'Welcome to Issue 11 of StylusLit. In this issue we have a few interviews that will certainly interest. We catch up with Melbourne-based poet, Angela Costi, who talks about her new book and her practice. Not sure where to start when publishing a poetry collection? We interview two poetry publishers, Stephen Matthews OAM, Ginninderra Press and Shane Strange, Recent Work Press.' (Publication summary)
Only literary material by Australian authors individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
Breaking up with a real artist by Hayden Pyke
'Angela Costi’s An Embroidery of Old Maps and New charts a process of mapping human interactions through embroidery. Costi is part of the Cypriot-Greek diaspora, and her grandmother used her embroidery skills to rise above poverty before she moved to Melbourne. There, Costi’s mother and sisters worked the machines at a sewing factory. In 2009, Costi travelled to Japan to work with the Stringraphy Ensemble, so it might not be too great a leap of the imagination to liken the stitches of Costi’s verse to sashiko, Japanese embroidery. Sashiko takes on a form distinct from European embroidery traditions in the movements required to create the stitches. Sashiko literally means “little stabs,” and, indeed, there are little stabs to the heart to be found and felt among the rich poetry in this collection.' (Introduction)
'Vanessa Page’s fifth collection of poetry, Botanical Skin, is as resonant as a bell ringing out at dusk – a liminal time. Indeed, several of Page’s poems are set at dusk, and she is often concerned with the blurring of boundaries, the breakdown of barriers, and the breaching of borders. Split into two alliterative sections, “Body” and “Bloom,” Botanical Skin is concerned with another “b” word: blue. In her forward, Page quotes Yves Klein: “Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions.” Page observes that poetry also transcends dimensionality. Certainly, this is true of Botanical Skin. Although it is divided into two sections, poems call to each other across the divide, with words often recurring throughout, including forms of “bloom,” “love,” and “deep.”' (Introduction)
'Melinda Smith’s eighth collection of poetry, Man-Handled, is essential reading for anyone who has followed the depiction of women in the Australian media, political, and public spheres, or who has suffered or witnessed gendered violence in the private realm. The collection is divided into six sections: “Exposures,” “The space inside his fist,” “Listen, bitch,” “The Night Book,” “Fugal States,” and “Ventriloquies.” The power of Smith’s poetry to reveal shocking truths reaches boiling point midway through the book. Yet, even after this scalding surge, the verse still simmers with subtle force.' (Introduction)
'Jane Williams’ Points of Recognition is inherently human poetry. Her concerns are wide-ranging: from empathy to idiosyncrasy, the mundane to the marvellous, compassion to passion, diffidence and restraint to ecstasy and excess. Always she is wondering, inquiring. What does it mean to be human? And what does it mean to be inhumane, even inhuman, in our treatment of others?' (Introduction)
'The prolific poet Anne Casey published two collections of poetry in 2021: Salmon Poetry’s The Light We Cannot See and Recent Work Press’s Portrait of a Woman Walking Home. The former is written from the perspective of a displaced daughter of Ireland and apprehensive mother. She fears that her children must endure the traumas that mar our society: the climate crisis, humanitarian disasters, and the Covid-19 pandemic. By contrast, Portrait of a Woman Walking Home is concerned with matters of misogyny and the experience of one woman who might be any woman or Everywoman. In the poet’s urgent message, the particular and the universal converge.' (Introduction)
