AustLit

'What can the original concepts underpinning psychogeography lend to a discussion of the relation between poetry and place in contemporary Australian poetics? Can the Paris-based wanderings of Guy Debord and the Situationist Internationale (SI) bring to the fore new meanings of being and creating in urban Australia? To delve into these questions this essay conducts a psychogeographic reading of Carmine Frascarelli’s 2016 book, Sydney Road Poems (Rabbit Poets Series), using key concepts put forth by Debord and the SI. Through such an approach, I believe particular psychogeographic motives – often of a political nature – will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the approach taken by Frascarelli in writing his poem. Beginning first with a short historical survey of the interrelation between walking and artistic creation, and how Frascarelli’s writing practice can be regarded in this tradition, the essay will then use the SI’s concepts of dérive, the idea of play, as well as touching on detournement and the effects of collage, to demonstrate how a psychogeographic writing practice can be considered a socio-critical tool – one which has allowed Frascarelli to re-imagine place through a de-spectacularisation of society, or more specifically, Sydney Road in the Melbourne, Australia suburb of Brunswick.' (Introduction)

'In 1890, an American aeronaut named Millie Viola departs the Geelong showgrounds in a hot air balloon, in order to give an assembled crowd of onlookers a parachute jump display. Her ascension followed foiled attempts earlier in the week, but, according to the Geelong Advertiser’s archives, ‘Mademoiselle Viola’ at last ascends – to the gratification of ‘an increasingly dubious crowd’ – to around 5000 feet (1540 metres), and comes close to being swept into Corio Bay. She manages to swing her way to land and alight in Pevensey Crescent – a few hundred metres from the space in which this essay’s authors currently live and write – though another archival source suggests she instead alights on the beach. In either case, the event has an impact on her next display: The Kyneton Observer reports, on 31 May, 1890, that preparations were prolonged ‘owing to the balloon being wet, it having dropped into Corio Bay in the early part of the week, on the occasion of an exhibition at Geelong.’' (Introduction)