y separately published work icon Sydney Review of Books periodical issue  
Issue Details: First known date: 2021... October 2021 of Sydney Review of Books est. 2013 Sydney Review of Books
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Contents

* Contents derived from the , 2021 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
The Path, Anthony Macris , single work essay
Poems to Paint on a Wall, Ali Smith , single work review
— Review of Borderless : A Transnational Anthology of Feminist Poetry 2021 anthology poetry ;

'Things are pretty hectic right now. There’s a lot to do, and there’s a lot to think about: what is happening and what might happen. Yesterday I watched a literary event online while I did housework. It was a warm and joyful discussion, with five writers located across different continents, but the highlight for me was a remark made by host Alvin Pang, who said, ‘For some reason we are uncomfortable about being confused’ – or something very like that, I was washing up as I listened and had to dry my hands then search for a pencil and paper to write the quote down.' (Introduction)

Vélo Culture, Dallas Rogers , single work essay
The Long Climb, Greg Pritchard , single work essay
Syntactical Torque, Prithvi Varatharajan , single work review
— Review of Change Machine Jaya Savige , 2020 selected work poetry ;
'Approaching Jaya Savige’s third full-length poetry collection—a substantial and unusual work, one that appears nine years after his last, Surface to Air—I found myself thinking about what poetry is. Not all poetry reminds you of this question, and it is because Change Machine offers several models of poetry as a literary art that it occurred to me. Contemporary poetry collections typically employ a single model of poetry: for instance, as a method for formally resolving intense feeling/impression/thought using a first person voice, or as an artful exploration of language itself, often in the absence of narrative. Discussion around contemporary poetry can also suffer from under-definition. Readers and critics may label a piece of writing ‘lyrical’ or ‘poetic’ without arguing why, thereby implying that anything can be lyric or poetry. Over-definition may also occur, particularly by the academically-trained, who may insist on rigid demarcations between poetries with longer lineages and ‘non-poetries’ of experimentation (‘for experimentation’s sake’) and off-the-page performance. Western literary criticism has accrued taxonomically complex definitions of poetry over millennia. But as I read Change Machine, I thought loosely of the free-verse poem as a formally inventive puzzle, often in a first person voice, that subtly or radically conceals its ‘content’.' (Introduction)
How to Read the Road, Dave Drayton , single work essay
Imaginations Fed by Exile, Nathanael O'Reilly , single work review
— Review of Into the Suburbs : A Migrant's Story Chris Raja , 2020 single work autobiography ;

'Christopher Raja’s memoir, Into the Suburbs: A Migrant’s Story, takes readers on several kinds of journeys: from India to Australia (and later, back again); from the city into the suburbs; from childhood through adolescence to adulthood; and from ignorance and naivety to understanding and acceptance. Raja’s memoir has a limited narrative focus, with most of its 185 pages devoted to a seven-year period of Raja’s life between 1986, when his family emigrated from Calcutta to Melbourne, and 1992, his first year at the University of Melbourne. Nevertheless, the memoir deals with a wide range of subject matter, including immigration, belonging and unbelonging, cultural differences, racism, violence, adolescence, father-son relationships, exile, grief, sex, class, religion, masculinity and healing.' (Introduction)

Kin-as-Ethics : Experiments in Un/authorised Queer Essay Practice, Peta Murray , Francesca Rendle-Short , single work essay

Author's note: INSTRUCTIONS TO THE READER:

  • The different parts of this intervention into the essay may be read in any order in homage to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (1980).
  • It may also be diverting for the reader to apply alphabetical and/or numerical filters so as to read each author’s entries as discrete components, thus 1,2,3,4 etc (Francesca Rendle-Short) and A,B,C,D etc (Peta Murray).
  • A randomising instrument may also be applied for the experience of the essay willy-nilly.
  • The reader need feel no obligation to keep paragraphs or indeed sentences intact.

 

A Glovebox of One’s Own, Luke Carman , single work essay

'Henry Savery wrote the first novel published in Australia and he ended his story by slitting his throat ‘from ear to ear’ in a Port Arthur prison, convicted of returning to forgery to make ends meet. Another famous Henry once advised all budding Australian authors to flee for London or ‘study elementary anatomy, especially as applies to the cranium, and then shoot themselves carefully with the aid of a looking-glass’. When I worked at the University teaching creative writing, my friend and fellow scribbler Martin Edmond, who had the excuse that he was born in New Zealand, used to come in and lecture the wide-eyed innocent undergrads that ‘writers are the true proletariat’, which I took to be a romantic way of trying to scare the smart ones straight, but those sweet babes hardly ever got the message.' (Introduction)

Blank Space, Madeline Gray , single work review
— Review of Bodies of Light Jennifer Down , 2021 single work novel ;
Scraps, Huyen Hac Helen Tran , single work essay
Kin and Kitchen, Gabriella Florek , single work essay
The Shaping of a Storyteller : An Interview with Edison Yongai, Hawanatu Bangura (interviewer), single work interview
Loss Statement, Eda Gunaydin , single work essay

'I’m letting our succulents die. I was the only one keeping them alive. So I’ve forced myself to stop. I read in a book that a vital stage of healing for those who have sustained trauma is letting go of the caretaker roles they find oppressive. I have deleted from my calendar the reminder notification that says ‘water plant’. When I see the pots I force myself to look away, and resist the compulsion to run to their aid.' (Introduction)

Can the Magpie Speak?, Max Easton , single work essay

'For all the talk about western Sydney, has anyone decided where it begins and ends? Most would agree that it’s some way west of the harbour bridge, somewhat east of the blue mountains, and that wherever its boundary, there would be no ocean view. Before a time when ‘area of concern’ or ‘LGA of interest’ entered the parlance, you might have thought of the boundaries of western Sydney as somewhere between undrawn and imagined depending on your frame of reference. Before July 2021, maybe the closest anyone came to convincingly forming a consensus was the half-joke of the ‘Red Rooster Line,’ but it has become clearer now, hasn’t it?' (Introduction)

Coming of Age on Impulse, Thuy On , single work review
— Review of Small Joys of Real Life Allee Richards , 2021 single work novel ;

'The soft pastel-pink cover of Allee Richards’ debut novel features a helmetless young woman in a short green dress riding a pushbike, her dark hair blowing in the breeze. From her carefree demeanour and the title, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is a self-help book full of hokey affirmations about finding beauty in ephemeral moments. Small Joys of Real Life is, however, more nuanced and complex than this first impression might suggest.' (Introduction)

Severance, James W. Goh , single work essay

'And so when he began to travel for his studies, the boy found his mobility offered him a vantage point from which to relate to people and place. The boy would commute every weekday of his teenage years to and from his suburban home in the southwest and his selective school in inner city Sydney. After his final class of the day, he would catch the school bus to Central, the train from Central to Bankstown Station, and another bus from Bankstown to home. These trips, without which his formative years could not be related, took him farther and farther afield, on various detours, and into contact with different people each time such that these journeys offered him their own education. In this way, as he began asking for more from the world, the boy came to learn about proximity and distance.' (Introduction)

Kapwa : A Three Card Spread, Annie Brockenhuus-Schack , single work essay

'Mum has been gardening, a hobby since her teaching days in Atimonan. She stops at my window, peering up from beneath the wide brim of dad’s Akubra hat, to ask if I can help her log onto a Zoom meeting with her fellow sisters from Handmaids of the Lord. She spots a tarot deck on my bed.' (Introduction)

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