so, I wish to present details here.


The Age A2 Weekend Magazine Saturday, January 24, 2009 Page 25
Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw is a new book of poetry by Chris Wallace-Crabbe. It is Published by Carcanet Press, $25.95. The review is by Gig Ryan, the Age poetry editor. Download this article from the Age web page or order the book from the library or perhaps buy it in Launceston when you can.

The Age A2 Weekend Magazine Saturday, January 31, 2009. Page 21
The Ulster farm on which Seamus Heany was raised remains in him and in his work – assured, exhilarating but not complex, writes John Clarke.
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus He any By Dennis O’Driscoll Faber & Faber $49.95. In this book Heaney shares his thoughts with O’Driscoll. It will be an interesting read for any one interested in the Irish, Nobel Prize Winner poet!
The Age A2 Weekend Magazine Saturday, January 31, 2009. Page 22
Poetry: There are voices of power and glory in Australian poetry and John Kinsella’s new anthology gives us a wide selection of them, says Peter Craven, Read the article then go and buy the book if you feel it might inspire your writing.
The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry
Edited by John Kinsella
Penguin, $35.00

The Age A2 Weekend Magazine Saturday February 7, 2009 Page 24
Anniversary: This month, one of the greatest poets of our age, Peter Porter, celebrates his 80th birthday. He tells Craig Sherbourne, about the crucial role poetry has played in his life.

Porter’s latest book, Better than God is published by Picadore at $29.95. Craig Sherbourne is the author of two memoirs, Hoi Polloi and Muck (Black Inc). His poem, Slipper appears below.

Slipper.

Slip your feet in the shoes of the water,
the fake-leather brown of it, and wear standing.
Your pair of red bunch of toes - eel boots in river - so current-long
the ends of them turn up like fashion.
Pebble and pop of caverns letting their fluid out where the banks burst.

Sea is miles away walking in its own pair of tides.
Here you can break in a horse of white water
and not be spilled where you trap it in your thighs,
it is froth-lame with rocks.
Name it Curry for its shandy-dirty sands.
Bareback it till your hands can fin no more, so cold and numb.
Then, leg after leg, you mortar and pestle back home over crunch,
though home is gone. Look all you like for someone there
they are loving in other places with another you.
Night lisps and warms in the pines

Craig Sherbourne