Where should we place the extraordinary achievement of W.H. Auden in the long history of contested ideas about poetry, its character and function? The range of his poetry—in subject matter and style—is all but inexhaustible. A reader would be difficult to please if he or she could not find a work resonating with and enriching their experience of life

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Upper Heights and Lower Depths is a supremely good book. Lovers of poetry would want to have it on their shelf to read and to own. It invites immersion. It invites the distinctive pleasure of returning to it and entering into what the four Tasmania poets have discovered and expressed. It exemplifies excellence

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      Arcadia has two fine poets in this review, and they know each other’s work. Tom Petsinis has the following comment on the back cover of Maria Foroudi’s book Tears in My Bread: “The reader is taken on a journey through family life, the body, illness, migration to Australia and visits to Greece.” […]

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The prolific Australian poet Bruce Beaver (1928–2004), author of a dozen collections of verse, from Under the Bridge (1961) to The Long Game and Other Poems (posthumously published in 2005), was born in the Sydney seaside suburb of Manly and spent most of his life there. As is noted in the online Australian Poetry Library, […]

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It is commonplace, amongst poets and readers of poetry today, to lament the decline in the appreciation of verse in contemporary society. Past eras are recalled—or imagined—when poems were learnt by heart; when poetry-reciting was a feature of popular culture, and it was taken for granted that the well-educated and well-read man or woman would, […]

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Condensing Jane Pride and Prejudice Poor Elizabeth Bennet, a honey Who is pretty and witty and sunny,     Really fancies rich Darcy     Who acts pretty arsy. She wins him and marries the money.   Persuasion Her father’s a terrible prick And her sisters both make you quite sick.      How we […]

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Of Maples and … 1 Monks Japanese maples, moved by awful sympathy for Tibetan monks, are immolating themselves beside the Buddhist temples.   2 Mothers As if they, too, were beseeching the Bosatsu to save their children, the maples adorn the worn Jizo stones with blood-red bibs.   3 Marxists Mao’s cadres wore red stars […]

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An Interesting Cover There were two wrought-iron chairs in the park— more or less in the middle of the park. I sat down on one, pretending to be absorbed in the book I held in my hands. I was only looking at the pages.   I was only looking at the pages, but when a […]

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Avernus From hell there is no exit, no through road, but there’s a sign to warn you it is near. Eternal fire is the central fact of life on earth. It burns beneath our feet as secret, silent and unseen as gravity.   Eruptions happen, of evil and depravity so fierce the morally frigid feel […]

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Two Notes   A late spring brings the male koel, his two-note courting call shy there in the shrubbery but advertising all   the splendour of his sturdy genes, the blue sheen in his feathers, to any female flitting by should they get together.   Eudynamys orientalis is still his Latin name. Rainbird, stormbird, madness […]

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