AustLit

'Bonny Cassidy’s Chatelaine is a gift to a reviewer that doesn’t want to paraphrase poems, for a reader that doesn’t need such summarising. Rather, its line-up of loosely framed lyrics offers opportunities for thinking and (re)reading. Cassidy’s figure of the chatelaine, or key-keeper, lives, or moves, somewhere in between the reader and the poet. There are keys being kept but they are not in a predetermined place, nor, I suspect, are there any predetermined keyholes either. Whether or not this seems like hedge-betting will reflect your idea of what literature is for, or what it does.' (Introduction)

'In an indignant letter, written on 12 December 1918, to S. Nevile Foster, editor of Land and Water, the novelist and former ship’s captain, Joseph Conrad, questions the suitability of the illustration of his story ‘Rescue’, which they were about to publish. He begins by describing himself ‘as an artist in another medium’, and remarking that he had ‘always been treated by his illustrators with a certain amount of consideration … with that loyalty which is due from a conscientious artist to the conceptions of another’. He questions whether the illustrator of ‘Rescue’ has ‘ever seen a yacht’s gig’ (a type of boat)? Or a man standing in one? Or any boat that looked like the one in the illustration? Had he ‘looked with an artist’s eye ever in his life at the leech of a sail, either full or aback, the most definite and expressive line in the world? The whole thing’, Conrad adds, ‘is false enough to set one’s teeth on edge; and of unpardonable ugliness … There are ways of rendering the luminous quality of a tropical night & there was no reason to cram ugliness into the very sky.’' (Introduction(

'Is colonialism a failed project? This is not a simple question. While contemporary oppositional discourse – any thinking that supports moves towards post- and decoloniality – rejects the colonial project, an assessment of its failure might mean that its aims weren’t realised, or that it has come to the end of its life, like a light bulb or bank, or prime ministership, or site that can no longer be accessed, or document that won’t load. I’m writing this unable to check my email on my computer, unsure if this is a browser failure, but knowing it’s my own failure, in not keeping up to date, not so much with the colonial (although the colonial, like all extant concepts, is now inseparable from the digital), but with Empire more broadly speaking.' (Introduction)

'In Family Trees, Michael Farrell continues to question how humans relate – to each other, and to the nonhuman, the worlds of animals, plants and objects. Inheritance can be a heavy legacy but in Michael’s expansive rendering it frees itself: how do we connect? Through affection, and through sharing, swapping and listening. Family Trees sees the return of familiar characters such as Pope Pinocchio, alongside new figures such as Lord Marmalade, Cherry the ‘Kiama Scammer’ and Adam, a paranoid country English teacher. Presented in filmic scenarios, these characters are often busily thinking, while also participating in more mundane forms of activity – gossip and sleep and work. The book includes a number of South Coast poems that take a poking interest in how language blooms off-track. It’s about memory, fantasy and the possibilities of living in conceptual space. Anything that has roots can be a family tree.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. When the editor of Tinfish Press wrote on a Facebook comment stream that she was interested in publishing work from the Pacific that responded to Ashbery's poetry, she did not expect Michael Farrell to respond that he already had such a manuscript in hand. ASHBERY MODE is that precise anthology, one that includes dozens of Australia's best contemporary poets writing in the "mode" of Ashbery. Like his New York School colleague and friend, Frank O'Hara, Ashbery proved crucial in relaxing the strictures of Australian poetry, releasing it from its formal and tonal bonds. It's wonderful to see Ashbery transmogrify into a local Australian poet. This book is a companion piece to Eileen R. Tabios's WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR (Tinfish Press, 2019) and, like her book, shows how poetic influence gets activated across national and oceanic boundaries, as well as how source texts can open up into radically new perspectives.' (Publication summary)