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.
Utterly arrival
July 2, 2020
Very happy to see my book Utterly in the flesh, straight from Ginninderra Press. Utterly has many poems about the environment and climate change, as well as more personal concerns. It can be ordered here (dispatching from the 13th July). Or through Amazon, etc.
My second book during the virus lockdown, although things are gradually getting back to normal in Canberra. I will be holding a physical launch for Utterly later in the year, probably alongside Monstrous (see last post). It’s hard to plan anything at the moment, although we are having a much easier time here in Canberra than parts of Melbourne (not to mention various other countries).
Regardless of the launch situation, it’s a wonderful thing to hold one’s own book!
Monstrous arrival
June 4, 2020
My new poetry collection just arrived from the publishers, Interactive Press. As the title would suggest, it deals with some horrible creatures, from a re-working of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to killer garden gnomes, to sharks that eat suns, to aliens on a nineteenth-century lunar voyage. There’s also the dubious future of the game of cricket. There’s some disturbing stuff, and some humour too.
You can read more about the book here. And it can be ordered here. The print version is postage free to Australia and New Zealand, for a limited time.
Thank you to Kaaron Warren for the Introduction, and to Andrew Galan for providing a blurb. Also to Zoe Hartland for the suitably freaky gnome, and Geoffrey Dunn for the author photo.
I will be launching it sometime in Canberra (and possibly elsewhere), when gatherings become a little more feasible, and I hear that an on-line event for all IP books published this month will be held. David Reiter, the publisher, is organising that.
Of course I wish that the May launch could have occurred, but the book has won through, in all its manic strangeness. I can’t wait to read some of the poems aloud to an actual gathering!
Free anthology from Red Room Poetry
May 5, 2020
Because so many poets and poetry books have been affected by the coronavirus, Red Room Poetry produced an anthology of poems, called In Your Hands. Each is from a book which has been in some way touched by the current lockdown. (Even though Australia really has had it easy compared to many other countries, there have been many things cancelled.) My poem ‘The belly of the gnome’ is from a forthcoming collection called Monstrous (Interactive Press) which was to be launched this month, but now isn’t. It is on p23 of the In Your Hands anthology. This link will take you to the page where the free anthology can be downloaded. Enjoy.
I will be launching my book after the restrictions ease (don’t know the date yet!).
Tuesday microstory: Fittest (And poetry criticism)
August 29, 2017
This little story was the winner of the RedBeard Bakery 50 Words Microfiction Competition, at the Words in Winter Festival, Trentham, Victoria. It is up by link on the Word in Winter site, but I thought I’d post in here now. Prize winning entries in the other categories can be read here. The story had to be exactly 50 words long; hence the rather clipped tone! The theme was ‘Origins’.
Fittest
It was hidden in the op shop, behind fifteen copies of Fifty Shades. First edition Darwin. Original Origin.
He grabbed it from me, paid $5, and ran. I followed, did only what was necessary, and reclaimed the book.
It sold for £100,000.
That’s only fitting, if you think about it.
PS Cottier
I also have a micro-poem just published in Award Winning Australian Poetry (Melbourne Books) which is being launched in Melbourne on the 30th August, at the Athenaeum Library in Collins Street, at 6pm. I went last year and it was a great launch.
So, after two micro awards, I’m obviously getting big in a small way. I received $200 in vouchers from a great bakery in Trentham for the story, which probably works out at a large roll a word, and will have to drive down and stuff myself some glorious and calorific day.
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And on another note, over at Overland there’s an extended debate about whether ‘bush poetry’ deserves to be included in ‘Best of’ collections. I find it fascinating how this sort of debate tends to attract so many more men more than women; what is it about definitions and certainties? But, anyway, here’s my less than serious contribution.
Mayweather v McGregor was more entertaining
than trying to know poetry by explaining.
It’s all so pugnacious.
(Is rhyming contagious?)
Next week: post-structuralism summarised in a limerick, and semiotics in a haiku.
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And on yet another, far less frivolous note, send a thought to the home of real haiku, who just had a missile sent over their northern island.
PS Cottier 