image of person or book cover 1536747067427269028.jpg
This image has been sourced from online.
y separately published work icon Cities selected work   poetry  
Issue Details: First known date: 2021... 2021 Cities
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Cities makes playful and lyrical incursions into myth to explore the nature of grief for a mother while becoming a mother, and the difficulties of love, ranging from the extended sequence Persephone at 40 to a piercing series of poems about the death of White’s mother. A series of fragmentary ‘journal’ poems spanning from London to Berlin, arises in part from the tensions and strangeness of prolonged lockdown in both cities.' 

(Production summary)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Vagabond Press , 2021 .
      image of person or book cover 1536747067427269028.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 64p.
      Note/s:
      • Published July 2021

      ISBN: 9781925735307

Works about this Work

Phyllis Perlstone Reviews Cities by Petra White Phyllis Perlstone , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , no. 29 2023;

— Review of Cities Petra White , 2021 selected work poetry

Each time I have read Cities, I have felt more of the affect of the poetical language. Yet there is a way of looking at it as a whole. Given Petra White’s themes, I can’t help alluding to Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck, also Sylvia Plath’s last book Ariel. White dives into the myths to find past definitions for past and present human roles : “Tell me what a mother is”. (Introduction)

Gareth Morgan Reviews Cities by Petra White Gareth Morgan , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 June no. 105 2022;

— Review of Cities Petra White , 2021 selected work poetry

'Petra White’s poetry has been highly and widely praised, celebrated for its seriousness, its engagement with poets like Petrarch, Dante, Coleridge and Donne, its ability to ‘recall’ these famous European names and their famous poems. She is presented as a serious poet, and has managed to get her ‘kind of Collected-poems-so-far’ (Duwell) onto the VCE Literature text list. I wonder what this says about poetry in Australia. Her poems are so good on one metric (studious, ‘clever’, instructive), and so bad, downright naughty, on another (stylistic and/or political ‘radicalness’).' (Introduction)

Unhappiness and Related Fields Martin Langford , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 81 no. 1 2022; Meanjin Online 2022;

— Review of Trigger Warning Maria Takolander , 2021 selected work poetry ; Cities Petra White , 2021 selected work poetry ; An Academic’s Tour of Hell Peter Kirkpatrick , 2021 selected work poetry ; Take Care Eunice Andrada , 2021 selected work poetry ; Sydney Spleen Toby Fitch , 2021 selected work poetry
Petra White : Cities Martin Duwell , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 16 2021;

— Review of Cities Petra White , 2021 selected work poetry
'Petra White’s Cities is a slim book by current standards but it is a dense one and there is a lot to be said for connecting it to its predecessor, Reading for a Quiet Morning. Both, for instance, begin by broaching crucial themes in the form of a revisiting and reconstruction of an existing myth. In Reading for a Quiet Morning the myth revisited was Ezekiel’s strange visions “at the edge of the Chebar” during the Babylonian exile. In Cities it is the old Greek story of Demeter and her lost daughter, Persephone. Taking an even longer perspective we can see that White has often employed sequences to work away at a theme and often these sequences are comprised of quite different poems. What strikes me about “How the Temple was Built” – the long sequence based around Ezekiel – and “Demeter”, is the way they each seem bifurcated, able to develop in two different directions.' (Introduction)
Petra White : Cities Martin Duwell , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 16 2021;

— Review of Cities Petra White , 2021 selected work poetry
'Petra White’s Cities is a slim book by current standards but it is a dense one and there is a lot to be said for connecting it to its predecessor, Reading for a Quiet Morning. Both, for instance, begin by broaching crucial themes in the form of a revisiting and reconstruction of an existing myth. In Reading for a Quiet Morning the myth revisited was Ezekiel’s strange visions “at the edge of the Chebar” during the Babylonian exile. In Cities it is the old Greek story of Demeter and her lost daughter, Persephone. Taking an even longer perspective we can see that White has often employed sequences to work away at a theme and often these sequences are comprised of quite different poems. What strikes me about “How the Temple was Built” – the long sequence based around Ezekiel – and “Demeter”, is the way they each seem bifurcated, able to develop in two different directions.' (Introduction)
Unhappiness and Related Fields Martin Langford , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 81 no. 1 2022; Meanjin Online 2022;

— Review of Trigger Warning Maria Takolander , 2021 selected work poetry ; Cities Petra White , 2021 selected work poetry ; An Academic’s Tour of Hell Peter Kirkpatrick , 2021 selected work poetry ; Take Care Eunice Andrada , 2021 selected work poetry ; Sydney Spleen Toby Fitch , 2021 selected work poetry
Gareth Morgan Reviews Cities by Petra White Gareth Morgan , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 June no. 105 2022;

— Review of Cities Petra White , 2021 selected work poetry

'Petra White’s poetry has been highly and widely praised, celebrated for its seriousness, its engagement with poets like Petrarch, Dante, Coleridge and Donne, its ability to ‘recall’ these famous European names and their famous poems. She is presented as a serious poet, and has managed to get her ‘kind of Collected-poems-so-far’ (Duwell) onto the VCE Literature text list. I wonder what this says about poetry in Australia. Her poems are so good on one metric (studious, ‘clever’, instructive), and so bad, downright naughty, on another (stylistic and/or political ‘radicalness’).' (Introduction)

Phyllis Perlstone Reviews Cities by Petra White Phyllis Perlstone , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , no. 29 2023;

— Review of Cities Petra White , 2021 selected work poetry

Each time I have read Cities, I have felt more of the affect of the poetical language. Yet there is a way of looking at it as a whole. Given Petra White’s themes, I can’t help alluding to Adrienne Rich’s Diving into the Wreck, also Sylvia Plath’s last book Ariel. White dives into the myths to find past definitions for past and present human roles : “Tell me what a mother is”. (Introduction)

Last amended 4 Jun 2021 12:26:18
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X