The nature of Sydney and the nature in Sydney, these are the foundations for much of Michael Aiken’s plain-speaking poetry, a verse that can be spare or lush as the city itself or as the city requires. Michael Aiken’s poems are minimalist in style and expansive in scope. He has the ability to infuse a poem with menace […]
Unaligned with any of Australian poetry’s factions, yet well aware of his audience, Rob Wilson enjoys writing his risk-taking, for-the-hell-of-it poetry. In an era of often overly-informative maximalism, Rob Wilson is succinct and measured − half-turned towards the world while auguring some newly burgeoning creation. Within the cathedral of Modernism, these poems are constructed like little […]
Kelly Pilgrim-Byrne lives in Perth, Western Australia, with her female partner of eighteen years and their daughter. Centred on the universal themes of family life and on issues of fertility/infertility, her poems are public works of plain speaking vigour. ‘For if we are a modern family,’ she says, ‘my poetry also shows we are breathtakingly similar to most families […]
Pete Spence (1946-) has achieved an enviable international acclaim for much of his work in painting, experimental film, visual poetry and of course the exuberant, engaging lyric verse. Pete has been one of the undiscovered heroes of Australian literature, for over four decades he has been quietly pursuing his own direction in this multiplicity of […]
With an inheritance from Ginsberg and the Beats, the Symbolists, the Russian Futurists and Artaud, Benjamin Frater (1979–2007) applied their traditions to his vision of the suburbs of south-west Sydney, producing, with his unique, visionary work, both on the page and in performance, some of the most total and committed poetry of his generation. His […]
