AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Prose poetry is a resurgent literary form in the English-speaking world and has been rapidly gaining popularity in Australia. Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington have gathered a broad and representative selection of the best Australian prose poems written over the last fifty years.
'The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry includes numerous distinguished prose poets-Jordie Albiston, joanne burns, Gary Catalano, Anna Couani, Alex Skovron, Samuel Wagan Watson, Ania Walwicz and many more and documents prose poetry's growing appeal over recent decades, from the poetic margins to the mainstream.
'This collection reframes our understanding not only of this dynamic poetic form, but of Australian poetry as a whole.' (Publication summary)
Contents
- A Strange Magic : Australian Prose Poetry, single work criticism (p. 1-16)
- Poet on Traini"out the corner of my eye, an olive-skinned hand, black notebook on lap. profile", single work poetry (p. 19)
- Empty Your Eyesi"The suffering has ended", single work poetry (p. 20)
- By the Sea (Retired)i"Thick tubes of bamboo conceal your form as you sneak through half light", single work poetry (p. 21)
- Lines from The Loveri"It was never a question of beauty but something else. Mind for example. For a long", single work poetry (p. 22)
- Berylliumi"Be-tter two than one she recalls less than none", single work poetry (p. 23)
- [Anon]i"that's all a lusciousless day today nothing like the smell", single work poetry (p. 24)
- Bondsi"You wore a white bonds t-shirt to bed last night. A plain, white, no-nonsense Bonds", single work poetry (p. 25)
- In a Cafe...i"by the rampage, all the chairs are carved in limestone", single work poetry (p. 26)
- Hamlet without the Princei"Vulnerable as a forest red-tailed black cockatoos, you went south the day", single work poetry (p. 27)
- The Loversi"Say that it is possible to love [live] without knowing why. The meanest may", single work poetry (p. 28)
- Audiblei"The camera panned up away from our conversation and fixed on a", single work poetry (p. 29)
- My Namei"Someone is prowling around the borders of my name. They have", single work poetry (p. 30)
- Icarus (from Virilities)i"I can understand how mentally deranged or overdosed people plunge", single work poetry (p. 31)
- The Definition of a Placei"Where the slow-pulsed creek grips a handful of", single work poetry (p. 32)
- The Medusai"I'D LIKE to hide, but cannot hide my vision of the bay's incoming", single work poetry (p. 33)
- Some Mountainsi"The mountain beyond that pass has no name. It is too old for us to name", single work poetry (p. 34)
- Missing Wordsi"I don't know how many things there are in this world that", single work poetry (p. 35)
- Hyde Parki"In Hyde Park, she is foraging once again for a", single work poetry (p. 36)
- A Piece of Sheepsongi"Very often, when I think of myself writing, I have in my mind an", single work poetry (p. 37)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
A Ringing Glass That Shivers Even as It Rings
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Text : Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , vol. 26 no. 1 2022;
— Review of The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry 2020 anthology poetry prose 'The following is a joint review written by two poets concerned with many of the same ideas, who over the months they discussed The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry were separated by borders that shifted and changed. The ideas we formed through reading this book appeared vague at first, then clear and distinct, but ultimately by the time it came to write the review, were blurred once again. Something that one of us wrote in correspondence to the other returned under some other subheading in a later draft, unknowingly subsumed into one of our consciousnesses as an idea for its own sake.'(Publication abstract)
-
Liquid and Infinitely Yielding : The Renaissance of Australian Prose Poetry
2021
single work
review
essay
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , October vol. 40 no. 3 2021; (p. 44-47) 'The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry is the first major collection of its type in Australian letters1, as highlighted in the erudite and informative introduction. Editors Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington are the co-authors of an academic study of the prose poem, so the reader is in good hands. Part of the sport of reviewing a significant and generational anthology such as this is to interrogate the biases of the editors and dwell upon who gets a guernsey. When it comes to prose poetry, however, the territory feels less emotionally charged. One can never be sure who’s playing in the muddy field between prose and poetry. In terms of the difficult task of defining the ‘prose poem’ the introduction provides some loose parameters: a prose poem is short and pithy, preferably half a page in length and not exceeding one page. Attention is also given to the justification of the right margin, which it is observed gives the impression of the text being fenced visually (as though the primary purpose of the Australian prose poem might be to keep the sheep in). Ultimately the editors resort to prose poetry to define the prose poem; according to James Harms they ‘feel horizontal in their rhetorical designs, like waves rushing up the beach, slowly flattening out into foam and a thin sheet of water, then receding back to the depths’ (14). This is as good a definition as any and the reader can proceed safe in the knowledge we’ll know one when we see one.' -
Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington in Conversation with Rosanna Licari
Rosanna Licari
(interviewer),
2021
single work
interview
— Appears in: StylusLit , March no. 9 2021; -
[Review] Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: StylusLit , March no. 9 2021;
— Review of The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry 2020 anthology poetry prose'Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington offer us this anthology of 160 prose poems by 149 Australian poets, including Bruce Dawe, Bruce Beaver, John Blight, Vincent Buckley, Michael Dransfield, John Forbes, Rae Desmond Jones, Rudi Kraussman, Tatjana Lukic, Vicki Vidiikas and the late Ania Walwicz.' (Introduction)
-
A Strange Magic
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Antipodes , vol. 34 no. 2 2020; (p. 398-400)
— Review of The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry 2020 anthology poetry prose'A book that has been long awaited, Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, provides an overview of how prose poetry has come into the Australian poetic landscape while presenting a variety of prose poems written by Australian poets who are breaking away from conservative, traditional poetic forms. These poets stand next to one another here—as a sort of resistance—unified by a shared belief that prose can and should be an acceptable entry for poetics. The featured poems are varied in content while also providing examples of how a prose poem might approach taking up space on the page. Each block of text uncovers a unique truth: "Until now, and despite the excellence of prose poetry in Australia, there has never been such an anthology, although poets since 2002 … have called for one to be published, … the result of relative neglect of prose poetry by critics and editors in Australia" (1). The anthology opens with a fourteen-page essay of exposition from the editors that seeks to explain the why of the book and bring readers to a level ground of understanding before experiencing the delight to come.' (Introduction)
-
The Elephant in the Room : Prose Poetry Finds an Audience
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 427 2020;
— Review of The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry 2020 anthology poetry prose'What is it about English language poetry that has proved so resistant to the lure of the prose poem? The French, it appears, held no such qualms, finding themselves besotted with the form ever since Aloysius Bertrand and Charles Baudelaire began dispensing with line breaks and stanzas. Of course, the very existence of English-language works like Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (1914) or William Carlos Williams’s Kora in Hell (1920) could be used to argue otherwise, but such endeavours were considered too eccentric at the time to impart a lasting legacy. Perhaps if T.S. Eliot, whose antipathy towards the prose poem is well known, had given us a major cycle along the lines of Saint-John Perse’s Anabasis (1924), a work he admired and translated, things might have turned out differently.' (Introduction)
-
Anything But ‘Prosaic’: John Jenkins Reviews ‘Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry’ Edited by Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , November no. 30 2020;
— Review of The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry 2020 anthology poetry prose'Considerable work has gone into this wide-ranging anthology, which the editors describe as ” a representative and compelling selection … written by Australians since the 1970s… (and including) a generous selection of twenty-first-century prose poems.”' (Introduction)
-
[Review] Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: StylusLit , March no. 9 2021;
— Review of The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry 2020 anthology poetry prose'Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington offer us this anthology of 160 prose poems by 149 Australian poets, including Bruce Dawe, Bruce Beaver, John Blight, Vincent Buckley, Michael Dransfield, John Forbes, Rae Desmond Jones, Rudi Kraussman, Tatjana Lukic, Vicki Vidiikas and the late Ania Walwicz.' (Introduction)
-
A Strange Magic
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Antipodes , vol. 34 no. 2 2020; (p. 398-400)
— Review of The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry 2020 anthology poetry prose'A book that has been long awaited, Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, provides an overview of how prose poetry has come into the Australian poetic landscape while presenting a variety of prose poems written by Australian poets who are breaking away from conservative, traditional poetic forms. These poets stand next to one another here—as a sort of resistance—unified by a shared belief that prose can and should be an acceptable entry for poetics. The featured poems are varied in content while also providing examples of how a prose poem might approach taking up space on the page. Each block of text uncovers a unique truth: "Until now, and despite the excellence of prose poetry in Australia, there has never been such an anthology, although poets since 2002 … have called for one to be published, … the result of relative neglect of prose poetry by critics and editors in Australia" (1). The anthology opens with a fourteen-page essay of exposition from the editors that seeks to explain the why of the book and bring readers to a level ground of understanding before experiencing the delight to come.' (Introduction)
-
A Ringing Glass That Shivers Even as It Rings
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Text : Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , vol. 26 no. 1 2022;
— Review of The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry 2020 anthology poetry prose 'The following is a joint review written by two poets concerned with many of the same ideas, who over the months they discussed The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry were separated by borders that shifted and changed. The ideas we formed through reading this book appeared vague at first, then clear and distinct, but ultimately by the time it came to write the review, were blurred once again. Something that one of us wrote in correspondence to the other returned under some other subheading in a later draft, unknowingly subsumed into one of our consciousnesses as an idea for its own sake.'(Publication abstract)
-
Working in the Shadows : Belated Recognition of Australian Prose Poetry
2020
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 425 2020; (p. 54)'Until recently, Australian prose poetry hasn’t attracted much attention – we’re not sure why. Having written prose poetry for years, we’re both fascinated by the form, which can be loosely defined as poems written in paragraphs and sentences rather than in stanzas and lines.' (Introduction)
-
A Form That Is Difficult to Pin down
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 21 November 2020; (p. 18) -
Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington in Conversation with Rosanna Licari
Rosanna Licari
(interviewer),
2021
single work
interview
— Appears in: StylusLit , March no. 9 2021; -
Liquid and Infinitely Yielding : The Renaissance of Australian Prose Poetry
2021
single work
review
essay
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , October vol. 40 no. 3 2021; (p. 44-47) 'The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry is the first major collection of its type in Australian letters1, as highlighted in the erudite and informative introduction. Editors Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington are the co-authors of an academic study of the prose poem, so the reader is in good hands. Part of the sport of reviewing a significant and generational anthology such as this is to interrogate the biases of the editors and dwell upon who gets a guernsey. When it comes to prose poetry, however, the territory feels less emotionally charged. One can never be sure who’s playing in the muddy field between prose and poetry. In terms of the difficult task of defining the ‘prose poem’ the introduction provides some loose parameters: a prose poem is short and pithy, preferably half a page in length and not exceeding one page. Attention is also given to the justification of the right margin, which it is observed gives the impression of the text being fenced visually (as though the primary purpose of the Australian prose poem might be to keep the sheep in). Ultimately the editors resort to prose poetry to define the prose poem; according to James Harms they ‘feel horizontal in their rhetorical designs, like waves rushing up the beach, slowly flattening out into foam and a thin sheet of water, then receding back to the depths’ (14). This is as good a definition as any and the reader can proceed safe in the knowledge we’ll know one when we see one.'
