Cirrus@Austlit

Authors notes:
Research contribution
A key innovation is our contemporary application of an ancient form of narrative formation. Our method reenacts the original formation of the tales, which was through the appropriation of a range of stories and tropes, and the intervention on these, by many writers, poetic voices and forms. We retrieve fragments from ancient texts and, after reflection and analysis, perform an 'arms-length' collaboration, independently writing elegies for the same characters, and then setting them against each other to explore how voice, prosody and intellectual/political concerns conspire to create fresh understandings of a familiar set of tales.

Research significance
The concept that drives this work has already attracted international interest, with both poets achieving publication of critical and creative work on the theme. A key significance is the confident interweaving of critical and creative writings, which effectively constructs a prismatic effect, testing the issues from a number of points of view.