Splinters of Blood: Reading Melinda Smith’s Man-handled and Heather TaylorJohnson’s Rhymes with Hyenas

Splinters of Blood: Reading Melinda Smith’s Man-handled and Heather TaylorJohnson’s Rhymes with Hyenas single work review essay

Author:agent Camille Rouliere

Issue Details: First known date: 2021... 2021 Splinters of Blood: Reading Melinda Smith’s Man-handled and Heather TaylorJohnson’s Rhymes with Hyenas

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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Sometimes, words are as sharp as blood. A red drop falls in slow motion, hits the pristine white tiles of the kitchen floor and explodes like a thousand splinters. Each of Smith’s words has been sharpened this way; it has been meticulously drawn ‘forth through that / needle’s eye’ and assembled to compose the six parts that form her collection Man-handled. Its third part (a previously published found-text chapbook entitled Listen, bitch) physically locates violence — the voices and attitudes that repeatedly dehumanise, strip naked and turn others into pounds of fresh meat — at the core of the collection.' (Introduction)

Notes

Epigraph:

If you must make me,

draw me forth through that

needle’s eye (Smith 2020: 1)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

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y Social Alternatives Poetry to the Rescue: The Poetry Special Issue vol. 40 no. 3 October 2021 23781124 2021 periodical issue Abstract
'Since its inception in 1977 Social Alternatives has had a long-running commitment to poetry. During this time the journal has published well over two thousand poems (Synott 2018: 46)1, including work by Judith Wright, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Les Murray, Judith Beveridge, Samuel Wagan Watson and Dorothy Porter (Morgan et al. 2007: 58). Alongside such luminaries, Social Alternatives has published hundreds of relatively unknown poets, many of whom had their first poems published in the journal. Certainly, when I began writing a quarter of a century ago it was one of the places you sent to. Many of the poets featured in the journal's early years were active in various social movements from anti-conscription and nuclear disarmament to Aboriginal land rights, women's liberation, and environmental protection (Synott 2018: 45). The poetry in Social Alternatives has often been slanted towards political and social themes but the work has usually been thematically broader (Morgan et al. 2007: 58), relating more abstractly to politics.' (Aidan Coleman Publication abstract)
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2021
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pg. 47-51