[Brian Henry, from the blog 'The Best American Poetry', July 29th 2010]:
Poetry criticism seems to be in a perpetual state of crisis. It’s not just that critics cannot agree on which poets or kinds of poetry are the best, but that poetry critics often have no common ground. They do not share the same aesthetic values, they cannot agree on common approaches. Critical writing about other art forms—say, visual art—is, or has been, in a similar position, but I’m not sure that art critics are constantly publicly worrying (in journals, on blogs and in comment fields) about art criticism. If they are, then maybe all critics (at least those who aren’t paid) should listen to Elvis Costello: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.”
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[Ken Edwards, from the blog 'Reality Street', July 30th 2010]:
The success of Ian McEwan – sometimes cited these days as Britain’s leading novelist – totally baffles me. I recall him being held up as a model for me as a young writer in the 1970s. McEwan, then labelled “most promising” British writer, had a short story published in Transatlantic Review, and a year or two later I had one in there too; then he had a story in American Review, so that was the one to aim at.
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Interesting viewpoint. Much as I respect Ken and his place in UK poetry and publishing, I disagree with regards McEwan … though I must confess, I’ve only read one of his books ['Saturday']. Intend seeking out his most recent ['Solar' ... which incidentally is getting some bad press, I hear]. Each to his own.
Ralph
Islet (www.islet.com.au) is pleased to announce the theme for its summer issue, and is now calling for submissions addressing the theme of ISLANDS.
You are invited to consider the theme imaginatively, broadly, and figuratively.
Submissions close: Friday October 22
Submissions should be emailed to the editor at islet.online@utas.edu.au with ‘summer issue submission’ in the subject line.
All of Islet’s standard submission guidelines still apply, including length – poetry must be under 25 lines, reviews under 400 words, and fiction under 600 words.
Please note that non-themed submissions will continue to be received for future issues.
See the submissions page of the website (http://www.islet.com.au/submissions) for pay rates and further details.
Islet is funded by Arts Tasmania and the Australia Council, and supported by the University of Tasmania.
[Stephen McCarty, Time, August 9th 2010]:
If you want to subvert the Chinese government these days, try writing a poem.
Given the hypervigilance of China’s censors, you’d have thought that dissenting poets would be frog-marched to the nearest labor reform camp in the time that it takes to declaim a heptasyllabic pentameter. But the apparatchiks have apparently taken their eye off the ball.
“Poetry is one of the freest media in China, but the West doesn’t know it,” says Ouyang Yu, the Chinese-Australian poet, author, translator and editor. “The authorities have turned a blind eye because Chinese society is increasingly focused on the economy. This is the best time for Chinese poets to flourish.” Although Ouyang’s verse is preoccupied with questions of identity and the migrant experience, it too is salted with the language of freedom and struggle. “Your reality is iron bars/ The shadows of the sun ten thousand miles away,” he writes in “The Wanderer.” In another poem, “Listening to the 80-year-old telling me a story,” he writes in the voice of a survivor of communist purges: “I had to be extremely careful in all those political campaigns …/ So many of my friends had died …’
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Launch of BN Oakman’s poetry collection, In Defence of Hawaiian Shirts (Interactive Press), at Castlemaine Art Gallery on Sunday 15 August from 2.30pm. “We intend the occasion to be an entertaining one.”
[Rosemary Sorensen, The Australian, July 29th 2010]:
A novel about “modern Australia as an exercise in liberalism” has made the first cut for the world’s most discussed literary prize.
Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap, a story told from multiple perspectives about a child slapped at a barbecue (and everyone’s opinions about what that slap means), is on the long list of this year’s Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
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The program for the seventh Australian Poetry Festival is now up at the Poets Union’s website as a pdf file [here].
Chris Wallace-Crabbe will deliver the Judith Wright Memorial Lecture.
Guests this year:
Emily Ballou
John Bennett
Judith Beveridge
David Brooks
Michelle Cahill
Bonny Cassidy
Michelle Dicinoski
B. R. Dionysius
Lucy Dougan
Stephen Edgar
Steve Evans
Michael Farrell
Marcelle Freiman
Robert Gray
Martin Harrison
L. K. Holt
Yvette Holt
Jill Jones
Paul Magee
Iggy McGovern
Liz Macnamara
David Malouf
Angela Rockel
Candy Royalle
Zhang Shaoyang
Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Ania Walwicz
Ouyang Yu