Our partners

Australian Book Review is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. ABR is supported by the South Australian Government through Arts South Australia.

We also acknowledge the generous support of our university partner Monash University; and we are grateful for the support of the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund; Good Business Foundation (an initiative of Peter McMullin AM), Australian Communities Foundation, the City of Melbourne; and Arnold Bloch Leibler.

Arts South Australia

Each poem, each donnée, each poetic state surely represents a kind of refusal – a retreat from conventional ways of perceiving life, family, nature, relationships, society, mortality. What are we doing as poets when we succumb to a poem but seeking unique metaphors for reality – ones never shared, never conceived before, too weird for public circulation.

In a quotatious mood, Rose drew on W.H. Auden (‘Alienation from the Collective is always a duty’) and James Baldwin: ‘All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.’ Rose concluded:

Telling the whole story, yes, vomiting it up – not just half of it either, and certainly not the savoury or orthodox bits – is a writers’

Sydney Modern

responsibility. It’s the promise of such that admirable publications like Verge enable writers and thus readers to explore.

Reader survey

Every couple of years ABR invites readers to complete a short survey. We always enjoy hearing from our readers. The 2023 reader survey will open on 15 May. Your feedback – positive or negative – helps us to form a sense of what’s working in the magazine and how we might improve it.

What do you think of our design, our website, our podcast, our balance of genres? What and whom do you most enjoy reading in ABR? Which new features should we introduce? The survey is totally anonymous – unless you want to be in the running for a five-year complimentary digital subscription to ABR (in which case we will need your name and email address). g

Letters

Dear Editor, Sydney Modern is a building better suited to wedding receptions than to art (ABR, April 2023). Even its much vaunted Yiribana gallery of Aboriginal art fails. Traditional Aboriginal art is best displayed in natural light, which the new gallery does not do. Much of the overall display is not of museum standard – that is a polite description for its ‘art’ on view. The building itself does not suit its position.

Neal Morrisey (online comment)

Eleanor Catton

Dear Editor,

In his review of Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (ABR, April 2023), Michael Winkler leaves out the fact that this book is wonderfully readable, full of brilliantly observed characters, and, above all, tremendously witty. I devoured it over a few days. (I do admit to skipping over some of the character’s ideological posturing, but it was necessary to the story and its wit.)

Desley Deacon (online comment)

Plibersek’s ‘demotion’

Dear Editor,

Why does Patrick Mullins consider an appointment as minister for the environment a ‘demotion’ in his review of Margaret Simons’s biography of Tanya Plibersek (ABR, April 2023)? After the prime minister, it is the most existentially important portfolio.

John Carmody (online comment)

Tightly held shires

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to Shannon Burns’s review of Who Cares? by Eve Vincent (ABR, April 2023). In my local shire in Central Victoria, on any night one in five houses are unused. The rental crisis in many parts is a wealth crisis. The well-heeled wield their assumed right to unfettered affluence as a cudgel with which to beat senseless the less fortunate. Meanwhile, Australian intellectuals mutter into their teacups and otherwise remain mute.

Patrick Hockey (online comment)

Tyrannous sound

Dear Editor,

Thank you, Debi Hamilton, for ‘The Tyranny of Sound’ (ABR, April 2023). It raises such important questions for public discussion. Brava!

Sarah Day (online comment)

Between the lines

Dear Editor,

Thank you, Lee Christofis, for your review of Don Quixote (ABR Arts, March 2023). As a dancer in the original production and film, and not yet having seen this current production, I am thrilled to read your review. I believe I have read between the lines in a couple of your comments. But I so appreciate your colourful and critical appraisal, clearly written by someone who liked this production, and who knows his dance and music.

We have just farewelled a music director who was fiercely independent, who helped take the Australian Ballet on big journeys, but was not always popular with artists and audiences. I hope the new one can maintain independence while breaching that gap between his own artistic integrity, directors’ wishes, and dancers’ needs.

Graeme Hudson (online comment)

New subscriber

Dear Editor,

I was not mistaken in subscribing to ABR. Such absorbing and interesting articles.

Simon Browne (online comment)