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y separately published work icon Collusion selected work   poetry  
Issue Details: First known date: 2012... 2012 Collusion
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Brook Emery's mode is enquiry, with a gentle insistence that enquiry matters. Fluent, occasionally epigrammatic, and showing a quiet humour, this is generous, open-minded poetry. As in previous collections, Emery's interest is in the intersections of the material, the spiritual and the rational. The poems are loosely addressed as letters to some implied correspondent, who might be real, the self or unconscious.

While Collusion is metaphysical in intent, the poems keep up a habit of sharp and tactile observation – the abstract becomes sensuous, and the intellectual makes friends with the physical. Swinging between affirmation and uncertainty, they weigh up the beauty and losses of the natural and human worlds.' (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Epigraph: Is it better to be here or there?
    Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
    (Chapter 4 'First Weeks on the Island')

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • St Kilda, Salisbury area, Salisbury - Elizabeth - Gawler area, Adelaide, South Australia,: John Leonard Press , 2012 .
      8267585121578977070.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 70p.
      Description: 21cm
      ISBN: 9780980852363

Works about this Work

The Value of Making : Traditional Form and Narrative in Australian Poetry since the Digital Revolution Tegan Schetrumpf , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , July vol. 4 no. 1 2014;
'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)
Brook Emery : Collusion Martin Duwell , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , vol. 8 no. 2013;

— Review of Collusion Brook Emery , 2012 selected work poetry
Certainties Crumble in Poetic Quest Ali Smith , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9-10 February 2013; (p. 21)

— Review of Liquid Nitrogen Jennifer Maiden , 2012 selected work poetry ; Collusion Brook Emery , 2012 selected work poetry
Aspects of Australian Poetry in 2012 Michelle Cahill , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Westerly , June vol. 58 no. 1 2013; (p. 68-91)

'T he act of reading for appraisal rather than pleasure is a privilege that brings me to a deepened understanding of the contemporary in Australian poetry, the way the past is being framed, its traditions, celebrities and enigmas washed up in new and hybrid appearances or redressed in more conventional, sometimes nimbus forms. Judith Wright wrote that the ‘place to find clues is not in the present, it lies in the past: a shallow past, as all immigrants to Australia know, and all of us are immigrants.’ The discipline of reading to filter such a range of voices underlines my foreignness, making reading akin to translation, whilst reciprocally inviting the reader of this essay to become a foreigner to my assumptions and conclusions.' (Introduction)

Susan Fealy Reviews Collusion by Brook Emery Susan Fealy , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , June no. 13 2013;

— Review of Collusion Brook Emery , 2012 selected work poetry
[Review] Collusion Anthony Lynch , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December 2012 - January 2013 no. 347 2012; (p. 49)

— Review of Collusion Brook Emery , 2012 selected work poetry
Certainties Crumble in Poetic Quest Ali Smith , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9-10 February 2013; (p. 21)

— Review of Liquid Nitrogen Jennifer Maiden , 2012 selected work poetry ; Collusion Brook Emery , 2012 selected work poetry
Collusion; The Sunlit Zone Bonny Cassidy , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 72 no. 2 2012; (p. 185-191)

— Review of Collusion Brook Emery , 2012 selected work poetry ; The Sunlit Zone Lisa Jacobson , 2012 single work novel
Brook Emery : Collusion Martin Duwell , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , vol. 8 no. 2013;

— Review of Collusion Brook Emery , 2012 selected work poetry
Susan Fealy Reviews Collusion by Brook Emery Susan Fealy , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , June no. 13 2013;

— Review of Collusion Brook Emery , 2012 selected work poetry
Another Year, Another Engrossing Crop Martin Langford , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meanjin , Summer vol. 71 no. 4 2012; (p. 70-79)
Many of the poems in Brook Emery's Collusion are about the sea, but the sea does more than supply him with material: it shapes his interaction with the world. Compared to the sea, the land is a much easier medium on which to project plans and migrations. Those close to the sea, however, tend to be less sanguine about such things. It is, after all, the element that, proverbially, we must never take for granted. Something of this respect enters Emery's work as a reluctance to draw conclusions: as if they were a step too far, or smacked of hubris. In his previous book, Uncommon Light (2007), the rhythms and thought patterns were those of the swimmer, for whom there was at least a sense of progression - even if only illusory, besides the sea's scale, and its gridlessness. In Collusion, however, there is little expectation of forward movement - with the caveat that though the poems do not arrive at understandings, they do converge towards an assertion of happiness. Many of the poems display a static antiphony between the self - most commonly represented as a question - and the universe of things that don't answer. Sometimes Emery addresses Ka a's K, the patron saint of fruitless questions. More often there is no addressee. Whatever the question, there will be no answer. Answers are claims, and by being so wary of them, Emery aligns himself with that broad spectrum of poets, across an increasingly wide range of poetics, who do not trust them.' (Author's abstract)
Aspects of Australian Poetry in 2012 Michelle Cahill , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Westerly , June vol. 58 no. 1 2013; (p. 68-91)

'T he act of reading for appraisal rather than pleasure is a privilege that brings me to a deepened understanding of the contemporary in Australian poetry, the way the past is being framed, its traditions, celebrities and enigmas washed up in new and hybrid appearances or redressed in more conventional, sometimes nimbus forms. Judith Wright wrote that the ‘place to find clues is not in the present, it lies in the past: a shallow past, as all immigrants to Australia know, and all of us are immigrants.’ The discipline of reading to filter such a range of voices underlines my foreignness, making reading akin to translation, whilst reciprocally inviting the reader of this essay to become a foreigner to my assumptions and conclusions.' (Introduction)

The Value of Making : Traditional Form and Narrative in Australian Poetry since the Digital Revolution Tegan Schetrumpf , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , July vol. 4 no. 1 2014;
'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)
Last amended 2 Dec 2014 13:01:30
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