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Survey Articles Contents page

This page provides links to articles that survey the Australian poetry scene at various times, and other items of documentary interest including book reviews, flyers, advertisements and so forth.

1971 Advertisement from New Poetry magazine, October 1971. Prism Poets: Three New Titles Now Available! The Black Abacus, by Robyn Ravlich; The Rumour by Robert Adamson; The Lost Forest, by Charles Buckmaster; and The What of Sane by Tim Thorne.

1971 ‘The Poetry Explosion’ — Virginia Osborne introduces six talented young Sydney poets, Vogue Australia, April 1971 (Robert Adamson, John Tranter, Michael Dransfield, Martin Johnston, Terry Larsen, and Peter Skrzynecki.)

1974 John Tranter surveys recent poetry publication in Australia, and reviews six chapbooks from Gargoyle Poets:

Graham Rowlands, Stares and Statues
Alan Wearne, Public Relations
Richard Packer, The Powerhouse
Peter Annand, The Long-Distance Poets’ Entry into Heaven
Antigone Kefala, The Alien
Rae Desmond Jones, Orpheus With a Tuba;

... and reviews nine poetry magazines: Canberra Poetry, The Saturday Club Book of Poetry, Fitzrot, Mere Anarchy, Parachute Poems, Makar, Contempa, etymspheres, and The Ear in a Wheatfield.

1975 John Tranter reviews The First Paperback Poets Anthology (1975), edited by Roger McDonald

1978 John Tranter reviews twelve books of poetry in Meanjin magazine:

Robert Adamson, Cross the Border
Laurie Duggan, East
John Forbes, Tropical Skiing
———, On the Beach
Philip Hammial, Foot Falls & Notes
———, Mastication Poems
———, Chemical Cart
———, Hear Me Eating
Rae Desmond Jones, Shakti
Nigel Roberts, In Casablanca for the Waters
Vicki Viidikas, unpublished manuscript
Alan Wearne, New Devil, New Parish
Laurie Hergenhan (editor), Australian Literary Studies, Volume 8, Number 2, October 1977

1979 Dorothy Hewett: ‘The Voyage Out from Xanadu’ — On the poetry of Robert Adamson and Michael Dransfield. First published in New Poetry vol 27 no 1, 1979. Seven printed pages long.

1979–80 This playful flyer advertising the publication of The New Australian Poetry (Makar Press, 1979), and Surfers Paradise magazine number two, was distributed with an issue of New Poetry in late 1979 or early 1980. The HTML version (click the green button to the left) imitates the layout and typestyle of the original, which goes on for a full A4 page, of which a small part is reproduced below:

Drugs and sex weren’t enough! In the turmoil of the late 1960s a new generation of writers burst onto the scene. Heedless of restraint, and filled with urges they themselves only half-understood, they wanted — and demanded — more! Much more!

Click this link to see the complete flyer. . .

1980: Martin Harrison: A Note on Modernism: for The New Australian Poetry
Part 1 [first published in New Poetry vol 27 no 4, 1980], a six-page review of The New Australian Poetry, an anthology of twenty-four of the more experimental poets of the 1970s, which places these new developments against a background of conservative cultural attitudes.

1980: Martin Harrison: A Note on Modernism: for The New Australian Poetry
Part 2 [first published in New Poetry vol 28 no 2, August 1980], a twelve-page continuation of his review of The New Australian Poetry.

1980 silk-screen poster for a poetry reading at Exiles Bookshop, Taylor Square, Sydney, 19 June 1980, designed and printed by John Tranter. The speech balloons feature the opening lines of Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl’.

http://april.edu.au/2surveys/index.shtml