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'Theory of Colours takes as its title and point of departure the influential nineteenth-century treatise on colour by Johann Wolfgang Goethe. In Li’s third full-length collection, colour — and its absence — is at once subject, structural principle and medium. Moving from the distant past, through the fleeting, unstable present, and into a series of speculative futures, the book elaborates worlds both familiar and strange — a country estate, a small town, a grand hotel, a tower. Informed by the spectral practices of early photography and cinema, as well as the visual and thematic conventions of ghost stories, westerns and science fiction, Li’s narratives of text and image are unsettling explorations of sequence and time, absence and haunting.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Bella Li : Alchemy, Allegory, Spectres of Light
2022
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Overland , Spring no. 248 2022; (p. 46-57) 'To flip through the thick, matte pages of Theory of Colours is to wander around an abandoned theme park at dusk. Dimly, you can make out certain structures in the falling light: a hotel, a museum, a swimming pool, and various attractions harnessing the vertiginous interplay of height and depth, including mountains, valleys, towers and gaping chasms. Picking through the brittle skeletons of these forms, testing your weight along beams of decaying wood and surveying barren microclimates, you sense the 'certain feverish appeal that this carnival once held. This has faded now to reveal a kind of 'peculiar and suspended charm', both timeless and utterly defined by its vulnerability to the ravages of time. The colours are cracked, consumed by grey, peeling to reveal blank, bone-white surfaces or blooming like weeds and spreading over paths, walls and boulders. The theme park is on an island, or on the waterfront like Luna Park. You can smell old salt in flicker at the air. Petals glow neon in the dimming light and shad the edges of your vision.' (Introduction)
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Rory Green Reviews Theory of Colours by Bella Li
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 15 September no. 106 2022;
— Review of Theory of Colours 2021 selected work poetry art work -
Contiguity
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin , June vol. 81 no. 2 2022; (p. 214-217) Meanjin Online 2022;
— Review of Theory of Colours 2021 selected work poetry art work -
Small-press Gems
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 18 December - 7 January 2021;
— Review of Homework 2021 selected work essay ; Second City : Essays from Western Sydney 2021 anthology essay ; Still Alive : Notes from Australia's Immigration Detention System 2021 single work graphic novel ; The Open 2021 selected work poetry ; Theory of Colours 2021 selected work poetry art work ; Dropbear 2021 selected work poetry essay -
Levelling the Uncanny : Two Moody Books of Allusion
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 437 2021; (p. 59-60)
— Review of Capacity 2021 selected work poetry ; Theory of Colours 2021 selected work poetry art work'These days, poetry is primarily a visual experience. So claims the American poet and theorist Cole Swensen, whose essay ‘To Writewithize’ argues for a new definition of ekphrasis. Traditionally understood to be writing about visual art, ekphrasis typically has a poet stand across from a painting or sculpture, in a kind of face-off, and write about it. To ‘writewithize’, however, is to take a different approach: this is not writing made about art but made with it. This is writing that, in Swensen’s words, ‘lives with the work and its disturbances’. Two new Vagabond releases by Bella Li and LK Holt are doing ekphrastic and intertextual work that is exquisitely disturbing. These are moody books of allusion and visual play by two of Melbourne’s most brilliant poets.' (Introduction)
-
Levelling the Uncanny : Two Moody Books of Allusion
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 437 2021; (p. 59-60)
— Review of Capacity 2021 selected work poetry ; Theory of Colours 2021 selected work poetry art work'These days, poetry is primarily a visual experience. So claims the American poet and theorist Cole Swensen, whose essay ‘To Writewithize’ argues for a new definition of ekphrasis. Traditionally understood to be writing about visual art, ekphrasis typically has a poet stand across from a painting or sculpture, in a kind of face-off, and write about it. To ‘writewithize’, however, is to take a different approach: this is not writing made about art but made with it. This is writing that, in Swensen’s words, ‘lives with the work and its disturbances’. Two new Vagabond releases by Bella Li and LK Holt are doing ekphrastic and intertextual work that is exquisitely disturbing. These are moody books of allusion and visual play by two of Melbourne’s most brilliant poets.' (Introduction)
-
Small-press Gems
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 18 December - 7 January 2021;
— Review of Homework 2021 selected work essay ; Second City : Essays from Western Sydney 2021 anthology essay ; Still Alive : Notes from Australia's Immigration Detention System 2021 single work graphic novel ; The Open 2021 selected work poetry ; Theory of Colours 2021 selected work poetry art work ; Dropbear 2021 selected work poetry essay -
Contiguity
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin , June vol. 81 no. 2 2022; (p. 214-217) Meanjin Online 2022;
— Review of Theory of Colours 2021 selected work poetry art work -
Rory Green Reviews Theory of Colours by Bella Li
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 15 September no. 106 2022;
— Review of Theory of Colours 2021 selected work poetry art work -
Bella Li : Alchemy, Allegory, Spectres of Light
2022
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Overland , Spring no. 248 2022; (p. 46-57) 'To flip through the thick, matte pages of Theory of Colours is to wander around an abandoned theme park at dusk. Dimly, you can make out certain structures in the falling light: a hotel, a museum, a swimming pool, and various attractions harnessing the vertiginous interplay of height and depth, including mountains, valleys, towers and gaping chasms. Picking through the brittle skeletons of these forms, testing your weight along beams of decaying wood and surveying barren microclimates, you sense the 'certain feverish appeal that this carnival once held. This has faded now to reveal a kind of 'peculiar and suspended charm', both timeless and utterly defined by its vulnerability to the ravages of time. The colours are cracked, consumed by grey, peeling to reveal blank, bone-white surfaces or blooming like weeds and spreading over paths, walls and boulders. The theme park is on an island, or on the waterfront like Luna Park. You can smell old salt in flicker at the air. Petals glow neon in the dimming light and shad the edges of your vision.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2022 shortlisted Small Press Network Book of the Year Award
- 2022 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
- 2022 joint winner APA Book Design Awards — Best Designed Small-run Book
