Month: March 2025

Ron Riekki | WE’RE SITTING AROUND A TABLE NOT FAR FROM THE RUSSIAN BORDER

US author Ron Riekki’s writing takes the measure of topics some might prefer not be discussed – protest, authoritarianism, immigration – as well as issues of which there’s too little discussion – prisons, overpopulation…. Below, references to some recent work …

                                                                      and
the Chinese artist talks about holding up signs in Hong
Kong that were all white, not allowed to have signs with
actual words, so this haunting image, this effective image
of hundreds of artists and writers and protestors and students
holding up these white signs, ghost signs meant to haunt
politicians …

 

(from Riekki’s poem ‘WE’RE SITTING AROUND A TABLE NOT FAR FROM THE RUSSIAN BORDER’, published 29th March 2025 in ‘Verse News‘)

 

And in an unrelated interview, published in ‘The Adirondack Review‘ of Winter 2021, Riekki’s queried about the effect of the pandemic on his work. He replies that he’d been interested in writing a pandemic book previous to covid, but ‘Then the pandemic happened and I realized it was too late.’

These days, ‘if you pitch a pandemic-related book, you have to jump into the monstrous slush pile.  But it’s been making me think about other issues that are right in our face that people are ignoring right now, but that we better put a light on early before things explode.  I wonder what it is that we’re missing that’s right in front of us now.  Maybe overpopulation?  The prison system?  I kind of feel that the next thing that’s going to be a massive concern for us is going to be those two things.  It’s probably a reason why I try to write about both….’

 

(Ron Riekki wrote U.P.: a novel (Great Michigan Read nominated) and edited The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book), Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (2016 Independent Publisher Book Award), and And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017 (Michigan State University Press, 2017.)

RIP David Bircumshaw

Sorry to learn of the loss of English poet David Bircumshaw recently. Had thought I might get to catch up with him on a visit to England mid last year, but it didn’t eventuate. We published a couple of issues together (British and Australian versions) of a short-lived poetry journal (‘The Chide’s Alphabet’) years back; can’t recall whether the British original was print or online (or both), the Australian issues were modest print versions. RIP

 

Olga Tokarczuk: ‘It’s autumn in our countries now, the foggiest, darkest and most rainy season. A time of year when it’s easy to lose hope and to give in to negative thoughts.’

In one of your poems you write about the spring that will come. On our geographical latitudes,
where for a long time the winter covers the world in darkness and cold, that’s a powerful
metaphor. I understand it well. The spring always comes.

(Olga Tokarczuk ~ from a letter to Kaciaryna Andrejeva, imprisoned in Belarus | more at Pen International)

 

‘The Clinking’ by Susie Greenhill review – a stunning, devastating debut

(By Bec Kavanagh … ‘The Guardian’, Friday 21st March 2025)

The Richell prize-winner’s novel, set in a near-future lutruwita/Tasmania, asks what does it mean to have hope in the face of climate crisis?

When Susie Greenhill won the 2016 Richell prize for emerging writers, her writing was described by one of the judges, Michaela McGuire, as “electric, and profoundly affecting”. Her resulting novel’s release into the landscape of 2025 only makes it more so.

This stunning, devastating debut starts slowly, easing us into the future where the novel takes place, a future marked by global heating and mass extinction. Tom, a scientist working to find and preserve the fading vestiges of plant and wildlife, brings home specimens and treasures to share with his daughter, Orla, and his wife, Elena, at their home in the foothills of Lutruwita/Tasmania. Feathers, skeletons and fins, “eggshells of the palest blue, a tiger snake’s translucent, papery skin”. But this poetic whimsy belies loss, as Tom is forced to reckon daily with the disappearance of the plants and animals he loves.

(Read the full article at ‘The Guardian’)

(PS I’ve changed the capitalisation of ‘Lutruwita’, from a small ‘l’, above.

I had occasion a couple of times last year to question the word’s capitalisation – on the back cover of Thomas Forest Bailey’s new poetry collection, ‘Lashings of Whipped Dream: spoken words ~ ink on paper’ for one, where Thomas had originally spelt it as ‘lutruwita’. The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre offers a map on its website listing the Aboriginal names of over 200 places in palawa kani, the language of Tasmanian Aborigines so I was comfortable at making the change, nevertheless rang the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in Hobart to confirm.  Since then, I note that initial capital letters for place names in palawa kani have become standard practice.                                            Ralph)