'A ground-breaking insight into the experience of disability, from a distinguished poet who has lived with Marfan Syndrome, including severe spinal curvature, and whose poems give voice to those who are often treated as ‘other’ or alien.
'The poems are visceral and intimate, they comfort and discomfort at the same time – empathy for the other seems to falter, only to expand and deepen.
'The poems in Human Looking speak with the voices of the disabled and the disfigured, in ways which are confronting, but also illuminating and tender. They speak of surgical interventions, and of the different kinds of disability which they seek to ‘correct’. They range widely, finding figures to identify with in mythology and history, art and photography, poetry and fiction. A number of poems deal with unsettling extremes of embodiment, and with violence against disabled people. Others emerge out of everyday life, and the effects of illness, pain and prejudice. The strength of the speaking voice is remarkable, as is its capacity for empathy and love. ‘I, this wonderful catastrophe’, the poet has Mary Shelley’s monstrous figure declare. The use of unusual and disjunctive – or ‘deformed’ – poetic forms, adds to the emotional impact of the poems.'
Source : publication summary
Author's note:
for Anne Mary Jackson (1940-2019)
and Norman Charles Jackson (1926-1973)
'The pandemic isn't over. No matter how often we speak of it using the past tense, or how strong our quixotic nostalgia for 'how it used to be'. Despite how oddly clueless we are at assessing actual risk or how much we wish ourselves not to be one of the vulnerable, it persists as a background hum, or a piercing, unshakeable tinnitus. Plans have to change at short notice. Friends are bedridden for days, exhausted for weeks or months. The numbers of cases and deaths, now merely footnotes rather than headlines, continue whether we look at them or not.' (Publication abstract)
'The poetry of Andy Jackson not only inhabits and is rooted in the liminal space of the body, but is used as a site to consider selfhood, subjectivity, language, form, and bodily difference. Using poetry as a generative practice, Jackson expresses the unsettledness of being in his own body. Jackson has the hereditary genetic disorder, Marfan Syndrome, where the body is unable to correctly produce the protein fibrillin-1, which in turn affects the connective tissue, the heart, the spine, and the joints. On his blog, Among the Regulars, Jackson describes his body of work as ‘poetry, from a body shaped like a question mark’.1 A pronounced spinal curvature means that Jackson inhabits his body in a particular way, and in turn marks his use of language in a particular way. He is explicit about this: ‘I would argue that to begin to unravel how the body is implicated in poetry will illuminate and liberate both’.2 In rewriting the language of the body, Jackson engages in a poetics of the threshold — the threshold being the nexus between selfhood, subjectivity, and the body, both the individual body and the collective body. He does this by renovating form (language) and by interrogating (his own) disability.' (Introduction)
At Home with Andy Jackson
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2021
23443591
2021
single work
interview
podcast
'Andy Jackson is a poet of compassion and intellect. His 2021 collection, Human Looking, explores the voices of the disabled and ill with tenderness and love.
'Andy's first collection, Among the Regulars, was shortlisted for the 2011 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and his 2020 collection Music Our Bodies Can’t Hold'was shortlisted for the John Bray Poetry Award.
'Andy has featured at literary events and arts festivals in Ireland, India, the USA and across Australia, and has co-edited disability-themed issues of the literary journals Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal. He works as a creative writing teacher and tutor for community organisations and universities.'(Production summary)
At Home with Andy Jackson
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2021
23443591
2021
single work
interview
podcast
'Andy Jackson is a poet of compassion and intellect. His 2021 collection, Human Looking, explores the voices of the disabled and ill with tenderness and love.
'Andy's first collection, Among the Regulars, was shortlisted for the 2011 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and his 2020 collection Music Our Bodies Can’t Hold'was shortlisted for the John Bray Poetry Award.
'Andy has featured at literary events and arts festivals in Ireland, India, the USA and across Australia, and has co-edited disability-themed issues of the literary journals Southerly and Australian Poetry Journal. He works as a creative writing teacher and tutor for community organisations and universities.'(Production summary)
'The poetry of Andy Jackson not only inhabits and is rooted in the liminal space of the body, but is used as a site to consider selfhood, subjectivity, language, form, and bodily difference. Using poetry as a generative practice, Jackson expresses the unsettledness of being in his own body. Jackson has the hereditary genetic disorder, Marfan Syndrome, where the body is unable to correctly produce the protein fibrillin-1, which in turn affects the connective tissue, the heart, the spine, and the joints. On his blog, Among the Regulars, Jackson describes his body of work as ‘poetry, from a body shaped like a question mark’.1 A pronounced spinal curvature means that Jackson inhabits his body in a particular way, and in turn marks his use of language in a particular way. He is explicit about this: ‘I would argue that to begin to unravel how the body is implicated in poetry will illuminate and liberate both’.2 In rewriting the language of the body, Jackson engages in a poetics of the threshold — the threshold being the nexus between selfhood, subjectivity, and the body, both the individual body and the collective body. He does this by renovating form (language) and by interrogating (his own) disability.' (Introduction)
'The pandemic isn't over. No matter how often we speak of it using the past tense, or how strong our quixotic nostalgia for 'how it used to be'. Despite how oddly clueless we are at assessing actual risk or how much we wish ourselves not to be one of the vulnerable, it persists as a background hum, or a piercing, unshakeable tinnitus. Plans have to change at short notice. Friends are bedridden for days, exhausted for weeks or months. The numbers of cases and deaths, now merely footnotes rather than headlines, continue whether we look at them or not.' (Publication abstract)
