Cirrus@Austlit

'There is a great deal going on in Christine Paice’s new novel, The Oxenbridge King. In this narrative, we meet the troubled soul of Richard III (1452-85), unable to find rest, a contemporary young woman who struggles with loss and misjudged relationships, an angel emerging from his chrysalis after being trapped for centuries in the cellar of the family home, and a talking bird that operates as a link between characters, places, times. In what can feel like dreamlike jolts, the parallel immediacies of 500 years ago and today keep warping and collapsing into each other.' (Introduction) 

'‘Tell me your crow name. Tell me the name you will wear to the bottom of the sea,’ begins the narrating voice of Francesca de Tores’s new novel, Saltblood. These opening words, spoken by the central character at what we come to realise is the end of her life, highlight the novel’s key themes and imagery: the play of names and identities, sometimes given and sometimes taken, but always something to be worn or cast off; the call of the sea and its persistent presence of sparkle and depth throughout this chronicle of an unusual life; and the blue-black image of the crow itself, the speaker’s constant familiar, an intimate figure who lurks, ominous and comforting, in the sway of rigging. Unfolding her story in the shadow of imminent death, the reflective, determined voice of de Tores’s narrator is as deep and unpredictable as the ocean itself, thereby setting the stage for a story of introspection and observation, resilience and desire, swashbuckling action, and quotidian seaboard life.' (Introduction) 

'This paper will consider the ways in which the poetic form echoes a visceral experience of embodiment that re-imagines the relationship between subject and object. Through a focus on poetic elements such as the rise and flow of line, the vital pauses of punctuation and white space together with the slip of association and metaphoricity, this paper contends that the lyric poem in particular not only recreates the experience of the respiring body but offers us an inhabited insight into an interplay of inside and outside, self and other, what sustains and what speaks. In this way, both poetry and breath can be seen to provide a deconstructued paradigm for subjectivity -- a subjectivity that emerges from the flow of overlap and connectedness rather than differentiation. In this sense, the poem speaks the body as well as the body speaking the poem. Informed by a conceptual framework that includes Thích Nhất Hạnh’s concept of ‘interbeing’ as well as Levinas’ notion of the face as it meets the breathing face of the other, this discussion references the work of eco-poet Anne Elvey in addition to my own poetry project, ‘Remarkable as Breathing.’' (Publication abstract)

'The 2023 Liquid Amber Poetry Prize invited poets to respond to the broad topic of 'home', which it turns out, can occupy a very rich yet often complex place within human experience. Poetry is, as ever, a powerful medium to reflect and communicate that complexity. In the variety and skillfulness of their poetic craft, the poets in this Long List anthology have provided readers with poignant and insightful reflections on how we might all understand the idea of home - a place that can hold us or become our undoing - as a vital human 'centre of gravity' to be acknowledged and grappled with, whether we inhabit it or not.' (Publication summary)

'In her short life, Lesbia Harford (1891–1927) created a body of poems which have become increasingly important to scholars and poets in understanding both the impact of poetic modernism in Australia and shifting concepts of gender, class, and the tensions between a personal and a collective politics. While Oliver Dennis’s 2014 Collected Poems of Lesbia Harford presents Harford’s full oeuvre, the new Text Classics edition, selected and introduced by Gerald Murnane, brings a sharp and accessible focus on this seminal Australian poet, highlighting her key themes and demonstrating a literary style that straddled worlds: from the formal structures and decorous themes of late nineteenth-century poetry to the challenges to form, voice, and subject matter that characterised the emerging revolutions of literary modernism.' (Introduction)

'Tara Calaby’s début novel, based on her doctoral studies, wears its clearly extensive research lightly as it weaves an engrossing story of a young woman’s struggle in 1890s Melbourne towards something a contemporary reader might call social, emotional, and sexual independence. Focused around the story of an individual, House of Longing also traverses a broad canvas of social issues – class, gender roles, attitudes to mental health and its treatment, the importance of friendship, and the possibilities of sexual love between women.' (Introduction)

'These strange years of pandemic and lockdowns certainly brought challenges and unusual experiences – those of constraint but also, surprisingly, of opportunity and richness. The curious spaces we occupy in the ether have become a seedbed for conversation and exchange; for connections that otherwise might not have found a field in which to prosper. Despite or perhaps because of the limits of the digital, perhaps even because we were undistracted by physical proximity, these spaces seemed to offer the potential for a raw honesty – lacunae of sotto voce conversations which brought us ironically into a form of seemingly unmediated communication. From the hermetically sealed bubble of lockdowns, digital connect took on the intensity of embodied dialogue, the intimate voice in the ear.' (Introduction) 

'One of the many life-challenging things that poetry can do is to prise open unexpected spaces and take us somewhere entirely unanticipated, whether it be in terms of how we live, how we understand the world, or how we link the fabric of textual utterance with that of our lived experience. These two new poetry collections set about this labour of disruption in very different ways, demonstrating some of the pathways available between poet and reader.' (Introduction)

'Increments of the Everyday is a collection of poetry which traces processes of change, loss and the possibilities of recovery. The diverse experiences of grief, injury, pandemic lockdowns and responses to varying life experiences are explored in five sections: ‘Hiatus Diary,’ ‘Impossible,’ ‘Woman Watching,’ ‘Palette’ and ‘Increments of the Everyday.’ Rooted in the momentary life of the everyday, these poems offer imagistic and compassionate reflection on the human capacity for insight into our own vulnerabilities and the ability to continue.' (Publication summary)

'An artistic collaboration reflecting on 2020: the fires of summer, the uncertainty of autumn isolation, the short reprieve of winter, lockdown of spring, and tentative transitions.  While 2020 in Melbourne was certainly challenging, these beautiful poems and paintings also point to ways in which crisis can lead to enrichment and reconnection.' (Publication summary)