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'There are many fine poets in our city, engaged with the raw fire and the vibrancy and the whirling circus of the word that is Melbourne. Loud ones, effusive ones, praisers, complainers,
the whisperers, the shy. Polished ones, and those just beginning; made for the page and/or the stage, it’s the great parade!
And then, in their own separate skies, there’s Anastasi and Coburn. I have known their poetry individually for some time, but in this collection I am rather astounded at the breadth, the clarity, the precision, and above all the surety of this work. Both poets possess an inherent quiet wisdom combined with a rarity of skill and poise in their writing that is quite unusual for any poet, let alone relatively young writers at this stage in their careers.
'Eaglemont Press is proud to have The Silences in its quiver, and Eaglemont’s king Shelton Lea will be delighted with this venture and is toasting Anastasi and Coburn from wherever he currently reigns. At any rate, they can tell it better than I so stop reading this. Read these two.. Shhh. Get silent. (Ian McBryde, Publication Summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Diamond Scraps of Sound
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Foam:e , March no. 14 2017;'The Silences, a two hander from Amanda Anastasi and Robbie Coburn, is one of the hits of the year for me. Although slender, coming in at just 41 pages, the poems have a power and coherence that has resulted from keeping their remit tightly focussed. Instead of a dos-si-dos format where each of the poets have a designated space within the book and their own ‘front’ cover, the poems in The Silences are interleaved as a conversation between the poets. The order, sometimes a single poem from one author followed by a set of poems from the other, is a well-structured scheme that has obviously been dictated by the flow of the poems rather than an artificially introduced this-then-that/ you-then-me idea.' (Introduction)
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Collaborations! Mark Roberts Reviews ‘The Silences’ by Amanda Anastasi and Robbie Coburn & ‘Scar to Scar’ by Robbie Coburn and Michele Seminara
2017
single work
review
essay
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , January – March no. 21 2017; 'I have been thinking a lot about poets working together on projects recently. I suspect that this has grown from reading translations and feeling, at times, slightly frustrated by the idea that there is an extra layer between my reading and the original poem. I noticed this particularly a few months back when reading the translations by Stephen Kessler of the Spanish poet Luis Cernuda. The translations were presented next to the original Spanish and, while I couldn’t read the poems in the Spanish, it was clear that Kessler had taken some major liberties with the structure of the poems, moving words from line to line and even from stanza to stanza. Armed with a Spanish English dictionary and a good online translator I began to create literal translations from the Spanish which I then reworked myself into versions I preferred. This, I realised, was a great example of how a good translator must do more than simply translate between languages – give the same poem to three different translators and chances are you will come up with three different poems.' (Introduction)
-
Collaborations! Mark Roberts Reviews ‘The Silences’ by Amanda Anastasi and Robbie Coburn & ‘Scar to Scar’ by Robbie Coburn and Michele Seminara
2017
single work
review
essay
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , January – March no. 21 2017; 'I have been thinking a lot about poets working together on projects recently. I suspect that this has grown from reading translations and feeling, at times, slightly frustrated by the idea that there is an extra layer between my reading and the original poem. I noticed this particularly a few months back when reading the translations by Stephen Kessler of the Spanish poet Luis Cernuda. The translations were presented next to the original Spanish and, while I couldn’t read the poems in the Spanish, it was clear that Kessler had taken some major liberties with the structure of the poems, moving words from line to line and even from stanza to stanza. Armed with a Spanish English dictionary and a good online translator I began to create literal translations from the Spanish which I then reworked myself into versions I preferred. This, I realised, was a great example of how a good translator must do more than simply translate between languages – give the same poem to three different translators and chances are you will come up with three different poems.' (Introduction) -
Diamond Scraps of Sound
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Foam:e , March no. 14 2017;'The Silences, a two hander from Amanda Anastasi and Robbie Coburn, is one of the hits of the year for me. Although slender, coming in at just 41 pages, the poems have a power and coherence that has resulted from keeping their remit tightly focussed. Instead of a dos-si-dos format where each of the poets have a designated space within the book and their own ‘front’ cover, the poems in The Silences are interleaved as a conversation between the poets. The order, sometimes a single poem from one author followed by a set of poems from the other, is a well-structured scheme that has obviously been dictated by the flow of the poems rather than an artificially introduced this-then-that/ you-then-me idea.' (Introduction)
