A Review of Imago Literary Journal

moving from the light, but meaningless "Squid Haiku", through the prosy, and bland "Cultural Perspectives In Retail Marketing", which leaves the reader with empty images. There is a hint that the poem is trying to equate shopping malls with the decline in the morals of children, but it isn’t realised. "Static" is not a badly written poem. The moment of anticipation coupled with the natural science of static is pleasant enough, but never reaches that transformation or sense of greater meaning that good poetry aspires to. "The Depressilympics" tries to be cute and clever, and might have raised a chuckle during the Olympic hype last year, but out of that context it just seems self-indulgent – like one of those e-mailed bits of humour that get circulated. Minor puns like “Life. Be Out of it.”, and “direct aid for AIDs, just aren’t enough to save this piece.

Although a little dated, "New Year’s Day 2000" is a more evocative piece, with its images of timelessness under a midnight sky: “It might have been,/and might be yet/New Year’s Day, 1000.” But "The Bird Knew Better" is also a nice eulogy piece, perhaps a little personal in its references to Queensland Uni and Wordsmith’s Café which limits its universal appeal, but most people can relate to a feeling of loss, and the physical imagery of laying a wreath, and the wordless poem of a bird “eclipsing all our online lamentations.” Other poems vary in intensity and in overall power, from the complex and overly image heavy "Inferno" to the quaint portraits which seem to lack deeper meaning, including "Hail Storm" and "Visiting Poet". The "Daughter’s Liturgy" is strange, combining as it does a religious liturgy with a visit to a rave club. This could work perhaps reworked into a prose form, but as a poem, its mixture of colloquialisms and Greek Orthodox chant simply doesn’t work.

While individually some of the poems are less powerful than others, there is a nice balance of formal and informal; classic and colloquial, experienced and novice poets, and the balance in poetry works well in the journal. The two poems of Jan Owens lends a greater authority to the experience of her work than the single poems of the others, and it would be nice to have a few poems from each author.

The reviews are also well balanced, including books spanning a broad literary context from Eric Rolls’

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