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Issue Details: First known date: 2023... no. 70 2023 of TEXT Special Issue est. 2000 TEXT Special Issue
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Contents

* Contents derived from the , 2023 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Poetry and Precarious Memory : Ways of Understanding Less and Less, Paul Hetherington , Cassandra Atherton , single work criticism

'Poetry as an art form has traditionally registered tropes of feeling and memory, often with astonishing power, especially since the Romantics began to focus on projections of the self. Yet, when poetry invokes memory, anchoring people to their pasts and identities, it frequently reveals that, at best, memory offers a precarious connection to what is certain or secure – and this is particularly the case for women writers. For example, much of Emily Dickinson’s poetry reveals that memory’s recesses are often uncomfortable, and studies in autobiographical memory confirm poetry’s intuition that all may not be what it seems within the “house” of the recollecting self. This paper explores ways in which poetry’s elusive suggestiveness, and memory’s more fraught instances, confirm the provisionality and precarity of what most people are inclined to take for granted – that they know themselves and can speak securely of who they are. This has always been a challenge for women in patriarchal societies as gender inequality and precarious work – often in atypical employment – has informed and affected their expressions of self and identity. We conclude with examples from the work of two contemporary women poets, Emma Hyche and Mary A. Koncel, in order to focus on their particular approaches to precarity in their poetry and prose poetry and to posit that women poets often disrupt and disturb aspects of the patriarchal language system to offer new constructions of autobiographical memory.' (Publication abstract)

Creative Companionship as We Face the Apocalypse – an Essay in Conversation, Shady Cosgrove , Christine Howe , single work criticism

'This essay explores how a commitment to poetic collaboration, with daily writing and reading, changed the ways we perceived and lived our lives, particularly in light of living through the extremity of climate change (characterised by Australian bush fires and floods), and the isolation and stress caused by the pandemic. We explore collaboration, prose poetry and the creative process in the context of extremity, arguing that writerly collaboration can engender hope beyond the page. We discuss these topics in an essay-conversation format, moving back and forth between authors, building/ expanding/thinking and re-thinking through matters of process in light of the poetic and the extreme. Some of our creative works from this time are also included.' (Publication abstract)

Mosei"Lido, Malamocco, Chioggia:", Paul Venzo , single work poetry
Wakei"The", Paul Venzo , single work poetry
Ramii"Gliding", Paul Venzo , single work poetry
13 Ways of Looking at Lockdown, Karen Le Rossignol , single work poetry
'The extremities of a state of pandemic lockdown intensify, through physical and
emotional constraints, an aesthetic of perceptual experience involving the senses, or
sense perception. Part of this pandemic perception requires living “with uncertainty,
[…] which involves living with the [cognitive] dissonance” (Aronson & Tavris, 2020).
So many artists found sensuous aesthetics to live with these dissonances (Sarasso et al.,2021), such as street performances while emptying the bins, or orchestra members
performing via Zoom (managing transition delays to suggest harmonies across
isolations). Wallace Stevens enlarges an aesthetic of the sensuous through a non-
mimetic form of practice, what he terms “the phenomena of perception”. The
phenomena which illustrate the pressures of imagination and reality infuse Stevens’s
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the model and catalyst for this poetic suite
on lockdown. This suite is rhizomatic, exploring Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987)
“rhizome [which] has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things,
interbeing, intermezzo”(27). The intention is to map a mass of roots, avoiding a
structural tree system (beginning, middle and end) which suggests binaries or
dualities. This rhizomatic presentation of extreme moments of “being between”
presents an array of mappings or tracings, “migrations into new conceptual territories
resulting from unpredictable juxtapositions” (Berry & Siegal, n.d.).' 

(Introduction)

Coastal Drowning —Port Macquarie 1986-92i"Surfers rode dreams of being sponsored like Slater;", Kristian Patruno , single work poetry
Wildfire (for Yvette)i"Sometimes fire is so beautiful it draws you", Kristian Patruno , single work poetry
Slaughter Housei"There was a punk band rehearsing upstairs in the lounge", Kristian Patruno , single work poetry
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