'Ecliptical addresses contemporary psychological, ethical and philosophical issues including family secrets and tensions, private and public creativity, the enigma of time, surveillance, fake news, environmental damage and homelessness.
'Ecliptical includes prose poetry and short prose; texts that are synaesthetic, sonic or linguistic explorations, surreal excursions and 'bullet point' adventures in which each line unveils a new observation. Other pieces employ non-literary forms or include documentary or remixed elements. Ecliptical also flirts with the posthuman in some collaborative computer-assisted poems.' (Publication summary)
'In an incisive review of Hazel Smith’s fifth book of poetry, ecliptical, Chris Arnold gestures to Smith’s reputation as a ‘relentlessly experimental’ poet. He notes the book title’s uncanny – because unintended but entirely logical – connection with Ern Malley’s iconoclastic The Darkening Ecliptic, to draw out some intriguing comparisons between these two books. Since her first volume, Abstractly Represented, Smith has been an innovator in Australia, in linguistic and generic experimentation. She has also been a pioneer in performance writing, intermedia work and electronic writing and her work has continued to break new ground over an impressive career spanning four decades. Nevertheless, Smith loses no time in problematising the descriptor ‘experimental’ in this interview. During our interview, Smith reflects on her commitment to expanding her own flamboyantly eclectic repertoire, discussing her interest in enigma, immersion, the alignment of the satirical and the surreal, the discomfort that humour in poetry often produces and computer-generated text. Smith had formerly been a professional musician and examines music’s formative impact on her poetry. She excavates her complex relationship with her Jewish heritage and talks frankly about the strictures of proscribed ethnic identities. Smith’s critical cosmopolitanism is evident in tropes of migration, displacement and transgenerational trauma, and in her attention, throughout these poems, to the precarity of many diasporic peoples.' (Introduction)
'What is most striking in Hazel Smith’s fifth collection of poetry is the far-ranging scope of topics explored and the wide number of poetic approaches employed, the poet still succeeding in retaining a powerful, unifying voice throughout. Smith’s poems challenge both intellectually and emotionally. Familial poems written in free verse are sandwiched between computer-generated works and list poems. Politically and socially aware poems about Trump, Brexit, the Berlin Wall and Covid-19 share space with poems such as the one that we first encounter, ‘The Collection’ [8-9] in which the poem’s third person narrator confesses to their process of writing and curating the book, a heads up to the reader that the poems in it' (Introduction)
'What is most striking in Hazel Smith’s fifth collection of poetry is the far-ranging scope of topics explored and the wide number of poetic approaches employed, the poet still succeeding in retaining a powerful, unifying voice throughout. Smith’s poems challenge both intellectually and emotionally. Familial poems written in free verse are sandwiched between computer-generated works and list poems. Politically and socially aware poems about Trump, Brexit, the Berlin Wall and Covid-19 share space with poems such as the one that we first encounter, ‘The Collection’ [8-9] in which the poem’s third person narrator confesses to their process of writing and curating the book, a heads up to the reader that the poems in it' (Introduction)
'In an incisive review of Hazel Smith’s fifth book of poetry, ecliptical, Chris Arnold gestures to Smith’s reputation as a ‘relentlessly experimental’ poet. He notes the book title’s uncanny – because unintended but entirely logical – connection with Ern Malley’s iconoclastic The Darkening Ecliptic, to draw out some intriguing comparisons between these two books. Since her first volume, Abstractly Represented, Smith has been an innovator in Australia, in linguistic and generic experimentation. She has also been a pioneer in performance writing, intermedia work and electronic writing and her work has continued to break new ground over an impressive career spanning four decades. Nevertheless, Smith loses no time in problematising the descriptor ‘experimental’ in this interview. During our interview, Smith reflects on her commitment to expanding her own flamboyantly eclectic repertoire, discussing her interest in enigma, immersion, the alignment of the satirical and the surreal, the discomfort that humour in poetry often produces and computer-generated text. Smith had formerly been a professional musician and examines music’s formative impact on her poetry. She excavates her complex relationship with her Jewish heritage and talks frankly about the strictures of proscribed ethnic identities. Smith’s critical cosmopolitanism is evident in tropes of migration, displacement and transgenerational trauma, and in her attention, throughout these poems, to the precarity of many diasporic peoples.' (Introduction)
