'I wrote most of this book on campus in Singapore, surrounded by a ring of jungle that couldn’t encroach as fast as it was being thinned out. The circles and mosses of that location tilt and transect others – Auckland, Bicol, an empty Bangkok penthouse, and somewhere else, entirely see-through. It seemed important to be as close to sleep as possible, so I closed windows and wore headphones. Not to shut things out or make them stranger, but to soften and modulate the tensions of exchange.
'In Bangkok, excavators swim up and down the canals. They float on barges and scoop themselves through the water. The water pools and resists, carrying places to places on its way.
'In the ‘epoch of simultaneity’ not all spaces are equally accessible to thought or description. Rituals of immersion, of the maze and the gate, may not open anything but the body’s ability to accumulate and to disperse, to be near and far, here and there. Memory, presence and imagination fold and run together. I was looking for gaps to step through, for ways both forward and back.
–Jen Crawford' (Publication summary)
'Koel is Jen Crawford’s third poetry collection and it clearly demonstrates the development of a challenging but highly rewarding poetic voice. This is a poet both confident and experimental, who is pushing at the boundaries of place and movement, what is remembered and an immersive present tense, the human subject and the ‘environment’, what we know and what we don’t. In the preface, Crawford suggests: ‘I was looking for gaps to step through, for ways both forward and back’. Koel catapaults the reader through these gaps of uncertainty and possibility.' (Introduction)
'Just one of the many really interesting trails that thread through the seeming wilds of Australian poetry over the last two or so decades (cripes, has it been that long?) is the slow, constant morphing one of Cordite. Sydney poets Adrian Wiggins and Peter Minter, founders of Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review, launched their first issue in 1997. After five issues in a broadsheet format and an oscillating editorship that included Margaret Cronin and Jennifer Kremmer, the editorship was handed over in 2005 to David Prater, whose key innovation was to appoint guest editors for mini- and, later, entire issues.'
(Introduction)
'Just one of the many really interesting trails that thread through the seeming wilds of Australian poetry over the last two or so decades (cripes, has it been that long?) is the slow, constant morphing one of Cordite. Sydney poets Adrian Wiggins and Peter Minter, founders of Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review, launched their first issue in 1997. After five issues in a broadsheet format and an oscillating editorship that included Margaret Cronin and Jennifer Kremmer, the editorship was handed over in 2005 to David Prater, whose key innovation was to appoint guest editors for mini- and, later, entire issues.'
(Introduction)
'Koel is Jen Crawford’s third poetry collection and it clearly demonstrates the development of a challenging but highly rewarding poetic voice. This is a poet both confident and experimental, who is pushing at the boundaries of place and movement, what is remembered and an immersive present tense, the human subject and the ‘environment’, what we know and what we don’t. In the preface, Crawford suggests: ‘I was looking for gaps to step through, for ways both forward and back’. Koel catapaults the reader through these gaps of uncertainty and possibility.' (Introduction)
