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Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Empirical selected work   poetry  
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Empirical
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Lisa Gorton began writing Empirical when the Victorian Government of the time threatened to cut an eight-lane motorway through the heart of Royal Park in Melbourne. She walked repeatedly in the park, seeking to understand how the feeling for place originates, and how memory and landscape fold in and out of each other. The poems exploring this feeling for place are followed by a sequence which recreates the colonial history of Royal Park through the gathering of fragments from newspapers, maps and pictures, a different way of asserting its value, by demonstrating how a landscape can conceal the history of country beneath its layers of time. From this close-up study, in its second part the collection opens out into poems which meditate on ancient statues, Rimbaud’s imperial panoramas, the making of Coleridge’s poem ‘Kubla Khan’, the exhibition galleries of Crystal Palace — tracking, through chains of influence, and a phantasmagoric procession of images, the trade between empire, commodities and dreams of elsewhere. Empirical follows a deluxe promenade of thought, in which landscapes are mirrored and refracted in the contemporary Baroque style for which Gorton is renowned.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Exhibitions

17461599
17457182
17488129
17457133

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 , 2019 .
      image of person or book cover 779889824187593324.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 112p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published June 2019.

      ISBN: 9781925818116

Works about this Work

Mary Cresswell Reviews Empirical by Lisa Gorton Mary Cresswell , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Plumwood Mountain [Online] , March 2020;

— Review of Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry
Jessica L. Wilkinson Interviews Lisa Gorton Jessica Wilkinson (interviewer), 2020 single work interview
— Appears in: Rabbit , June no. 30 2020; (p. 204-216)
Two Surveys, Two Milestones : One Premature Death Martin Langford , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 79 no. 1 2020;

— Review of The Gang of One : Selected Poems of Robert Harris Robert Harris , 2019 selected work poetry ; Birth Plan L. K. Holt , 2019 selected work poetry ; Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry ; Crow College : New and Selected Poems Emma Lew , 2019 selected work poetry

'In 2017 Alan Wearne quite rightly decided that the work of Robert Harris deserved to be more widely available than through a scattering of individual volumes, and crowd-sourced funding for a selected—which may be an example of Australian poets taking a bad situation into their own hands, but which should never have been necessary if the rest of the country was even remotely aware of the achievements of its writers. Judith Beveridge came on board as editor, and the result is this very handsome and user-friendly edition.'  (Introduction)

Uncrushed Local Thought Michael Farrell , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , February 2020;

— Review of Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry

'Is colonialism a failed project? This is not a simple question. While contemporary oppositional discourse – any thinking that supports moves towards post- and decoloniality – rejects the colonial project, an assessment of its failure might mean that its aims weren’t realised, or that it has come to the end of its life, like a light bulb or bank, or prime ministership, or site that can no longer be accessed, or document that won’t load. I’m writing this unable to check my email on my computer, unsure if this is a browser failure, but knowing it’s my own failure, in not keeping up to date, not so much with the colonial (although the colonial, like all extant concepts, is now inseparable from the digital), but with Empire more broadly speaking.' (Introduction)

Book Review : Empirical by Lisa Gorton James Arbuthnott , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: ArtsHub , July 2019;

— Review of Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry

'Gorton’s meditations take on a contemporary romanticism towards Melbourne and contrast it with the history of empire.'

Dinggedichte David McCooey , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 415 2019; (p. 65)

— Review of Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry
'In her latest collection of poems, Empirical, Lisa Gorton demonstrates – definitively and elegantly – how large, apparently simple creative decisions (employing catalogues or lists; quoting from the archive; engaging in ekphrasis or description) can produce compelling and complex poetic forms.' (Introduction)
Found in Translation Geoff Page , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 26 October 2019; (p. 24)

— Review of The Love of the Sun Matt Hetherington , 2018 selected work poetry ; The Bright and the Cold : Selected Poems of Anne Elder 2018 selected work poetry ; Apparently Joanne Burns , 2019 selected work poetry ; Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry

'Recently released collections of the works of four Australian poets, past and present, showcase different styles and influences, writes fellow poet Geoff Page.'

Uncrushed Local Thought Michael Farrell , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , February 2020;

— Review of Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry

'Is colonialism a failed project? This is not a simple question. While contemporary oppositional discourse – any thinking that supports moves towards post- and decoloniality – rejects the colonial project, an assessment of its failure might mean that its aims weren’t realised, or that it has come to the end of its life, like a light bulb or bank, or prime ministership, or site that can no longer be accessed, or document that won’t load. I’m writing this unable to check my email on my computer, unsure if this is a browser failure, but knowing it’s my own failure, in not keeping up to date, not so much with the colonial (although the colonial, like all extant concepts, is now inseparable from the digital), but with Empire more broadly speaking.' (Introduction)

Two Surveys, Two Milestones : One Premature Death Martin Langford , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 79 no. 1 2020;

— Review of The Gang of One : Selected Poems of Robert Harris Robert Harris , 2019 selected work poetry ; Birth Plan L. K. Holt , 2019 selected work poetry ; Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry ; Crow College : New and Selected Poems Emma Lew , 2019 selected work poetry

'In 2017 Alan Wearne quite rightly decided that the work of Robert Harris deserved to be more widely available than through a scattering of individual volumes, and crowd-sourced funding for a selected—which may be an example of Australian poets taking a bad situation into their own hands, but which should never have been necessary if the rest of the country was even remotely aware of the achievements of its writers. Judith Beveridge came on board as editor, and the result is this very handsome and user-friendly edition.'  (Introduction)

Mary Cresswell Reviews Empirical by Lisa Gorton Mary Cresswell , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Plumwood Mountain [Online] , March 2020;

— Review of Empirical Lisa Gorton , 2019 selected work poetry
Jessica L. Wilkinson Interviews Lisa Gorton Jessica Wilkinson (interviewer), 2020 single work interview
— Appears in: Rabbit , June no. 30 2020; (p. 204-216)
Last amended 16 Nov 2020 09:44:24
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