Prithvi Varatharajan

Change Machine is an ambitious collection which has two standout accomplishments. One is its formal eclecticism and dexterity; the other is its contribution to Australian poetics in drawing on local vernacular and literary influence, and subjecting these to international currents.

Reading the losses arrayed in this anthology to write this review – even as they were tempered by expressions of joy or hope at ecological resilience, or calls for action – I felt somewhat overwhelmed. In that state, I recalled the classic Freudian account of melancholy as a mourning of loss that becomes pathological, because it is perpetual.

There are a lot of memorable episodes and images in Displaced. But memorability isn’t enough, in my mind, for a memoir to stand out. Something that can elevate a memoir beyond an account of lived experience (however skilfully told), and help it flourish as literature, is when it evokes and explores the mechanics of memory: when the story is built on how remembering through writing works. Kinsella is conscious of this possibility of memoir.

Fish Song is essayistic in its purpose, returning to questions about human existence in the world, adding and taking away from its answers, shaping and reshaping a response.

In October 2017 I led twenty people around the inner-Melbourne suburb of Brunswick. It was a guided walk, but unlike any most in the group had experienced before. Mine was one of five walks in a public arts project aimed to facilitate aural attentiveness to our environment