'Final Theory is a long poem told in episodes, combining two fragmentary story lines – the one following a couple as they travel through landscapes which are at different times pristine and ravaged by progress; the other portraying the sensations of a child tumbling through the ocean, encountering evidence of lost worlds. Researched and composed in countries that were once part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana – New Zealand, Australia and Antarctica – the poem places its figures within vast scales of time and space. The focus on two generations, the near-future and the far-off future, raises questions about the development of consciousness, and what place we as humans have in the unfinished process of chance and change.' (Publication summary)
'That poetry is implicated with politics is incontrovertible. As Theodore Adorno writes ‘art exists in the real world and has a function in it, and the two are connected by a large number of mediating links.’ Those mediating links however, the things that connect each to the other, are harder to grapple with. What does the daily life of a protest poet look like compared to a conservative one when both work in a modern university? What poetry does the politician read?' (Introduction)
'That poetry is implicated with politics is incontrovertible. As Theodore Adorno writes ‘art exists in the real world and has a function in it, and the two are connected by a large number of mediating links.’ Those mediating links however, the things that connect each to the other, are harder to grapple with. What does the daily life of a protest poet look like compared to a conservative one when both work in a modern university? What poetry does the politician read?' (Introduction)
