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y separately published work icon Domestic Interior selected work   poetry  
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 Domestic Interior
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The poems in Domestic Interior draw together varieties of suburban experience and imagination, charting places that are vibrant, plangent and comical. Award-winning poet and essayist Fiona Wright shows her acute concern for spaces general and particular, showing the small details that build our everyday worlds via story, memory and experience. In her poems these details hold their thrall through the moments of charged emotional extremity we encounter across our lives, whether through dream or desire, illness or struggle. Wright traverses family and its rituals, the spaces of love and friendship, the sites of everyday experience: houses, roadways, clinics, shopping centres. These works are mostly set in Sydney, in the inner suburbs where Wright now lives and in the south-western suburbs where she grew up. Domestic Interior captures these sites as the locations of love as well as sadness, of adversity as well as succour and strength.'  (Publication summary)

Exhibitions

17216203
17023670

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Artarmon, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Giramondo Publishing , 2017 .
      image of person or book cover 7687412682523473031.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 96p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 1 November 2017

      ISBN: 9781925336566

Works about this Work

General Tenancy Agreement Ella Jeffery , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , December vol. 12 no. 2 2022;

'Notions of home and unhomeliness have long been discussed by scholars in relation to Australian poetry, but little scholarly work has explored how contemporary Australian poets interrogate the relationship between renting and constructions of home. As the great Australian dream of homeownership becomes increasingly inaccessible and the availability of public housing declines, a larger proportion of the population privately rent their houses in a lightly regulated and highly competitive rental market (Morris et al 2021: 72). Poetry has long been used to record and preserve the affective dimensions of home, and in this paper I examine a series of poems concerned with finding rental properties, moving in and out of them, and with attempts to create a sense of home in houses that always already belong to others. I discuss the work of three poets whose recent collections grapple with notions of home, stability and security in relation to rented houses: Zenobia Frost’s After the Demolition (2019), Omar Sakr’s These Wild Houses (2017), and Fiona Wright’s Domestic Interior (2017). I argue that in these collections, houses are sites characterised by anxiety, instability, and erasure, rather than stable and secure archives of personal identity and domestic ritual.' (Publication abstract)

Julia Clark Reviews Domestic Interior Julie Clarke , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Rabbit , no. 27 2019; (p. 130-133)

— Review of Domestic Interior Fiona Wright , 2017 selected work poetry
'Fiona Wright's second collection of poetry sinks into a well-worn armchair, retraces sidewalks warped by regular routing, and reconnects your favourite sensations with the moment you first felt them.' (From introduction)
Review The Sorrow in Our Marrow, Domestic Interior by Fiona Wright Jena Woodhouse , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Foam:e , March no. 16 2019;

— Review of Domestic Interior Fiona Wright , 2017 selected work poetry
Alice Allan Reviews Domestic Interior by Fiona Wright Alice Allan , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Plumwood Mountain [Online] , August 2018;

— Review of Domestic Interior Fiona Wright , 2017 selected work poetry
[Review] Domestic Interior Naomi Riddle , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 78 no. 2 2018; (p. 191-196)

— Review of Domestic Interior Fiona Wright , 2017 selected work poetry
[Review] Domestic Interior KN , 2017 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 25 November- 1 December no. 184 2017;

— Review of Domestic Interior Fiona Wright , 2017 selected work poetry

'It is hard to read Fiona Wright’s new collection of poems, Domestic Interior, without her award-winning and much-publicised essay collection, Small Acts of Disappearance, in mind. That book dealt with Wright’s eating disorder and Domestic Interior notably abounds in references to food. Food appears in similes: “Older sisters were round and brown / as hard-boiled eggs” (in the poem “Commute”); “my hands grow thick and lumpy / as air-cured salami” (in “Surely”). Food is also in titles – “Sweet Potato”, “Pudding” – and in allusions to cafeterias and bakeries. And there are poems in the form of charms, such as “Charm Against Casual Cruelty”, which lists various ingredients, precisely measured: “a small green chilli, an eggshell / a peanut, a wheat husk”. Indeed, all the poems in this book are skilfully measured and disciplined.' (Introduction)

Review The Sorrow in Our Marrow, Domestic Interior by Fiona Wright Jena Woodhouse , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Foam:e , March no. 16 2019;

— Review of Domestic Interior Fiona Wright , 2017 selected work poetry
[Review] Domestic Interior Naomi Riddle , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 78 no. 2 2018; (p. 191-196)

— Review of Domestic Interior Fiona Wright , 2017 selected work poetry
Julia Clark Reviews Domestic Interior Julie Clarke , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Rabbit , no. 27 2019; (p. 130-133)

— Review of Domestic Interior Fiona Wright , 2017 selected work poetry
'Fiona Wright's second collection of poetry sinks into a well-worn armchair, retraces sidewalks warped by regular routing, and reconnects your favourite sensations with the moment you first felt them.' (From introduction)
Alice Allan Reviews Domestic Interior by Fiona Wright Alice Allan , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Plumwood Mountain [Online] , August 2018;

— Review of Domestic Interior Fiona Wright , 2017 selected work poetry
Fruitful Playgrounds Jessica Wilkinson , 2017 single work essay review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , November 2017;

'Three new poetry collections, three Australian women poets: Present by Elizabeth Allen (Vagabond), Domestic Interior by Fiona Wright (Giramondo) and Passage by Kate Middleton (Giramondo). All three women are award-winning authors, and each has won a major prize for their previous volumes: Allen won the 2012 FAW Anne Elder Award for Body Language, Wright won the 2012 Dame Mary Gilmore Award for Knuckled, and Middleton’s Fire Season was awarded the 2009 WA Premier’s Literary Awards for Poetry. All live in Sydney. These are easy things to report, biographical facts. What is perhaps less known is that each of these poets is a generous spirit and supportive presence in the world of poetry and writing in Australia, as editors, associate publishers, event organisers, colleagues, mentors and poetry champions. I have witnessed this generosity not only from afar but first-hand, at readings, launches, and even through unexpected encounters in cafes; it’s the only thing that would make me consider moving to Sydney. So I emphasise this to begin with, because I think it is important to recognise their contributions in this regard too, and to convey the respect that I have for all three authors not only as poets, but as literary community gems.' (Introduction)

Confessional Intensity Joan Fleming , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 401 2018; (p. 40-41)

'The classic lyric preoccupation with interiority, and how internal life touches and changes the outside world, finds expression in two recent collections of poetry: Fiona Wright’s Domestic Interior and Carolyn Abbs’s The Tiny Museums. In both collections, the speakers draw the shapes of their internal furniture, while building monuments to the intimate scenes and common spaces that define them.' (Introduction)

General Tenancy Agreement Ella Jeffery , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , December vol. 12 no. 2 2022;

'Notions of home and unhomeliness have long been discussed by scholars in relation to Australian poetry, but little scholarly work has explored how contemporary Australian poets interrogate the relationship between renting and constructions of home. As the great Australian dream of homeownership becomes increasingly inaccessible and the availability of public housing declines, a larger proportion of the population privately rent their houses in a lightly regulated and highly competitive rental market (Morris et al 2021: 72). Poetry has long been used to record and preserve the affective dimensions of home, and in this paper I examine a series of poems concerned with finding rental properties, moving in and out of them, and with attempts to create a sense of home in houses that always already belong to others. I discuss the work of three poets whose recent collections grapple with notions of home, stability and security in relation to rented houses: Zenobia Frost’s After the Demolition (2019), Omar Sakr’s These Wild Houses (2017), and Fiona Wright’s Domestic Interior (2017). I argue that in these collections, houses are sites characterised by anxiety, instability, and erasure, rather than stable and secure archives of personal identity and domestic ritual.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 17 Oct 2018 10:50:25
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