With another year concluded at Bowen Street Press, we proudly present our new edition of the BSP Review.

BSP Review is a collaborative project between RMIT’s second year Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing) and first year Master of Writing and Publishing students. As with previous years, the collaboration focused on responses to art. In the creation of their work, the Creative Writing students were encouraged not to simply write about art, but rather to write with, through and alongside art.

Our authors drew inspiration from The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s (ACCA) exhibition ‘Five Acts of Love’, curated by Dr Nur Shkembi OAM. This exhibition explored themes within Sufi philosophy, presenting them through five core experiences:

‘Five Acts of Love’ offers space for reflection and an opportunity to delve into profound internal and external truth telling through the exploration of various acts of love. The exhibition revolves around five acts: resistance, revolution, intimacy, memory and annihilation. Each act of love circles around what we ultimately relinquish when we love—and are loved.

ACCA website

The title for the 2025 BSP Review, sunder, draws inspiration from an excerpt of a poem by Rumi, which accompanied one of the artworks:

We came whirling

Out of nothingness

Scattering stars

Like dust

It sunders

All attachments

Rumi, Fragments / Ecstasies, translations by Daniel Liebert.

To ‘sunder’ is to separate, part, divide, sever. We believe our authors have severed from expectation, from the familiar or ordinary. They were prompted to take risks, to experiment and push their writing to new destinations—and we are proud of the ways they have achieved this.