What then, can those poets who have regularly appeared in the magazines and compiled an impressive collection of poems do to get them into print in book form?

This group of writers formed its own co-operative, Pariah Press. I don’t know how the name came into operation, but the image of a small creature devouring all that comes into its path may not be quite accurate.

As I said, the co-operative was formed to publish the backlog of manuscripts, and often very fine manuscripts, they had to hand. It doesn’t aim for huge profits or bestsellers, nor can it cope, at present, with the mass of writing that exists outside the co-operative.

Their first two volumes, by Barbara Giles and Joyce Lee, sold well. Late last year the second batch, volumes by Lyndon Walker and Diana Kan, went out into the bookshops. (Which of course is another problem: so few shops stock poetry titles and most who do won’t look beyond the major publishers’ catalogues.)

What then, of the poetry published by this co-operative? How does it compare with the offerings already available on the market?

Since the demise of annual anthologies like A & R’s Australian Poetry and, more recently, Poet’s Choice, the reader has been forced to rely mostly on the editors of magazines and newspapers to give an indication of the current achievements of our poets. There has been no easy reference to gauge their performance.

The series of anthologies growing as an off-shoot from the Mattara Poetry Prize, of which Neither Nuked Nor Crucified is the fourth and most extensive, goes some way toward filling this gap. Not all practising poets enter competitions, though, and often the temptation is to present the judges with a long overpowering poem in which the delicate nuances found in shorter pieces may be obscured by sheer bulk.

The judging of a competition the size of Mattara (1984 saw 2600 entries!) must be a mammoth task. The compilation of an anthology which tries to be fair and representative of the entries received appears no less daunting.

Yet Chris Pollnitz has presented us with a very readable collection. The contributors are arranged alphabetically to stop squabbles and the offerings by unfamiliar names stand up well in the company of their better-known contemporaries.

There are impressive sequences by the winner, John A. Scott and by Andrew Taylor, Michael Jackson and Andrew McDonald; long poems by Les A. Murray, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Geoff Page and Geoffrey Lehmann; and a wide range of poems to suit most tastes in the book’s 180 pages.

Of the shorter pieces I was most impressed by those of Marc Radzyner and Susan Hampton.

This anthology, like its predecessors, gives a good overview of the nation’s poetry without attempting to be definitive.

Lyndon Walker’s ‘Twelve Gacclas: In memory of Federico Garcia Lorca’ or his ‘Seven poems about not travelling to America’ would not have been out of place in an anthology such as this for they are as impressive.

Walker has published several slim volumes before Singers and Winners, but his present book launches him as a poet of extensive talents. He displays a mastery of the short lyric and indicates, but never too obviously, how a wide reading in, and appreciation of fields not necessarily restricted to literature can enhance poetry and make it relevant to the general reader.

‘Postcards to Titik’ from Diana Kan’s second volume The Birdman is another sequence comparable to work in the anthology. I was also taken especially by her landscape sequence, ‘Winter poems, Dorking’ and the historical ‘Outward passage’.

These latest volumes from Pariah Press seem to indicate then, that these poets can stand side by side with those who have been judged to represent our best.

Their initiative in getting this series off the ground must be seen as a worthwhile venture and I await the publication of further volumes. They may not strip the major publishers to the bone, but their books do have bite!

Despite the supposed growth of interest in Australia as a multicultural society, much of the work being done in non-English languages and communities remains unknown by the wider community. Jim Kable here draws our attention to some of his work, and to the remarkable publisher who has worked to bring it to a wider audience