As the flagship publication of a national poetry body, there are obvious constraints. The journal should be able to appeal to poetry readers across Australia, and poetry is a broad yet atomised church, so perhaps a tentative start was inevitable. From the grey-green and white sans serif of the cover, to the way the poems are laid out quietly on the page, in alphabetical author order, with some reviews at the back, it fits within a sober design tradition. A nine-page ‘spotlight’ on the short-lived Robert Harris breaks through the restraint, mainly because his poems still feel so startlingly fresh.

However, all is not quite business as usual: it is the newer, less established poets in this volume who provide the most interest and surprise. Misbah Khokhar, for example, has an arresting style, rather like Emma Lew without the unreality. Michelle Cahill and Stuart Cooke, in different ways, pull strangeness from the world into seemingly ordinary rooms, while Carmen Leigh Keates does the same thing the other way round: ‘There’s a rightness / in using one knife for everything / from cutting up a chop / to dividing the bulbs of daffodils.’

It will be interesting to see where these poets, and this journal, go from here. It is to be hoped that Australian Poetry Journal will find its own voice, as they have.