Vol.3 No.3 Sep 2009

KIRSTY GUNN
on Helen Garner
This is a merciless, brutal little book. It can be read in a single sitting easily enough yet by the time one has reached the end the feeling is that you’ve carved your own heart out and then eaten it.  

JACKIE WILLS
Mackerel shoal
The sea boiled with mackerel
inches from the shore –

it was thundery, a glassy July evening,
gulls dived, boys ran shouting with rods.

VINCENT O'SULLIVAN
Daddy Drops a Line
My father used to say if there was truth anywhere, we had to make it for ourselves. A dubious enough thing to tell children who want certainty from their parents, not that proviso for self-discovery.

As for symptoms, Dr Jung
A friend my own age says “God”
as a kind of code for whatever resists
the shambles we stand to our hocks in,
our last ditch human sleighting
to emboss love a little across the blades

ANITA MASON
on Keki Daruwalla
“A historical novel is neither history nor fiction,” asserts the author (a poet, former policeman and chief of Indian intelligence).

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