Lucy Van Reviews Merlinda Bobis single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Lucy Van Reviews Merlinda Bobis
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'Marianne Moore called it ‘courageous attack’:

today, you span the far mountains
with an arm and say,
‘this I offer you —
all this blue sweat
of eucalypt.’

'So begins ‘driving to katoomba’, from the first poetry collection that Merlinda Bobis published in Australia, Summer was a fast train without terminals (Spinifex, 1998). The opening is typical of Bobis’s inimitable gusto and extravagance: the lines follow the gesture of the body that reaches for a view, simultaneously craving and offering the world while delighting in the knowledge that both impulses remain unfulfilled.'  (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Cordite Poetry Review Philippines no. 85 1 March 2018 13423853 2018 periodical issue

    'To enter the mind of Philippine literature in English, it is important to note the evolution of English in the Philippines. We were colonised by Spain in 1521 and sold to America in 1898. According to eminent Filipino poet and scholar, Gémino Abad, Philippine poetry in English only took flight in the 1920s – it is a considerably young poetry, being less than a hundred years old. At this point, Filipinos spoke so many vernacular languages and even variants of ethno-languages that the establishment of a stable literature in English seemed an unlikely project.' (Mookie Katigbak Lacuesta and Shirley O Lua Editorial introduction)

    2018
Last amended 23 Mar 2018 08:56:44
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