Anne Kennedy picks Bill Manhire’s ‘An Inspector Calls’ at NZ Poetry Shelf for ‘playing favourites’. She praises ‘the jazzy sound of it, the funny rhyme at the beginning, the noir feel, the angular look’. Yes!
Readings on Lygon Street in Carlton used to sell the London Review of Books, and I’d pick up a copy every second month or so and read it at the pub across the road, on the corner of Lygon and Elgin Street. What was it called? I can’t remember. That, I’m sure, is where I first read Manhire’s poem - in that pub, printed in that paper - and the last line stuck with me since then. A Peter Steele poem from the same year - published in The Age? - ended, I’m sure, with the line ‘but this is Carlton’. I’ve never been able to find it since, and don’t know if I’ve imagined it now.
The pub is a vegan restaurant now, the tatty and cavernous second-hand book store that was next door to it burned down. Readings, last time I went, don’t stock periodicals:
There’s always a point at which a routine enquiry
turns into something else entirely
