There’s a new anthology of Australian poetry just hit the decks. I think the official publication date was early January, but there were plenty copies in bookshops before Christmas. I bought one in one of my favourite bookshops, Kinokuniya, in Sydney, in December. There’s some discussion about it going on Laurie Duggan’s blog , especially about the cover. I’m not so keen on the cover but others I know think that it’s fine. And there is always going to be the usual argument about who is in and who is out, and why. I've been left out of enough anthologies and been in a few (I'm in this one, for instance), and have said my piece on that a few times too many in the past, so perhaps it's not the place to join that discussion for the moment. I’m more interested in John Kinsella’s comment in one of his introductory essays (you can read all of this essay on the Penguin website ): “The publication or presentation of innovative verse-novels, prose poetry, hypertextual poetry, multim...
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The way I read it was Barry making a point about the way the Black Inc anthology was compiled, which is the editor's and/or publisher's prerogative, nuthin' to do with us chickens (don't know whose decision it was in this case to not ask for submissions, tho' I assume it was the editor's).
Anthologies are always difficult; you could argue the editor is always leaving something out. I'm often critical of them because of that, and have been criticised similarly when I was an editor. It must be hard to be 'representative (if, indeed, that's what an anthology should be) when essentially all you've got are the poems published in a year.
I was a bit miffed that the editor of Black Inc previous year (06) and then UQP 07 chose the same poem of mine, but them's the breaks. Still, you can mount fair criticism about what is left out so long as you pony up with reasons and examples. Do you think that the case wasn't made?
Thanks for stopping by.
i guess that what my comment was about: at least partially (as an editor) you have to be 'seen' to be doing the right thing. too many abr selections, & it will 'look' bad.
of course my opinion that abr isn't the venue for the greatest aus. poetry is neither here nor there.
but dammit, i will have my opinions...
Or put another way, the process is as important as the product (urgh, that sounds a bit ugly).
In other words, someone's always looking at what you're doing.