Cirrus@Austlit

'It was a great privilege, if a little overwhelming (I had about 1,800 poems to read), to edit this edition of Cordite Poetry Review and, as it is not themed, I had the luxury of choosing poems on various subjects. I have tried to make the issue varied but also unified by my aesthetic principles. I am one of those poets who believe aesthetics are important, that an over-heated experimental or exploratory approach, or a poetics that privileges linguistic flux over emotional stability or response, can take us away from the deep connection that language has with the body. This is one reason why I have an affection for the lyric, and I do not hold to the assumption that the poet does not exist, or that the movement inwards, towards subjectivity, is innately problematic. From the body we get idiosyncrasies of rhythm, music, voice, sensual knowledge, syntactical deportment, emotion and ideas. No-one who writes a poem is ever disembodied, though sometimes it can seem as if they are, given the overabundance of abstraction and linguistic imprecision that occurred in many of the poems I read for this issue.' (Judith Beveridge : Editorial introduction)