Cirrus@Austlit

'This paper considers the practice of learning-by-heart and argues for its relevance to learning, to thought (as defined by Gilles Deleuze) and as a way of turning towards the ‘new’ or ‘the future’, via the operation of repetition. It considers two modes in which rote learning can be productive and provocative—firstly, when the content itself is something worth retaining, and secondly, when the actual process of the learning itself and then the repeating align themselves with the criteria of ‘practice’, as framed by the author here. In the face of rote learning’s reputation as an out-moded pedagogical tool, the paper argues that it inhabits a paradoxical and productive site, whereby what begins as a repetition of the same, can open towards pure repetition (as Deleuze frames this notion), and facilitate inventiveness and a courting of the new. In this way, poetry, and the learning of it by rote, constitute a unique constellation, disputing the platitude that learning is ‘only discovering what one already knew’ and instead proposing that learning is closer to an awesome ordeal, one that leads to concepts and collisions that did not exist before and cannot be predicted in advance.' (Publication abstract)

'This paper engages with biopoetic paradigms for understanding creativity and, especially, poetry. While acknowledging the tensions that have long existed between the sciences and the humanities, this paper argues that the work of the US sociobiologist Ellen Dissanayake provides exciting opportunities for rethinking poetic praxis that extend Romantic paradigms. Dissanayake’s theory of poetry’s origins in ‘motherese’, the emotionally charged and dynamic language through which mothers or caregivers engage their children, is of particular interest. Dissanayake’s conception of poetry’s genesis provides us with a new way of theorising two key features of poetic creativity—emotionalism and inarticulacy—that resonate with a Romantic phenomenology of poetic praxis as well as with this author’s experience of writing poetry.' (Publication abstract)

'Following from Karl Popper's notion of 'subjectless' knowledge, this article argues that poetry, like the other arts and sciences can be construed as a distinct 'world'. This world is constituted by internal relations both in a structural and an intertextual sense. Utilising Yury Lotman's formalist-structuralist approach, the difference between an internal relation and an external relation is made clear through a close reading of John Kinsella's 'The Silo', where the antipastoral elements are shown to be in an external relation to it, whereas the gothic mode is in an internal relation. A close reading of Philip Salom's Keepers trilogy further explores the kind of knowledge possessed by poetry.' (Publication abstract)

'‘Not So Much a Thought’ explores the real or professed dichotomies between thought and feeling, mind and body, the personal and the universal to consider the general relationship between philosophy and poetry. Beginning with Brook Emery’s own poetry and broadening to consider the views of Romantic and modern poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Wallace Stevens, Robert Gray), literary critics (Samuel Johnson, Marjorie Perloff, Hank Lazer) and philosophers (Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty) it argues that philosophy and poetry are not antagonistic, as has often been assumed, but that they are different ways of thinking and saying. It concludes that a poem is inevitably a form of reasoning even if it does not employ, in Heidegger’s phrase, ‘the logic of calculating reason’. ' (Publication abstract)

'Between 10 September 2012 and 6 March 2013 Paul Hetherington and Katharine Coles conducted an interview about poetry, creativity and creative practice by email. Questions and answers were exchanged one email at a time and what follows is the wide-ranging discussion that resulted—about Katharine Coles’ approach to poetry, some of the ways in which she connects her poetry to her personal experience, and her understanding and practice of her craft.' (Publication abstract)

'In this essay I outline some broad structural and cultural aspects of the digital revolution which may contribute to the renewal of traditional form and narrative in Australian poetry as an expression of the millennial value of making. Firstly, that making traditional poetic forms is partly a response to the structural limitations of websites and e-readers, and culturally a response to the remediation of poetry to the perceived temporality and instability of the internet. I briefly associate Manovich’s argument that the database is the enemy of the narrative with the new ‘empirical turn’ in the humanities and suggest that strongly narrative poetry is reacting against the digital preference for the number. Finally I note the strategies of a smooth grammatical line and ‘bardic’ stance as a way for ‘professional’ authors to differentiate themselves from online amateurism.' (Publication abstract)

'This paper is an investigation into the apparent fluctuating interest in and practice of visual poetry in Western culture through its history and form. The article will address in particular visual poetry (VP) in the 20th and early 21st centuries and the notion that the fluctuation coincides with the ‘crisis of sign’, reflecting a crisis of culture. While the crisis of sign may have been, and may continue to be, a fundamental driver of the 20th-century manifestation of VP, this article will argue that there are other possible factors contributing to its surges of interest, especially in the 20th century.' (Publication abstract)

'On 14 November 2013 Paul Hetherington interviewed Nigel McLoughlin, about his poetry in his office at the University of Gloucestershire. Nigel talked about various aspects of his approach to writing poems, including its connection to his childhood, his methods of making work and how he understood poetry in terms of creative practice and research.' (Publication abstract)

'An exploration of the author’s abiding interest in the nature of time, memory, the force of the past, and the promptings of nostalgia. His speculations touch on notions of the past’s ‘reachability’, the question of fate and free will, and more implicitly on the impulse to faith and transcendence. The discussion is counterpointed with a range of examples from his poetry in which these concerns are foregrounded or implied.' (Publication abstract)