Cirrus@Austlit

'An unprecedented look at the lived experience of mental health in creative work, as told by writers, comedians and public figures

'We are full of worlds that can't be contained by a pill.

'This groundbreaking collection documents the state of mental health in Australia, foregrounding a wide range of voices with lived experience defining themselves beyond a diagnosis.

'Admissions showcases more than one hundred works- poems, essays, lyrics, fiction and illustrations from some of our leading writers, comedians and public figures challenging prescribed notions of illness, recovery, treatment and trauma while reclaiming language as an act of mad pride.

'Exploding with optimism and pain, encounters and descriptions, this is an unprecedented exploration of what is carried through life and writing.' (Publication summary)

'Your name is not yours / once it’s in their mouth   

'The highly anticipated follow up to the award-winning collection The Special, this electric new body of work by David Stavanger is a mix tape of free verse, lyric poetry, found text, spoken word and flash fiction documenting the lived/living mental health experience and the well beyond.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Over the past decade, Spoken Word has established itself as a central part of contemporary Australian & New Zealand poetry. For the first-time ever, these voices are transported from the stage to the page, captured in print so that the spoken-word experience can be shared with a new and broader audience.

'Solid Air showcases the work of more than 100 performance poets - combining elements of slam, hip-hop and experimental performance poetry - to deliver an unforgettable reading experience that is both literary and loud. Poems capture themes of modern culture, identity and resistance.

'Contributors include Ali Cobby Eckermann, Hera Lindsay Bird, Claire G. Taika Waititi, Courtney Barnett, Michelle Law, Hannah Gadsby, Luka Lesson and many, many more.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'American performance poet Emily XYZ wrote In the opening (typed) notes of her (printed) songbook that she viewed the stage work contained within (pages) "as something to be heard than read, and as performance scripts rather than literature".

'We live in a world moving further from the limitations of binaries whilst still clutching to the need to define things in concrete. The duality of performed and written poetry has been forged by reaction as much as revolution. Many in power are unsettled by the continued rise of a poetics that can be understood without academic assistance. The loss of 'hard-won technique', of contested space. The growing degree of diversity. The discovery of access. Poems as entertainment, as popular culture. Poems as air. Spoken Word is both a new and an ancient aesthetic. A turning toward the fringe, the feral, the first, the unfinished, the unbound, the speaking tongue. Minority and First Nation voices interrogating a binary world to birth new-old lines:

 
InshaAllah means, there arc many worlds. Maybe in one, you are not dead 
Don't make me choose / For I am both, l am more 

(Introduction)