here and now
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...
Comments
It's large and very diverse. There should be something in there for everyone. I especially enjoyed the poems by Phi O and Peter Rose, and a fine elegy for Jan McKemmish by Pam Brown.
The editor also included previously unpublished work and I wonder if that's a departure from the practices of previous BAP editors?
Adam Aitken
Yes, it's almost, but not, overwhelming. I liked Martin's poem for Dorothy as well. And Chris Edward's poem - well, partly because I edited the poetry feature it was part of. And ..., and ... Many others to enjoy.
I think that it has been a feature of a lot of previous Black Inc BAPS (as opposed to the UQP ones), for the editors to accept submissions during the year of unpublished as well as published work. Peter Rose decided not to, as I recall, but I'm sure Les and Dorothy did.
Jill