AustLit

'How to begin a long poem? In AXIS BOOK 1: 'AREAL', the inaugural part of carruthers' long poem project, each 'axis' cuts, layers, folds, and accumulates language in two columns. One side often plays the support role, an 'accompaniment' for the other side. Elsewhere they merge, intersect, cross, or even obliterate each other. Book 1 is the first test of this structure, a laying out of fields, of poetic 'areas.' It asks questions about questions: Can utopia be lived inside the work? Is there a place for the political in the poem? What is the fate of community, of the chorus, of lyric time? Could there be such a thing as poetic geography? Poetic science? What doesn't poetry know about music? Big, bold, brainy. An experimental tour de force.' (Publication summary)

'Book 2 is made of 3 microbooks – Blazar, Chorastics, Disk – & comprises 30 poems in total. Blazars; black hole objects with jet axes pointing towards earth. Chorastics; a chorus, a human cluster. Disk; the shape of some galaxies but also a compact storage device. Each microbook; equal number of lines for each register. Blazar in 3 registers (258 lines), Chorastics in 4 (680 lines), Disk in 5 (360). Ends with music.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Drawing on media such as musical notation, Carruthers writes in vertical verse stanzas that can be read in any direction; recalling the the palindromic poems in the Chinese poetic tradition, they challenge the dominant linear mode of thinking and writing in the West. Z book 3 is the third book in the AXIS series, a lifelong project begun in 2011.' (Publication summary)