Cirrus@Austlit

'The poems in In the Photograph unfold in domestic and suburban settings. They capture the exact moment of writing: how, from it, possibilities branch out into observation, memory, word play, analogy, fantasy, other artworks and other art forms. Cinema, photography, theatre, painting and music all move freely in and out of the poem’s frame.

'The writing revels in humour and narrative surprise: twists in syntax, jump cuts in time, jump cuts from one category of experience into another. In the Photograph is intimate, familial, often moving; it is also sparklingly clever and alert to the imaginative possibilities that can open out from the minutiae of days.' (Publication summary) 

'Australia has a stylish new poetry press. The two books reviewed here by Life Before Man, the poetry wing of Gazebo Books, preference book cover art and poem above all the usual paraphernalia: publishing details, barcodes, author notes – even the epigraph – are tucked into a back page, and there are no apparently distracting contents pages or page numbers. Most of the poems sit neatly on the right side of the page with a private blank beige page buffer. There’s orientation in a contents list, and I trust the poets have a choice about whether they want one. That said, there’s a holiday-like liberation in slipping through unmoored. It’s a subtle reading experience, but do these aesthetic somewhat precious innovations justify the use of extra paper?' (Publication summary)

'If I were to make gauche generalisations about the poetics of MTC Cronin, Jordie Albiston, and Michael Farrell, I might respectively write conceptual, technical, and experimental. But these established poets – each in their fifties, highly regarded – display fluency with all these descriptors, especially in their latest books.' (Introduction)