Bonny Cassidy

Multicultural sleep

A review of 'Fainting with Freedom' by Ouyang Yu

Insouciance may be an undervalued poetic quality. In this latest collection by the Chinese Australian poet, novelist, editor, and translator Ouyang Yu, the attitude of insouciance is also a cultural strategy. It reflects Yu’s own movements as a writer and citizen, that is, situated “in Oz or China / Or both.”[1]

Infidel poetics

A review of John Mateer's 'Unbelievers'

Reading John Mateer’s recent collection of poems, we experience a pleasantly alienating affect of suspension from emotional involvement, political certainties, and location. At the same time, Unbelievers, or The Moor is dominated by the condition of its speaker — a discursive, self-reflexive persona, which has been continuous throughout Mateer’s poetic oeuvre.

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