Refugee Kosovo by X. Duong

Integration: The Magazine for Multicultural & Vietnamese Issues, $15 pb, 130 pp

Prompted by the ‘exodus of Kosovars’ last year and ‘the image of a young girl resting her crying head on her crying mother’, Duong interrogates the making of refugees of war, the level’ care’ in plans to suffering where even the ground is victim. The references that accompany some of the poems, such as ‘The distance feet’, reinforce the journalistic tone of his poetry. However, he has captured· particularly well the sense of vulnerability multiplied by all the parts of us that can be hurt. ‘The feet’ that ‘have walked a thousand miles / they have actually been carried on the back / on the lap, on the shoulders / under the armpits / all the way / the feet of the baby’.

In drawing images of the brutal machinery of ‘War’, Duong focuses on the ‘shame’ that is heaped on the count of physical pain. He laments the inability of onlookers to understand that civil war refugees have a right to ‘want to go back home’, to ‘complain’ about bathing once a month. The real ‘shame’ is ‘to exist without living’ or, worse, to be interred ‘an unrecognisable body’. He gives new meaning to what American Civil War General W.T. Sherman said of war: ‘it is all hell’.

Ten thousand fcuking (sic) monkeys by Justin Clemens

Workshop 3000, $15 pb, 76 pp

In his début collection, Clemens attempts to let loose the ‘monkey within’ to comment on obscurity in art, love and politics, the slipperiness of words and meaning. He creates ‘ten thousand’ monkeys who are erudite but not clever with it, full of forced rhyme and little rhythm. Their aim is to ‘make making figures a blasphemy / Of derivations’. They could be a sort of inverted Athenian Council of Five Thousand (finally getting off the ground) times two.

There are some promising satirical pieces here, such as ‘Ten Thousand Fcuking Monkeys’ and ‘The Shattering of the Operation’. As a book, it is the art of it that takes the edge off the case to turn the whole idea into serious play or simply childish fun successfully. The convoluted language of too much monkey business overtakes the game-play. I found it hard work maintaining belief in what Clemens appears to be doing. But perhaps the main problem is really one of purpose and voice – it is difficult to determine whether or not the monkeys are meant to be consciously critical of the charade or willing participants in it. Playing the harlequin to demonstrate the absurdity of the act is tricky theatre.

925 edited by Jelte

Collective Effort Press, Free pb, 148 pp

In this final issue of 925, its editors and contributors celebrate the magazine’s twenty-one-year history. Divided into three sections (‘ring work’, ‘responsible economic management’ and ‘conversations at work’), it is an anthology of contributions to 925 between 1978 and 1983. It highlights issues of work safety, desire and material value, definitions of ‘labour’. More significantly, Jelte’s selection draws attention to the dilemma of a need for meaningful employment and the failure of ‘work’.

Many poignant statements are made in poetry, prose, photography, and graphic art. Among them are Val Thompson’s ‘The potato eye picker’, Tony Birch’s ‘Father’,’ Allan Jurd’s ‘“Putting acid’” on’, Michael Wilding’s ‘Untitled’ about ‘new security measures’ at a university and Bonny’s ‘Shiftwork’. The volume also includes some well-known pieces – Jelte’s photo-poem on clocks and time, PiO’s ‘Sonnet’ on the sickie and Jas H. Duke’s controversial ‘Shit Poem’. Bound to be a reader’s favourite is Peter Jones’s ‘It’s too good a day to be working.’