We squabble about the money skimmed from our drudgery, the barbs lift enemies from our skin. At the end of shifts we are lathered in sweat and the day is night

Shastra Deo reviews new work by Rebecca Jessen, Cham Zhi Yi, David Stavanger and John Mukky Burke.

there is a place more real than desire as real as a train or a brick or a sarcoma, words are cleaner there, swaying whitely like feathers in warm air, where dignity whispers like silk skirts.

If we use current literary prizes as indicators of literary merit and as generators of reading lists, Australian poetry becomes a near ghost, dancing around the edges of the industry and only sometimes allowed in. A future that truly celebrates and champions excellence in Australian poetry is something to fight for and look forward to.

Please stop walking, and look at us/Raise your head and look at us/Raise your hands and look at us/Look at the life lost in our abode/Look at the tears our eyes have lost.

The moon rises above clouds— in the cold light, all is grey, and white. Night sky turns on a paper wheel.

CW: sexual violence.

On the bluff, by the lookout, off the path, in the scrub, no one is coming but us. And through the coin-operated binoculars it is clear we are going for it—in the surf, on a weekday, beyond the flags, we are creating a little churn within the great one

Westfield Chermy is one of our sacred sites / ehh gammin! / my grandparents came to Chermy in the early 50s / they had a house on Fee St / where my mother and her siblings grew up / they moved there after the two older children were born in Wacol / Mum was the second born in Fee St.

If it were a thousand-limbed Monkey Puzzle seeded against the odds by continental seabirds, or a Mesozoic Bunya Pine cast out from ancient lands it would be celebrated as a rarity, but its aetiology is unknown

It’s described as haunting. And I know it well. Led by our relatives, our ancestors, we do feverish work, memory work, detective work. But the compulsion is not just to fill in gaps. Doesn’t just stop at the finding.

New work by Franny Choi, essa may ranapiri, Tricia Dearborn, Zenobia Frost, Caitlin Maling and aj carruthers reviewed by Rae White.

I can’t get to sleep. Anne Carson is in my head.

Murray leaves a legacy of strong writing which, like much Australian literature, is tainted by indefensible principles and politics.

‘In Blakwork, Alison Whittaker literally and figuratively demonstrates the subtle – yet radical – ways in which poetry may influence perceptions, particularly with regards to the colonial romanticisation of so-called Australia. One of the ways she powerfully does this is by mimicking Dorothea Mackellar’s use of rhyme, and reveals how it creates nostalgia = settler ownership/entitlement = systematic racism.’ New work by Alison Whittaker, Lindsay Tuggle, Michael Farrell and George Mouratidis reviewed by Autumn Royal