Review: Peter Doherty on the virus
August 29, 2021
I thought that some readers might be interested in a review I wrote of Peter Doherty’s book An Insider’s Plague Year. And just in case I am right, here’s the link! The following illustration has nothing to do with the review, except that mice feature there, too. I just had to use this, so why not now?
My reviewing is picking up a lot after I made my first swag of selections for poetry at The Canberra Times, which took a great deal of thought. The straight ‘no’ is easy, as are the obvious yes poems. It’s the maybes that kill you.
Reviewing
May 17, 2021
I have recently had my fortieth review published at The Canberra Times. The book was a challenging and at times disturbing analysis of psychosomatic illnesses, entitled The Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories of Mystery Illness by Suzanne O’Sullivan. You can read the review here.
Writing so many reviews has given me a lot of time to reflect on the process. I see a review as a kind of bridge between the book and reader. The reader can cross over the bridge, and then make the decision as to whether they will jump off the other side, to buy or borrow the book.
Questions such as whether the book is a good example of its genre, and how it fits into an author’s previous publications can be addressed. New authors’ strengths can be celebrated, and what they add to a genre examined. There’s no point reviewing a thriller and complaining about it being action driven, or a horror novel for trading in darkness, for example; that would be a misuse of space.
I will of course point out what I see as faults in a strong book, but if there’s a book I really can’t stand, I won’t review it. People want to be referred to books worth the reading, and have an indication as to why, rather than observe the reviewer’s vocabulary of negative words being taken out for a walk (or flaunt). I don’t want to dwell on something that I find annoying or repellent, either.
The wide variety of books available has taken me to places I wouldn’t necessarily have gone without having the ability to read for review (which entails free books, and being paid something for the effort). Would I have sought out a book about psychosomatic illness before I began reviewing regularly? Possibly not. So a reviewer puts herself over a kind of bridge each time she picks up a new type of book, sometimes checking out surprising views on the way to the book’s end, before going back and asking the reader to accompany her.
I think I’ve flogged the bridge metaphor to death, and must now blow it up in a River Kwai type action. I try and avoid that sort of exhausting overuse of metaphor in reviews. Honestly.
Book Review: Two Holocaust stories
August 11, 2020
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6862223/harrowing-and-inspiring-stories/
In recent months I have been reviewing quite a few books for The Canberra Times. The most recent review, published on 8-8-2020, is of two remarkable books recounting the lives of Holocaust survivors, and I thought I’d post a link to it here. The books reviewed are Eddie Jaku’s The Happiest Man on Earth and When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains by Ariana Neumann.
Reviewing is a privilege when it involves reading books such as these; the only problem is trying to do the books justice in the space available.
Photo by Flora Westbrook on Pexels.com
Thinking about 2019 (from a deliberately narrow perspective)
December 23, 2019
As I sit and constantly look up the spread of the bushfires, particularly on the South Coast of NSW where we’d usually be around now, I thought I’d reflect back on all my publications and readings this year to take my mind (and lungs) off the smoke. Here we go:
Participant, Living Studio, Belconnen Arts Centre, late 2018 (November) onwards. Reading at Centre, 12 March (star poems) ‘Living the Studio’.
Poem ‘On the couch’ published The Canberra Times, 2-3-19
Poem ’Two stroke or more’ published Not Very Quiet 4, March 2019. Read it at launch.
‘The Ashes, 3150 A.D.’ published Eye To The Telescope 32, US, April 2019, ‘Sports and Games’ edited Lisa Timpf.
Poems ‘Mining time’ and Excalibur’s Lament’ published in The Rhysling Anthology (US), 2019, edited David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Poem ’Transformation’ published The Mozzie, April 2019
Poem ‘The creature runs through the ice, pursued by Doctor Frankenstein’ published Cordite 91, Monster issue, edited Nathan Curnow, May 2019.
Poem ‘Freckles’ published Sponge, Issue 5, New Zealand, May 2019
Senryu ’turpsichore’ (deliberately spelt like that!) published The Mozzie, Volume 27, May 2019
Reading poem ‘Fry up’ for special event, Poetry. Science. Women: Celebrating the Amazing, Smiths, 17 June, 2019. To be published in Axon.
Poem ‘Mawson Expedition medicine chest, 1911’, written on commission for National Museum of Australia about that object in the Objects Gallery. To be read at Museum event in June (2019) and published on website.
Shortlisted ACU Poetry Prize, July 2019, theme ’Solace’. Published in chapbook.
Reading Manning Clark House, July 2019
Poem ‘The Ashes 3152 AD’ republished The New Zealand Cricket Bulletin July/August 2019 No. 597
Review Jack Charles: Born-again Blakfella by Jack Charles with Namila Benson published The Canberra Times, 31-8-19
Haiku ‘Aliens declutter’ published Scifaikuest, US, August 2019, Edited Teri Santitoro.
Reading at The House (ANU) August 2019
Poem ‘Mountain Pygmy-possum’, renamed ’Snow and heat’, in Mountain Secrets anthology, ed. Joan Fenney, Ginninderra Press, 2019. Read it at launch in Blackheath, Blue Mountains, November 2019.
Poem ‘The dusky grass wren’ published Not Very Quiet Issue 5, September 2019, edited Tricia Dearborn
Haiku ‘Angels picnic’ published in The Mozzie, September/October 2019 (received November)
Panellist, Conflux (Poetry) and also interviewed by Kaaron Warren for another panel, October 2019
Review of A Sharp Left Turn: Notes on a life in music, from Split Enz to Play It Strange by Mike Chunn published The Canberra Times, 26-10-19
‘The Most Loyal Servant and the Peas’ (story) published Antipodean SF, No 254, November 2019, and on radio show (my reading).
Review of Never Say Die: The Hundred-Year Overnight Success of Australian Women’s Football by Fiona Crawford and Lee McGowan published The Canberra Times 9-11-19
Review of Absolutely Bleeding Green: The Raiders Story by David Headon published The Canberra Times 23-11-19
Review of The Institute by Stephen King published The Canberra Times 24-11-19
‘Fry up’ published Axon: Creative Explorations, Vol 9, No 2, December 2019
Review of Maybe The Horse Will Talk by Elliot Perlman published The Canberra Times, 7-12-19
I’m happy that I’m doing quite a few reviews again, as it keeps you on your intellectual toes (now I’m picturing a brain in a tu-tu) and encourages you to think about how each book promises something, and whether it lives up to those implied promises. I really enjoyed reviewing the history of the Raiders and the history of women’s football in Australia; all I need now is a cricket book, and AFL.
I’ll definitely try and keep the reviewing up next year.
Next year I’ll be having two books published, both poetry.
Have a great Christmas, and let’s hope that there is still an inhabitable east coast of Australia after the next few months. (And SA, and WA, too.)
Theatre Tuesday
October 9, 2017
So you’ve been feeling a bit past your use-by date, and a little tarnished by time. Perhaps you are terrified that you are losing your way, and becoming the type of writer who repeats themselves, not to work and rework ideas like an artisan kneading bread, but because they can’t do anything else. You meet that type, and they piss around the corners of conversations, lest new ideas insinuate and undermine their certainties.
And then someone* finds one of your poems, tucked away on this very blog, and includes it in a theatre work, and it is given a new voice and body by an actor**. And you listen to it take its place in the work, and feel glad that someone felt its energy and its humour; a humour wedged between despair and hysteria.
Because you’re a total dag, you adopt a horizontal position in a photo amongst some of the other poets, and the actors. You*** would underline how much the production meant to you in some alien form of punctuation. You really need to discover decorum, rather than dwell in a cellar of rum.
*Adele Chynoweth, who directed the work Under Sedation, currently showing at The Street Theatre, as well as selecting/arranging the poems
**Ruth Pieloor (The other actor is Ben Drysdale and you can probably spot him in the photo above.) The photo below shows Ruth adopting a Polonius stance, after the production.
***You obviously doesn’t mean you, dear reader.
PS Cottier 