The fiction and creative non-fiction are lively. Morris Lurie’s narrative with its infectious repetition is brilliant: ‘… Of being mad. Of going mad. Of slipping into madness ...’ Ouyang Yu also stars with a creative essay on being a ‘double expat’ and a poem entwining Chinese and Australian mythology. Poetry is playful and appealing. Sheryl Persson’s ‘Ostrich Eggs’ is a witty Hollander-esque shape poem; John Carey’s ‘tactile’ has the memorable final line: ‘… the secret of balancing / a dozen tasks in the course of a morning / with a funambulist’s sangfroid and poise’; and Peter Rose’s ‘The Cherry’ hooks the reader with its ingenious referencing of Bishop’s poem ‘The Fish’ and Patricia Highsmith’s gin-soaked afternoons via the consumption of a cherry in January.

Editor Nicholas Birns is ‘hopeful of announcing a new publishing agreement that would afford greater exposure for the journal via online databases’. This would allow the fugue of voices in Antipodes to reach an even more diversified global readership.