Lost Edens. "Other Gravities" by Kevin Gillam and "A Tasmanian Paradise Lost" by Graeme Hetherington [review]

Abstract

Hetherington's poems are black poems in terms of their fixation with dark histories and fascinating compulsions. As the final poem concedes, the investigatory re-imaginings may be bleak but they provide solace, too — a take on history and identity that is communal and personal. It is a powerful collection. Kevin Gillam’s "Other Gravities" presents a very different mode of writing. In these short poems, with predominantly short-line forms, he offers glimpses. This book, too, allows the varieties of Eden lost.