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'The sonnet is a classic lyric form that has beguiled and perplexed poets for over seven hundred years. In this, her thirteenth collection, Jordie Albiston re-invents the sonnet structure, trading meter for syllabics, and employing fifteen lines in lieu of the traditional fourteen. Themes of destruction and loss, hope and wonder, and the pressing fate of an unstable world, are coded like enduring questions into the machinery of these extraordinary poems.
'Albiston's relationship with the sonnet has prevailed since her earliest work, most notably the highly celebrated and award-winning the sonnet according to 'm'.'
Source : publisher's blurb
Notes
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Epigraph: Speech is the small change of silence. -George Meredith
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Acceptance Speech, John Bray Poetry Award
2022
single work
prose
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Journal , vol. 12 no. 1 2022; (p. 100-101) 'Jordie Albiston (30 September 1961–28 February 2022) received this award posthumously, for her collection Fifteeners, the Awards’ website explains, also adding it was a book ‘which judges found “utterly enrapturing” and notes she wrote with an unmatchable precision’. Fifteeners was her thirteenth collection.' (Introduction)
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Jordie Albiston Fifteeners
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: World Literature Today , vol. 96 no. 3 2022; (p. 63-64)
— Review of Fifteeners 2021 selected work poetry 'FIFTEENERS IS THE latest stunning installment in this storied poet’s fearless oeuvre, and Jordie Albiston’s book of strangest deformations of the sonnet form traverses “all the life / That an awkward person must go through in / The awkward course toward death.” In the first poem, an ars poetica and apologia, Albiston mimics an Elizabethan diction to reassert the privilege of affect over intellect: “Poetry may / be loved but never thought by love it may / be gotten holden but by thought nay so,” and that love is a paramountcy remains amply evidenced across this poet’s extensive catalog. Her books on love (Element; Euclid’s Dog: 100 Algorythmic Poems; The Book of Ethel) and its multiple modes of atrophy (Warlines; Jack & Mollie [& Her]; Vertigo: A Cantata) suggest that affective modalities—or is it the quest from disequilibrium toward idealized states—have long determined the impetus of this prolific and widely admired writer. (Introduction) -
An Upward Fall : A Poet’s Quest for Totality
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 440 2022; (p. 44-45)
— Review of Fifteeners 2021 selected work poetry'Every poet has his or her addictions: words they use over and over again, ones they own ‘by right of obsessive musical deed’ (to quote Richard Hugo). For Emily Dickinson, it was thee, thou, and Death. For Sylvia Plath, it was him, nothing, go, and gone. For Gabriel García Lorca, it was sangre, lagrimas, negro, and corazón. For Jordie Albiston, it just might be world, the word that aims to contain everything.' (Introduction)
-
An Upward Fall : A Poet’s Quest for Totality
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 440 2022; (p. 44-45)
— Review of Fifteeners 2021 selected work poetry'Every poet has his or her addictions: words they use over and over again, ones they own ‘by right of obsessive musical deed’ (to quote Richard Hugo). For Emily Dickinson, it was thee, thou, and Death. For Sylvia Plath, it was him, nothing, go, and gone. For Gabriel García Lorca, it was sangre, lagrimas, negro, and corazón. For Jordie Albiston, it just might be world, the word that aims to contain everything.' (Introduction)
-
Jordie Albiston Fifteeners
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: World Literature Today , vol. 96 no. 3 2022; (p. 63-64)
— Review of Fifteeners 2021 selected work poetry 'FIFTEENERS IS THE latest stunning installment in this storied poet’s fearless oeuvre, and Jordie Albiston’s book of strangest deformations of the sonnet form traverses “all the life / That an awkward person must go through in / The awkward course toward death.” In the first poem, an ars poetica and apologia, Albiston mimics an Elizabethan diction to reassert the privilege of affect over intellect: “Poetry may / be loved but never thought by love it may / be gotten holden but by thought nay so,” and that love is a paramountcy remains amply evidenced across this poet’s extensive catalog. Her books on love (Element; Euclid’s Dog: 100 Algorythmic Poems; The Book of Ethel) and its multiple modes of atrophy (Warlines; Jack & Mollie [& Her]; Vertigo: A Cantata) suggest that affective modalities—or is it the quest from disequilibrium toward idealized states—have long determined the impetus of this prolific and widely admired writer. (Introduction) -
Acceptance Speech, John Bray Poetry Award
2022
single work
prose
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Journal , vol. 12 no. 1 2022; (p. 100-101) 'Jordie Albiston (30 September 1961–28 February 2022) received this award posthumously, for her collection Fifteeners, the Awards’ website explains, also adding it was a book ‘which judges found “utterly enrapturing” and notes she wrote with an unmatchable precision’. Fifteeners was her thirteenth collection.' (Introduction)