AustLit
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'In thinking about the relationship between poetry and the extreme, we wanted to examine how poetry functions in a number of ways: how it creates the space – and new forms of language – to articulate events which seem inexpressible; how poets innovate to enact resistance; how poetry helps to break silences and taboos; and how poetry, and the role of the poets, is so often linked to the transgression of boundaries. The submissions we received embraced the notion of extremity in a variety of ways, considering the mathematical complexities of the work of Louis Zukofsky, for instance, and the desire for liberation in the poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik, whose life, Caio Yurgel writes, might be understood as “a long preparation for suicide”. We received work on provocative ideas about nationalism and resistance, politics and disaster, about collaboration through the extremities of climate change and COVID, and how women poets might “disrupt and disturb” patriarchal systems to construct new visions of autobiographical memory, as Paul Hetherington and Cassandra Atherton examine. The poetic responses also echo these themes, often eerily, focussing on abject bodies and the taboo, on autobiographical memories, on places overwhelmed by the devastations of extreme weather events, and on the “phenomena of perception” as a reaction to the alienating nature of pandemic ‘normal’. Importantly, the responses, both scholarly and creative, demonstrate the centrality of poetry to the difficult, wrestling with questions about selfhood and belonging, for example, as well as with language itself, its contortions and transformations in seeking to find new shapes for the ineffable.' (Alyson Miller and Ellie Gardner : Editorial)
Notes
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Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
“All that has room within it / even without / language”: the poetic technique of Paul Celan by Mags Webster
Poetry’s upper limit by Etienne Garnier
“Trace your grave”: On the poetry of The Communist Manifesto’s grave-digger thesis by Jayson Althofer
The writing of the disaster poem: Knowing oil through global apocalypse movies by Connor Weightman
The extreme calligraphy of the world in the poetry of Herberto Helder by Sérgio das Neves
God, a metaphor: A meditation on Alejandra Pizarnik’s “Awakening” by Caio Yurgel
Seeing the pen as a bayonet: The extremities of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s utopian imagination by Mark Markovic
“Tomar Santan Jano Thake Dudhe-Bhaate”: Exploring the Naxal movement through Bengali protest poetry by Shriya Dasgupta
Gutted: Three Poems on Irregular Stomachs by Cath Nichols
Contents
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Poetry and Precarious Memory : Ways of Understanding Less and Less,
single work
criticism
'Poetry as an art form has traditionally registered tropes of feeling and memory, often with astonishing power, especially since the Romantics began to focus on projections of the self. Yet, when poetry invokes memory, anchoring people to their pasts and identities, it frequently reveals that, at best, memory offers a precarious connection to what is certain or secure – and this is particularly the case for women writers. For example, much of Emily Dickinson’s poetry reveals that memory’s recesses are often uncomfortable, and studies in autobiographical memory confirm poetry’s intuition that all may not be what it seems within the “house” of the recollecting self. This paper explores ways in which poetry’s elusive suggestiveness, and memory’s more fraught instances, confirm the provisionality and precarity of what most people are inclined to take for granted – that they know themselves and can speak securely of who they are. This has always been a challenge for women in patriarchal societies as gender inequality and precarious work – often in atypical employment – has informed and affected their expressions of self and identity. We conclude with examples from the work of two contemporary women poets, Emma Hyche and Mary A. Koncel, in order to focus on their particular approaches to precarity in their poetry and prose poetry and to posit that women poets often disrupt and disturb aspects of the patriarchal language system to offer new constructions of autobiographical memory.' (Publication abstract)
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Creative Companionship as We Face the Apocalypse – an Essay in Conversation,
single work
criticism
'This essay explores how a commitment to poetic collaboration, with daily writing and reading, changed the ways we perceived and lived our lives, particularly in light of living through the extremity of climate change (characterised by Australian bush fires and floods), and the isolation and stress caused by the pandemic. We explore collaboration, prose poetry and the creative process in the context of extremity, arguing that writerly collaboration can engender hope beyond the page. We discuss these topics in an essay-conversation format, moving back and forth between authors, building/ expanding/thinking and re-thinking through matters of process in light of the poetic and the extreme. Some of our creative works from this time are also included.' (Publication abstract)
- Mosei"Lido, Malamocco, Chioggia:", single work poetry
- Wakei"The", single work poetry
- Ramii"Gliding", single work poetry
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13 Ways of Looking at Lockdown,
single work
poetry
'The extremities of a state of pandemic lockdown intensify, through physical and
emotional constraints, an aesthetic of perceptual experience involving the senses, or
sense perception. Part of this pandemic perception requires living “with uncertainty,
[…] which involves living with the [cognitive] dissonance” (Aronson & Tavris, 2020).
So many artists found sensuous aesthetics to live with these dissonances (Sarasso et al.,2021), such as street performances while emptying the bins, or orchestra members
performing via Zoom (managing transition delays to suggest harmonies across
isolations). Wallace Stevens enlarges an aesthetic of the sensuous through a non-
mimetic form of practice, what he terms “the phenomena of perception”. The
phenomena which illustrate the pressures of imagination and reality infuse Stevens’s
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the model and catalyst for this poetic suite
on lockdown. This suite is rhizomatic, exploring Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987)
“rhizome [which] has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things,
interbeing, intermezzo”(27). The intention is to map a mass of roots, avoiding a
structural tree system (beginning, middle and end) which suggests binaries or
dualities. This rhizomatic presentation of extreme moments of “being between”
presents an array of mappings or tracings, “migrations into new conceptual territories
resulting from unpredictable juxtapositions” (Berry & Siegal, n.d.).'(Introduction)
- Coastal Drowning —Port Macquarie 1986-92—i"Surfers rode dreams of being sponsored like Slater;", single work poetry
- Wildfire {for Yvette}i"Sometimes fire is so beautiful it draws you", single work poetry
- Slaughter Housei"There was a punk band rehearsing upstairs in the lounge", single work poetry
