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'DURING THE SENSORY MONOTONE of Sydney’s lockdown, I failed to finish several contemporary novels that registered no difference between quotidian matters and violence or suffering. Everyone I knew was one click from COVID death tolls as they filtered Zoom to blur domestic chaos. In literature, I could no longer narcotically scroll. Then I read Anwen Crawford’s No Document (2022) and felt the sharp cut that is part of the book’s compositional strategy. Here was an astute awareness of the violence of particular juxtapositions — refugees and nationalism, borders and the state — and an insight into protest cant like “not in our name.” If we’re made and unmade by documents, as Crawford suggests in her sampling of official reports and state directives, then we can hardly ignore how our own words fall on the page. No Document’s use of white space and lineation, its ethically attuned emphasis, is exhilarating. Its shifting tone is wry, bracing, and affecting.' (Introduction)
