AustLit

'The recent anthology Contemporary Australian Poetry, published by Puncher & Wattmann), purports to be “both a survey, and a critical review, of Australian poetry between 1990 and the present”. It’s not. In fact, it’s not even close. How can it be when the four editors completely omitted a genre of Australian verse that has enjoyed a great deal of popularity during this period?' (Introduction)

'One way to read poetry in Australia is to see it as being in a constant state of conflict. For the most part, this is a cold war where poets argue with poets in very poetic ways – the outcry about Geoff Page’s Southerly blog probably counts as the outer limit of this activity, which manifests more often in email exchanges, reviews that are compliment sandwiches or gossipy asides. Sometimes this breaks out into the open, as we saw when John Kinsella took out a restraining order against Robert Adamson and Anthony Lawrence and which the Sydney Morning Herald covered in 2006.' (Introduction)