Paul Carter Paul Carter i(A6046 works by) (a.k.a. Paul Hugh Carter)
Born: Established: 1951
c
England,
c
c
United Kingdom (UK),
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Western Europe, Europe,
;
Gender: Male
Arrived in Australia: ca. 1980
Heritage: English
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Works By

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1 y separately published work icon Translations, an Autoethnography : Migration, Colonial Australia and the Creative Encounter Paul Carter , Manchester : Manchester University Press , 2021 24545928 2021 multi chapter work criticism

'Translations is a personal history written at the intersection of colonial anthropology, creative practice and migrant ethnography. Renowned postcolonial scholar, public artist and radio maker, UK-born Paul Carter documents and discusses a prodigiously varied and original trajectory of writing, sound installation and public space dramaturgy produced in Australia to present the phenomenon of contemporary migration in an entirely new light. Migrant space-time, Carter argues, is not linear, but turbulent, vortical and opportunistic. Before-and-after narratives fail to capture the work of self-becoming and serve merely to perpetuate colonialist fantasies. The 'mirror state' relationship between England and Australia, its structurally symmetrical histories of land theft and internal colonisation, repress the appearance of new subjects and subject relations. Reflecting on collaborations with Aboriginal artists, Carter argues for a new definition of the stranger-host relationship predicated on recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty. Carter calls the creative practice that breaks the cycle of repeated invasion 'dirty art'. Translations is a passionately eloquent argument for reframing borders as crossing-places: framing less murderous exchange rates, symbolic literacy, creative courage and, above all, the emergence of a resilient migrant poetics will be essential.'  (Publication summary)

1 Paul Carter Paul Carter , 2016 extract criticism (Ground Truthing : Explorations in a Creative Region)
— Appears in: A Single Tree : Voices from the Bush 2016; (p. 57-58)
1 Lines Paul Carter , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: Postcolonial Studies , vol. 19 no. 1 2016; (p. 94-96)
'As an immensely readable, well-researched and passionately engaged account of Darwin, Tess Lea's biography of a city might be expected to invite speculation about the challenges of neo-tropical urbanism. Her fine decision to present Darwin's history, people, cultures and environments through a suite of loosely grouped stories demonstrates the proposition that 'Darwin' does not exist as an urban centre with critical or historical mass to generate its own story. It is a con-centration or distribution of suburbs defined by two major edges: the coast and the military landing strip (qua airport). In planning terms, it is a constellation of residential grids and star forms whose essential gravitational pull is expansionist. The recent plan to build a new satellite town up the harbour, irrational on any ordinary principles of town planning, attested to the fact that Darwin remains a pattern of landing strips, sites of temporary arrival and sojourn, always considered preliminary to further flight. The Weddell debacle was not a mysterious offspring of an anti-social spirit of place: as the creation of separated residential developments south of Heavitree Gap in Alice Springs demonstrates, it embodies an institutional incapacity to manage the growth of complexity. Lacking control, the Northern Territory government relishes control: simplification has the double effect of calculability and discouragement.' (Introduction)
1 Common Patterns : Narratives of 'Mere Coincidence' and the Production of Regions Paul Carter , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Creative Communities : Regional Inclusion & the Arts 2015; (p. 16-29)
'Paul Carter's chapter...considers the interconnectedness of Indigenous and non-Indigenous presence in regional communities. Carter focuses on the deserts of central Australia in his work...He explores how storytelling and place-making affect sociability and community in profound ways. His chapter opens a window to ways in which change might be achieved through negotiation across time and space to connect people from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Based on a collaborative project with community members, Carter traces the transformation of stories into places and services that reflect community identities and needs.' (Introduction 7-8)
1 Introduction Paul Carter , 2015 single work essay
— Appears in: Happiness 2015; (p. vii)
1 Review : Game Day Paul Carter , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 365 2014; (p. 41)

— Review of Game Day Miriam Sved , 2014 single work novel
1 2 y separately published work icon Ecstacies and Elegies : Poems Paul Carter , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2013 7039012 2013 selected work poetry

'The poems of Ecstacies and Elegies are as engaging and virtuosic in their range of styles as they are generous in their imagery.

The way up and the way down are the same, said Heraclitus, and in this moving collection the ecstasy of love coexists with the grief of death; the pain of loss is in proportion to the longing for union. The poet is lifted up, flying over the earth’s surface like a bird; he climbs and descends the stairs of foreign cities; in the breakup of a relationship he looks up from the city pavement. States of illness are translated into lucid dreams. Tours in other countries discover an inner music. A fissure in reality opens up.

Paul Carter’s intuition that space is history has distinguished his cultural writing, public art and radiophonic scripting. In his first full length volume of poems, a celebrated debut, we encounter a startling overlay of immemorial myth and ephemeral urban encounter. Spirits of the classical world jostle with the sensory stimuli of contemporary domestic life. Desire tours a terrain of abysses.' (Publication blurb)

1 y separately published work icon Ground Truthing : Explorations in a Creative Region Paul Carter , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2010 Z1770726 2010 single work criticism 'Australia's evocative Mallee region is rich with histories, impressions and geographical complexities. It is also a microcosm of a world in turmoil. Ground Truthing allows the Mallee to speak: to show its nurturing and renewable self. In searching for the creative principles that bring the Mallee into being, Carter digs, plots and weaves a poetic passage. A Wotjobaluk man, 'Jowley', the poet John Shaw Neilson and pastoralist William Stanbridge are among characters that give creative access to the region. Their voices mingle with those of vanished peoples and an ecological future crying out for renegotiation. Through this spatial history of the Mallee, we see that regions contain 'the region of regions' that is the creative key to the production and sustenance of all places.' (Publisher's blurb)
1 The Forest in the Clearing : The Environmental Poetics of John Shaw Neilson Paul Carter , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Halfway House : The Poetics of Australian Spaces 2010; (p. 133-157)
1 Ardea Improvisation for Paul Cox i "Improvisation for Paul Cox", Paul Carter , 2009 single work poetry
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , no. 53 2009;
1 Paul Cox Dossier Victoria Duckett , Roger Ebert , Paul Carter , Maria Stratford , Asher Bilu , Alexander Garcia Duttmann , Chris Haywood , 2009 anthology criticism
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , no. 53 2009;
1 form The Letter S Paul Carter , 2006 single work drama radio play

'In "The Letter S" Paul Carter overlays a number of parallel journeys.

'A group of actors meet with a young playwright to work on a his new play: theirs is an artistic journey. The playwright's father wrote a radio play which they listen to: it is Memory As Desire about the journey in search of the inland sea, and the mutual incomprehension of indigenous and European cultures. His new play is based on the Odyssey and in particular the relationship between father and son: the son searching for the lost father. Just as the search for the inland sea is ill-fated, so to the cast of actors conclude that their search for a new theatre is futile. The indigenous people had no letter 'S', leading to misunderstanding. The explorers failed to listen to the land. The characters in the version of the Odyssey are washed away in a sea of sibilants. This is a work packed full of ideas, puns, and concrete poetry propelled by desire and loss, but also hope.'

Source: ABC Radio National website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/airplay/stories/2006/1716177.htm
Sighted: 11/09/2006

1 Abnormal Life Paul Carter , 2005 single work short story
— Appears in: Verandah , vol. 20 no. 2005; (p. 24-27)
1 Dark Writing Paul Carter , 2004 single work extract
— Appears in: Ngara : Living in This Place Now 2004; (p. 97-99)
1 Myrtleford, 1983 Paul Carter , 2004 single work short story
— Appears in: Verandah , no. 19 2004; (p. 90-95)
1 1 form The House that Flies : Episodes in the Spirit : Life on the Run Paul Carter , 2002 single work radio play drama 'Suffolk House is a famous colonial mansion outside Georgetown, Penang, now in a state of disrepair and awaiting restoration. At one time the residence of the first Governor of Penang, its ruins now stand on ground that was formerly known as Suffolk Estate, so named after the English county where Francis Light, the merchant-adventurer who established Penang in 1786, was born. Francis left the Suffolk Estate to his life-partner Martinha Rozells, but very quickly the land passed out of her hands. History has forgotten Martinha and turned Francis into an imperial myth. It has even forgotten that Martinha, besides being a remarkable figure in her own right, was the mother of William Light, Adelaide's first Surveyor-General. As for the great mansion known as Suffolk House, we know that in order to build it an older building had to be removed: a Malay-style pavilion. The House that Flies is a sound diary of Jadi Jadian, a heritage-in-performance project designed to resurrect the memory of Martinha Rozells. It takes its title from the bamboo pavilion, which, in its lightness, symbolises the spirit of Martinha and builds on an earlier work, Light, an ABC Listening Room-Adelaide festival collaboration in which Carter, Chandrabhanu and Adelaide artist Hossein Valamanesh, explored the legacy of William Light. It tells the story of Martinha as her soul, woken from its 200 year sleep, is escorted to the underworld and is at last released on the funeral pyre of her pavilion to go home, once again lodged in history's memory. The performance of Jadi Jadian took the form of a secret ceremony made at the ruins of Suffolk House in 1998, based on Chinese funerary ritual, and incorporating Malay spirit healing incantation as a way of bringing Martinha back to her lost ground, and reinstalling her memory. Now that Suffolk House lies in ruins awaiting restoration, Martinha's return raises a question: will we again erase her presence? Or will we let the wind blow through and remember differently?' (ABC Classic FM website)
1 1 form Nearamnewspeak Paul Carter , 2002 single work radio play drama
1 Little Places Loculi Paul Carter , 2002 single work prose
— Appears in: Salt , vol. 16 no. 2002; (p. 11-15)
1 1 form Nostalgia's Nose Paul Carter , 2000 single work radio play drama 'Adapted from the novel Baroque Memories, Christopher, an Australian student of the baroque, wanders and photographs the serpentine streets and elaborate facades of the city of Lecce, the Baroque capital of Southern Italy. He is drawn to the lost migrant Nostalgia, trying to reconnect with her city of origin. She is interested in an encounter with the photographer, but chance meetings in this maze of streets and piazzas are always difficult to arrange and are constantly frustrated by encounters with other fantastic figures who cross their paths: Grazioni, the inventor of the camera profonda; the bald Contessa von Economico; Philophilus the pedantic tour guide. Thoughts, destinies, casual meetings, erotic adventures are here determined by the physical and architectural properties of a place. Memories belong not to the past but shadow us into the future, the might have beens we cannot leave behind. In the crumbling city of the past, surfaces are dwelt upon-faces, time worn facades, clouds, tumbling seas, random sounds'. (ABC Classic FM website)
1 1 form Relay for Radio Paul Carter , 2000 single work radio play

'16 'Olympian Odes' in the tradition of the dada/futurist, trans-lingual voice poem evoking the 'meaning of the Olympics to Australians'. Derived from the text-based, site-specific art work installed at Fig Grove, next to the Homebush Bay main stadium, the odes relate specifically to the first modern Olympics meet in Athens in 1896, the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the Sydney 2000 Olympics and 'the Olympics of the future'. These texts are engraved into the vertical faces of the stone tiers that compose the 'sitting out' areas of Fig Grove. They are composed of words that overlap their first and last letters - as if a baton were being handed over in a relay race. Inside the arrangement of words and their combinations other hidden words and meanings are concealed. A polyphony of alternative readings emerges. Making out the sense of these could be compared to watching a race where the runners keep changing positions, and for a time the outcome is unclear. Since the metrical unit of poetic line is the foot, Relay for Radio revives the connection between poetic rhythm and the dance of feet, the dance in this case evoking a group of running feet in a constantly changing rhythmic relationship with each other.' (ABC Classic FM website)

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