If you think you know about John Glover (1767–1849) and his achievements, then think again. Read this publication and you will discover fresh and compelling information about Glover, his life in Australia, and his house and garden.

The book is also a great read. It reveals the author’s passion for his subject, his years of research, and the authority he brings to it. The emphasis is on an exploration of the paintings Glover produced at his Patterdale estate in northern Tasmania before his death at the age of eighty-two, as well as on the farm and house he created there.

The two previous authors who have written about this artist, John McPhee and David Hansen, have contributed much to our knowledge. This publication tells us much more, not only about Glover’s works, but also concerning the specific sites around Patterdale depicted in the paintings.

This is an entertaining family biography of Oxford philosophy from 1900 to 1960. Nikhil Krishnan has mined various autobiographies and reminiscences to craft a series of biographical sketches, anecdotes, and snapshots of philosophy at Oxford during the twentieth century. He has traced the connections, legacies, and disagreements among the philosophers, demonstrating how, over the years, pupils came to inherit the chairs of the professors who had trained them, passing on certain attitudes and practices, characteristic of the Oxford way of doing things.

It is also a defence of Oxford’s way of doing philosophy. Krishnan tells us how, when first tutored at Oxford, in 2007, he resented being asked, ‘Now exactly what do you mean by …?’ Coming from India, he thought of philosophy as poetic and plumbing depths. At Oxford, clarity was demanded, ‘common sense’ respected, and the ineffable distrusted. His conversion to the style culminated ‘in an affection and loyalty that are all the fiercer for having come so slowly’. He does not shy away from acknowledging Ernest Gellner’s attack on Oxford’s obsession with words rather than things or Marxist disgust at its lack of political engagement, but he wants to defend Oxford philosophy as ‘just one more stage in the slow evolution of a basically Socratic picture of philosophy, one that views philosophy as concerned with the pursuit of truth through rigorous, self-aware dialogue’.

Essentially a creative critical biography, The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck belongs to a greater project of re-examining Hollywood and decentring the phallocentrism of film history. It is the latest book in the series Women’s Media History Now! which focuses on the unexplored work of women in film. Established in 2009, this series became even more timely with the advent of #MeToo and with books such as Helen O’Hara’s call to arms, Women vs Hollywood (2021). The purpose of this new women’s media history is, according to Catherine Russell, to seek out its ‘absent’ or ‘lost’ women protagonists. Barbara Stanwyck (1907–90) may be neither absent nor lost. Indeed, as Russell admits, there is a wealth of material on Stanwyck, including monographs, biographies, and entire archives dedicated to her, and her films are still shown regularly in cinemas, on digital platforms, and on free-to-air television. Nonetheless, Russell argues that Stanwyck has been undervalued as a creative force in the films she helped make memorable. Hence the curious title of the book, which seems more suited to the study of a director than an actress. Russell sets out to show how Stanwyck ‘made’ films by making herself a master of her craft.

While Russell’s approach may be that of ‘the fan and the collector’, she nonetheless demonstrates how Stanwyck ‘challenged the gender conventions that dominated in every decade of her sixty-year career, and […] survived the doctrinal misogyny of the American film industry with her bank account intact’. Russell’s main reference point is Jane Gaines and Monica Dall’Asta’s landmark collection Doing Women’s History, which provides Russell with a critical-historical approach. The first step in this re-evaluation is to shift the focus from ‘women-as-spectacle to women’s agency’, particularly by recognising that acting is first and foremost a type of labour, and it is the image of Stanwyck as above all else a hard-working, independent woman with a shrewd head for business that Russell seeks to promote.

Andy Jackson is a poet, creative writing teacher, and a Patron of Writers Victoria. He was the inaugural Writing the Future of Health Fellow, and has co-edited disability-themed issues of Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal. Andy’s latest poetry collection is Human Looking (Giramondo, 2021), which won the ALS Gold Medal and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry.

Which poets have influenced you most? 

I’ve been shaped and invigorated the most by three poets – Sylvia Plath, Gregory Orr, and Adrienne Rich. From them I’ve tried to learn the power of harnessing an intensity of affecting, musical language to an intelligent solidarity. 

Are poems chiefly inspired or crafted?

For me, they are always both (or neither). Every poem I write is written out of a kind of urgent need. But they never arrive complete: poems are a wrestling (or reconciliation) between immersion and detachment. 

What prompts a new poem?

The inability to absorb or let go of an experience, feeling or thought, and a suspicion that there might be a voice that could hold it, a vessel which could be useful in some way.

What circumstances are ideal for writing poetry?

I’m tempted to say oppression, but that would be wrong. The quip ‘at least you’ll get a good poem out of it’ is too facile – suffering can take language away from us. What poetry actually requires is spacious time – the ability to allow the complexity of a situation to find its right shape.

Roughly how many drafts do you produce before ‘finishing’ a poem?

Early in my poetry writing life, I’d write ten or twenty different drafts. Now it’s half a dozen or so. I’m growing to accept, and appreciate, the seemingly imperfect. Being human is messy. Form always relies on deformity. 

Which poet would you most like to talk to – and why?

I always love talking with other disabled poets. There’s less that needs translating. 

Do you have a favourite Australian poetry collection?

Not of all time. For me, Australian poetry is so dynamic and vast (and my reading so partial), especially these days, that I can only feel comfortable saying ‘recent favourite’. That would be Alison Whittaker’s Blakwork.

What do poets need most: solitude or a coterie?

Either, but only if it reaches for the other. For me, I need solitude, but the kind of solitude that wants to connect with others. Other poets, I suspect, will need a crowd of affinity, along with the urge to retreat.

Who are the poetry critics you most admire?

I’m really uncomfortable with the word ‘critic’, which to me smacks of judgement, hovering overhead. I prefer engagement, owning up to being embodied and particular. In terms of writers on poetry, recently I’ve loved the essays of Prithvi Varatharajan, and the book Visceral Poetics by Eleni Stecopoulos.

If Plato allowed you to keep one poem or poetry collection in his Republic, what would it be?

I would intensely resent him for such a brutal limit. Part of the value of every poem is how it relates to the others. So, I’d have to pick the most capacious anthology I could find. Considering the ones on my shelf, that would be either Beauty is a Verb or The Rattle Bag. 

What is your favourite line of poetry? 

‘Without tenderness, we are in hell’ (Adrienne Rich, from ‘Twenty-one Love Poems: X’).

How can we inspire greater regard for poetry among readers?

I don’t think we need to burden poetry with a marketing strategy. I think of poetry as being as diverse (and as potent) as music. Not everyone likes free jazz, or hyper pop, or ambient, but everyone likes something. What will ‘inspire greater regard for poetry’ is readers being able to find the poems that move them. This means making poetry accessible, i.e. published, available, in many formats. Australia having a Poet Laureate should help.