AustLit

'In his review of Lucy Van’s The Open, Gareth Morgan writes that Van writes ‘against the impulse to ponder dutifully about the sins of the past and present.’ This fucked me up for some time. What is it to ponder dutifully? But perhaps more importantly, how do we ponder in a way that’s more … metal? Gareth’s first full-length collection, When A Punk Becomes a Spunk, illustrates this anti-impulse vividly, as a refusal to think too seriously, or perhaps too appropriately. Not because we don’t need to think carefully about our complicity in the big ‘-isms’ like neo-colonialism or climate change. Rather, under present politics, these ubiquitous problems demand a constant, weary moral attention which blunts critical thought and meaningful change beyond meagre representation. This book suggests we should be suspicious of western imperialism, of cringe, of the Australian refusal to accept complicity, and of bad art. It views apprehensively anyone who ponders too dutifully, too loudly, who doth protest too much–though thankfully, these poems are gloriously and critically unsuspicious.' (Introduction)