Cirrus@Austlit

 (Publication summary)

'The blurb of Jennifer Mackenzie’s 2020 collection Navigable Ink (Transit Lounge) begins by introducing Indonesian writer and activist Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who died in 2006. Mackenzie had been offered Toer’s novel manuscript Arus Balik for translation back in 1993, but it seems this translation was never completed. Navigable Ink is described as a ‘poetic exploration of Toer’s tragic, visionary and ultimately triumphant life’. At first glance a reader could be forgiven for thinking that this is the translation of Arus Balik, but Mackenzie’s acknowledgements clarify that this is not the case, rather the poems ‘created out of episodes from the novel are based on my own translation (with interpolations) of the text’.' (Introduction)

'Adelaide poet Jill Jones sits down 1,525.5 km from me, Claire Albrecht in Newcastle, to discuss her sparkling twelfth book A History of What I’ll Become. That’s a lot of ground to cover – along the way we talk grit, sexuality, anxiety, and the way these might be captured by observations and processed by repetition, hesitations, and formal experimentation into a poem. We dig up the sublime and consider shared modes of composition between poetry and a symphony. We die symbolically on the beach. We write to control. Strap in.' (Introduction)