A Nest of Bunyips

Bunyip: (say ‘bunyuhp)
noun 1. an imaginary creature of Aboriginal legend, said to haunt rushy swamps and billabongs.
2. Obsolete a full-grown beast (def. 2) which has remain unbranded.
3. Obsolete an impostor. [Aborig.; Wathawurung]

Bunyips, apparently, are nocturnal creatures known to haunt waterholes. It’s been suggested that there are more than a couple of Australian poets to whom this description might apply. This, certainly, is a rich poetry issue, a nest-full of the finest new writing, from Jennifer Maiden, John Kinsella, Maria Takolander, Michael Farrell, Craig Powell, Michael Sharkey, Kate Middleton and many others (several of them quite tee-totalling), plus essays by Kevin Hart on A.D. Hope, Lachlan Brown on Kevin Hart, Michael Buhagiar on Christopher Brennan, Suzie Cardwell on John Scott, Mike Ladd on poetry and radio, John Jenkins on poetry and film, Michael Ackland on Murray Bail, and, here and in The Long Paddock, further bunyipery of the highest order: reviews of many new poetry collections, an interview with Laurie Duggan, and a striking selection of new short fiction.

CONTENTS

POETRY

Michael Sharkey, Where the Bunyip Builds its Nest: Five Centos
Jennifer Maiden, The Pearl Roundabout
Greg McLaren, Gas Works at Little Manly Point with mother and child
Philip Hammial, Duffer
Maria Takolander, Bestiary
John Kinsella, Jam Tree Gully Poems
Peter Kirkpatrick, The Angels in the House
Sarah Jane Barnett, Marathon Men
Dimitra Harvey, Sport
Tom Coverdale, The Gulf Reclaimers
Michael Crane, Poetry and Violins
Kate Middleton, Gretel, Hansel
Kevin Gillam, when they fell
Bruce Dawe, Losing Bella
Peter Bakowski, Friends since high school
Thomas Shapcott, Mt. Glorious
Andrew Burke, The Name of the Game, Dunes at Night
Julie Maclean, cassowary
D.J. Huppatz, Surplus
Michelle Leber, A 27th Century BCE Chinese Inventory of the Bird empire
Michael Farrell, Abstract Alcohol
Margaret Bradstock, Ask not
Peter Dawncy, homeward
Craig Powell, “and catch the heart off guard”, Fort Da
Michael Brennan, Afterlife, MDPV
Corey Wakeling, Jim Courier the Third
Graham Kershaw, Ingenium 
Ian Gibbins, Knuckey Street, Darwin

ESSAYS

Michael Ackland, Behold Burton’s Tomb: Mortality and Escapism in Murray Bail’s Homesickness
Kevin Hart, Susannah Without the Cherub
Michael Buhagiar, F.C.S. Schiller and Brennan’s The Burden of Tyre
John Jenkins, Poetry as Cinema
Mike Ladd, Notes Toward a Radio Poetics
Suzie Cardwell, Kristevan Intertextuality and John Scott’s Warra Warra
Lachlan Brown, The Edges and Voices of Silence in Kevin Hart’s Wicked Heat

STORIES

Matthia Dempsey, One Week Gone
Greg Bogaerts, The Market Porter
Eliza-Jane Henry-Jones, Green Cupcakes
Liz Gallois, Playground Duty on Little Bourke Street

REVIEWS

Craig Powell on Francis Webb, Collected Poems, ed. Toby Davidson
Kate Middleton on Kate Kennedy, The Taste of River Water
Corey Wakeling on Gig Ryan, New & Selected Poems
Duncan Hose on Benjamin Frater, 6am in the Universe
Michelle Cahill on Elizabeth Campbell, Error
Andrew Carruthers on Geoff Page, A Sudden Sentence in the Air
Bonnie Cassidy on Jaya Savige, Surface to Air

And in the Long Paddock…

POETRY

Rae Desmond Jones, Ash Wednesday
Stuart Barnes, Cocoon
Andrew Burke, “The birds are still in flight…”
Liam Byrne, soviet kitsch
Peter Dawncy, ruins
Michael Farrell, Telephone
Liam Ferney, NC-17
Ian Gibbins, Dr Korsakoff and Colleagues Report
Philip Hammial, Dear Sisters and Brothers
D.J. Huppatz, Fuzzy-Wuzzy Angels
Greg McLaren, The rusting land…, from Broken
Ng Mei-kwan, Rainstorm (trans. Bonnie S. McDougall)
Brenda Saunders, Looking for Bulin Bulin
Tegan Schetrumpf, The Cotton Mill
Barnaby Smith, Imbalance
Corey Wakeling, The Vault

STORIES

Annabel Duckworth-Smith, The Trick with the Hat and the Dove
Mark O’Flynn, The Isthmus
Sue Woolfe, To Kill or to Hit, extract from a work in progress

REVIEWS

Pam Brown on Louis Armand, Letters from Ausland
Melinda Bufton on Best Australian Poems 2011, ed. John Tranter
Elizabeth Campbell on Mal McKimmie, The Brokenness Sonnets I-III
Gerald Keaney on Luke Davies, Interferon Psalms
Tom Lee on Astrid Lorange, Eating and Speaking
Corey Wakeling on Duncan Hose, One Under Bacchus
Petra White on Fiona Wright, Knuckled
and Libby Hart, This Floating World

INTERVIEW

Laurie Duggan, with Fiona Scotney, 17 December 2010

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