Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Diamonds in the Rough : Cordite Poetry Review, Kent MacCarter, and the Australian Poetry Industry
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'An editor at a nationally-prominent, poetry-specific publishing house and I were recently talking about “the industry.” After reading my manuscript, she relayed that, despite the fact that she found the poems to be of “high enough standard,” her press would not be able to publish it. This was simply for the reason that the press wasn’t taking on any new work whatsoever. I was both surprised and dismayed, and not only for reasons of self-interest. This news came amidst the recent downturn in Australian poetry more generally, and to see yet another press fold made me concerned for all the poets I knew, and the hungry readers of poetry that I know exist.'  (Introduction)

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Works about this Work

Diamonds Bite Back : A Response to Robert Wood Jonathan Dunk , 2018 single work column
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , July 2018;

'Australian poetry tends to enjoy a scrap, whether or not there’s an actual point at stake – cf. what Ali Alizadeh called the ‘abundantly unnecessary poetry wars’ – but even so Robert Wood seems to have raised eyebrows for more substantial reasons in a bizarre piece published in the Los Angeles Review of Books last week.

'Briefly, Wood manages to turn a review of Kent MacCarter’s recently released collection California Sweet, published by Five Islands Press, into a jeremiad bemoaning an apparent crisis of opportunity instigated by his own experience of rejection from ‘a nationally prominent, poetry-specific publishing house.’ Inauspicious, but it gets worse. From the sweeping and fatuous claim that ‘individual poems and reviews of poetry books are no longer in Australian newspapers’ – instantly corrected on twitter by The Australian’s poetry editor Jaya Savige – we move on to an old-fashioned cultural cringe:

But I do not know of any Australian poetry press that is a hot ticket in global, literary markets.'

(Introduction)

Diamonds Bite Back : A Response to Robert Wood Jonathan Dunk , 2018 single work column
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , July 2018;

'Australian poetry tends to enjoy a scrap, whether or not there’s an actual point at stake – cf. what Ali Alizadeh called the ‘abundantly unnecessary poetry wars’ – but even so Robert Wood seems to have raised eyebrows for more substantial reasons in a bizarre piece published in the Los Angeles Review of Books last week.

'Briefly, Wood manages to turn a review of Kent MacCarter’s recently released collection California Sweet, published by Five Islands Press, into a jeremiad bemoaning an apparent crisis of opportunity instigated by his own experience of rejection from ‘a nationally prominent, poetry-specific publishing house.’ Inauspicious, but it gets worse. From the sweeping and fatuous claim that ‘individual poems and reviews of poetry books are no longer in Australian newspapers’ – instantly corrected on twitter by The Australian’s poetry editor Jaya Savige – we move on to an old-fashioned cultural cringe:

But I do not know of any Australian poetry press that is a hot ticket in global, literary markets.'

(Introduction)

Last amended 26 Jul 2018 09:44:02
https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/reviews/diamonds-rough-cordite-poetry-review-kent-maccarter-australian-poetry-industry/ Diamonds in the Rough : Cordite Poetry Review, Kent MacCarter, and the Australian Poetry Industrysmall AustLit logo Los Angeles Review of Books
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