Gig Ryan

‘Art requires, a long look’

So much has been written on the Heide group of artists, Nolan, Tucker, Hester, and their patrons John and Sunday Reed that it is hard to imagine anything more could be added. π.ο.’s Heide however, though holding this group of communalism, camarade...

Rae Desmond Jones (1941-2017): ‘The fractured poetry / of commerce and power’

'Rae Desmond Jones has stated that for him poetry and politics are mutually contradictory pursuits, yet his poetry, concerned with how people and classes interact, is, like all art, necessarily political.'

Catcher and Sifter: Net Needle by Robert Adamson

'Net Needle indicates in its title the poem as net, an often-recurring, even talismanic word throughout Robert Adamson's work. The net is both catcher and sifter, with the needle able to repair and renew. Net Needle then is also the constantly rev...

Subtle persuasive protest: Liquid Nitrogen by Jennifer Maiden

From her superbly accomplished first books Tactics and The Problem of Evil, to this, her sixteenth book of poetry, Maiden’s style has evolved from bitingly tense portraits and narratives with echoing dialogues and soliloquies, constructed in heigh...

Gig Ryan and difficulty