Jackie Saunders | Mineral Notes

NO THEME 15 editorial: Maxine Beneba Clarke

Artwork:
13 artworks by Jackie Saunders

Essays:
How to be a poet: Expert advice for aspiring and emerging poets
Approximating coherence: A reading of three collections on disability by Clarisse C. Culla
Poetry’s magic circle: ‘By the incantation of this verse’ by Thomas Ford
Weapons (Javelins) by Jonno Révanche
I’m your Andy by amira.h.
Uneasy dreams: A century of change in Victoria’s public swimming pools by Liz Taylor

Interviews:
‘Carry the sound of all the people we come from’: Nafanua Purcell Kersel in conversation with Anne-Marie Te Whiu
‘I’m a judgey, grudging reader’: Michael Winkler in conversation with Declan Fry
‘Gawking, profiling, fleshing out the cumslut’s saga’: Paz Deol in conversation with Moonyeka

Translations:
3 Stella N’Djoku translations by Julia Pelosi-Thorpe
3 A Hua translations by Xuelan Su
3 Lyudmyla Diadchenko translations by Padma Thornlyre

Chapbooks:
The most powerful man in the world by Rachel Ang
OZ Lingual: A Refugee’s Dictionary of Home by Mo Sudi
Red Dirt Poetry: 3 poets from the Northern Territory
Like God by Benedicte O’Leary Rutherford

Reviews:
Rot cycle – the long future: Jeanine Leane reviews Evelyn Araluen
Unconsenting to allegory: Jocasta Suzanne reviews Eunice Andrada and Amy Crutchfield
Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn reviews Anne-Marie Te Whiu and J. Marahuyo
Alex Creece reviews Toby Fitch’s Or: An Autobiography

New book:
Three Durians by Troy Wong, introduced by Eileen Chong

And 71 new poems selected by Maxine Beneba Clarke:
Hey Sandy
by John Layton
ACT 1: ASK AGAIN LATER
by Dewni Wijesinghe
To Christo Cooper
by Rhiannon Stevens O’Sullivan
Gratitude Journal
by Joyce Kristine Culong
Sforzando
by Zakeeyah Khan
Cohesion
by Ko Ko Aung
Gardening lessons
by Grace Rupcic
Lather
by Max Ryan
PSA
by Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
Dinosaur Phase
by Tyler Jackson Chappell
Headless Statues
by Ed Wright
Sunset Oil
by Elizabeth Tyson-Doneley
Bright Star
by Helena Pantsis
Reel
by Hanna Lucas
Rage
by Rhiannon Hall
Doves
by Joshua Kulseth
Old school archives
by Sela Ahosivi-Atiola
The Road, 2026
by Alvin Pang
Dallas Street, Orange Mound 1994
by Courtenay Kantanka
Dutchess County
by Hana Tsai
Lorikeets
by Chen Wang
Ploughman’s Lunch
by Lawrence Blake
The Thread
by Jennifer Compton
fermentation
by Sandra Tan
Another Fire Summer
by Michelle Visser
Year 12 Formal
by Damian Balassone
Never Flip The Fish
by Sim Xin Yi
A Boy With Paper Wings
by Antonio Montaine
First Concert
by Natalie Rose Dyer
A New Language
by Katrina Madarang
Slip carefully
by Isabel Greenslade
afterschool
by Saanvi Bishnoi
pretending
by Ken Krieger
Thirteen
by Jane Lockwood
The Shape a Family Left in the Air
by Pradeep R. Varadwaj
CHILDS PLAY.
by Arantza Garcia Ferrand
The singing, not the song
by Russell Buzby
What bothers me is…
by Thabani Tshuma
POLLY POCKET
by Tess Ezzy
kibam
by Maria van Neerven
rent poem
by Dominic Symes
Paradise
by Tusiata Avia
Atlas
by Nadia Niaz
The Swim (with Long Covid)
by Melanie Weckert
magnolia
by Pip Smith
The Shape of What Entered
by Topher Shields
after
by Zac Brennan
Casual war
by Kirwan Henry
Idobale
by Kelvin Kellman
Dual Moment
by Douglas Jones
the vowels in grieving
by Adegoke Adeola
Units Dispatched
by Cate Furey
whopping. great. waltz.
by Ana Constantinou
Pink Bubblegum On Your Lips
by A.C. Belandres
Olio of Concerns
by A-E Best
 
 

CORDITE POETRY REVIEW
ISSUE 121: NO THEME 15
Released: 14 August 2026


ESSAYS


Uneasy dreams: A century of change in Victoria’s public swimming pools

Friday, August 14th, 2026

One of my earliest memories is being trapped by an uncomfortably safe seatbelt into the back of a 1980s-hot family van and seeing a gigantic swimming pool come into view. This pool emerged, mirage-like, from a hazy horizon of eucalyptus trees and melting bitumen. I don’t remember first seeing the ocean, but I remember thinking the water at this place was similarly vast. Decades later, trying to place this vivid but untethered memory, I’m almost certain this was the Raymond West swimming pool – or swimming lake – in Shepparton, northern Victoria.

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REVIEWS

Alex Creece reviews Toby Fitch’s Or: An Autobiography

Wednesday, June 24th, 2026

The Or tree, the central totem in Toby Fitch’s Or: An Autobiography, grows understoreys and overstoreys; is fertilised with citational compost; cross-pollinates with Leslie Feinberg, with Judith Butler, with Travis Alabanza, with the wind-blistered/blustered queer body. The tree blossoms before the reader. It spills appendices into its rhizosphere, grafts its scions with collage and boasts its landscaped ‘toby-ary’.

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INTERVIEWS

‘Gawking, profiling, fleshing out the cumslut’s saga’: Paz Deol in conversation with Moonyeka

Friday, August 14th, 2026

Poet Paz Deol and artist Moonyeka had a conversation about the role of the whore and how workers transmute collective and individual rage. Paz writes with mythopoetic multiplicity, strangling men with umbilical cords, and peels back a few layers to revel in the humanness of their many-faced BDSM goddess embodiment.

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GUNCOTTON BLOG

, and
Submission to Cordite 122: THRUM

Friday, August 7th, 2026

Calling all thrumheads— — —

Every poem has an inherent frequency that hums through to the reader, a continuous drone between life and death. In weaving, thrums are the excess, unusable threads that still affect the ‘final’ work, discarded and put back together. We want to tap into that and curate a composition of ranging rhythm and leftovers. What sound does a poem on a page make? What are its scraps, its overflow?

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