Joan London 2008 The Good Parents (Vintage)

The cream white pain of a girl-woman’s skin, fleshed up and ready for scarring. The smirched recurring dreams of parents caught in their own traps. Claustrophobic love, ‘grubby and slippery and desperate’ (258). The First Floor Ladies Restroom only a temporary escape.

Cover detail: smoking youth
Cover detail: smoking youth

Tony Birch 2015 Ghost River (UQ Press)

Deep dive into the Merri and Yarra. Boys I would have worked to befriend and river I would have swum in. Emotive writing, water under change. Swirling flow of an ancestral serpent spitting out the chest-puffing of capital and welcoming the good-hearted.

 

'The urge to destroy is a creative urge too' (graffiti on right hand back strut)
‘The urge to destroy is a creative urge too’ (graffiti on right hand back strut)