AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Superette’s speaker assumes the guise of an audacious flâneuse with a practiced eye for detail. A combination of Dorothy Parker wit, burlesque, and punk, this citizen stylist observes urban life anew. The collection pulsates with sneaky beats and sharp observations of latent and not-so-latent fantasies. Her poems swell with lunch-hour humidity, re-envisioning our everyday routines and small intimacies. Be prepared to surrender to Superette’s artful turns and city pockets, as Bufton leads us through a contemporary expanse with effortless flair.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Conversations with Commodities : Consumable Bodies in Melinda Bufton’s “Conversations with Christopher Langton’s I Luv You Sculpture, 1993”
2020
single work
essay
— Appears in: Philament , November no. 26 2020; 'A key premise in classic aesthetic theory is the distinction between events, artworks, and phenomena, as determined by the presence or absence of an aesthetic response in a viewing subject.1 Classical aesthetic categories like the beautiful or the sublime are bound up with the distinction between high and low art, which has plagued critical theory across disciplines for decades. However, the high/low dichotomy was irreparably destabilised by postwar Western visual art movements, such as Dada and Pop Art, which coincided with a rapidly growing consumer culture that turned art into commodity, and vice versa. With the Western world moving into late-stage capitalism, there appears to be a new evolution in the destabilisation of the aesthetic distinctions between subject and object, the consumer and the consumed. Melinda Bufton’s poem “Conversations with Christopher Langton’s I luv you sculpture, 1993,” presents the possibility of a new aesthetic relation, the end of the line for capitalist objectification: a consumable subject.' (Introduction) -
‘That Is Some Crafty Bite’ : Trisha Pender Interviews Melinda Bufton
Trisha Pender
(interviewer),
2019
single work
interview
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , May no. 91 2019;'In her eagerly awaited second collection, Superette (Puncher & Wattman, 2018), Melinda Bufton delivers dramatically on the promise announced in her 2014 debut, Girlery (Inken Publisch, 2014). Girlery performs a provocative en guard to a literary culture overly sanguine in its dismissal of all things ‘girl’. In it, Bufton subverts the charges of superficiality and irrelevance that are often levelled at the popular culture of girls and instead celebrates this culture in loving, defiant detail. Fans of Bufton’s poetry, among whom I happily count myself, will be delighted to know that her second collection does not tone down, or retreat from, the concerns of her first. If anything, this collection is louder, smarter, deeper, and more glorious. Superette is Girlery’s dark and dangerous big sister.' (Introduction)
-
‘That Is Some Crafty Bite’ : Trisha Pender Interviews Melinda Bufton
Trisha Pender
(interviewer),
2019
single work
interview
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , May no. 91 2019;'In her eagerly awaited second collection, Superette (Puncher & Wattman, 2018), Melinda Bufton delivers dramatically on the promise announced in her 2014 debut, Girlery (Inken Publisch, 2014). Girlery performs a provocative en guard to a literary culture overly sanguine in its dismissal of all things ‘girl’. In it, Bufton subverts the charges of superficiality and irrelevance that are often levelled at the popular culture of girls and instead celebrates this culture in loving, defiant detail. Fans of Bufton’s poetry, among whom I happily count myself, will be delighted to know that her second collection does not tone down, or retreat from, the concerns of her first. If anything, this collection is louder, smarter, deeper, and more glorious. Superette is Girlery’s dark and dangerous big sister.' (Introduction)
-
Conversations with Commodities : Consumable Bodies in Melinda Bufton’s “Conversations with Christopher Langton’s I Luv You Sculpture, 1993”
2020
single work
essay
— Appears in: Philament , November no. 26 2020; 'A key premise in classic aesthetic theory is the distinction between events, artworks, and phenomena, as determined by the presence or absence of an aesthetic response in a viewing subject.1 Classical aesthetic categories like the beautiful or the sublime are bound up with the distinction between high and low art, which has plagued critical theory across disciplines for decades. However, the high/low dichotomy was irreparably destabilised by postwar Western visual art movements, such as Dada and Pop Art, which coincided with a rapidly growing consumer culture that turned art into commodity, and vice versa. With the Western world moving into late-stage capitalism, there appears to be a new evolution in the destabilisation of the aesthetic distinctions between subject and object, the consumer and the consumed. Melinda Bufton’s poem “Conversations with Christopher Langton’s I luv you sculpture, 1993,” presents the possibility of a new aesthetic relation, the end of the line for capitalist objectification: a consumable subject.' (Introduction)
