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'In A. Frances Johnson’s Save As, poetries of disfigurement braid tropes of ruin: land and country, self and community.
'Shunning earnestness and sanctimony, this distinctive ‘writing after nature’ offers deprecatory wit and an arsenal of intertextual and parodic free-verse techniques. An aluminium can narrates its own lifecycle, speaking of unchecked corporate extraction of aquifers; the Wikipedia entry for ‘Water’ is reframed in past tense, the vital chemical as pure remembrance in a dry world. Donne’s iconic ‘The Sunne Rising’ is retold with a factor 50 smile and more than a gentle nod to an overheated world. Keats’s lakeside withered sedge in ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ is transplanted to a tired pink lake under Melbourne’s Westgate Bridge. Among these politically playful poems, moving personal elegies are interspersed. These, too, are subtly implicated in ecological crisis; the mourning subject is always part of a bigger picture.
'These poems eschew one-note, passivity-inducing, melancholic lamentation, and invite self-identification and self-critique. Boldly wrestling with the long-armed tradition of modern pastoral romanticism, the collection’s poetic and personal ‘dross scapes’ show urgent engagement with ecological ruin and ecologies of grief.
'Johnson’s compelling poetic agitprop attests that one cannot die of landscape, but one can die of despair over loss of country and home. In demolishing ‘landscape’ and ‘poetries of the natural world’, these poems invite us to confront the real while acknowledging mythic artifice.'
Source : publisher's blurb
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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A Longing for Place Brendan Ryan Launches ‘Save As’ by A Frances Johnson
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , vol. 36 no. 1 2023;
— Review of Save As 2021 selected work poetry'I am honoured to be asked to launch Amanda Johnson’s fourth book of poetry, Save As. I have known Amanda for some years, and like the person herself, I found this collection of poetry to be playful, funny, critical, smart and a pleasure to be immersed in.' (Introduction)
-
A. Frances Johnson: Save As
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 17 2022;
— Review of Save As 2021 selected work poetry 'The poems of Amanda Frances Johnson’s fourth book have the same kind of double focus as those of her earlier collections. They look towards personal and family history as well as outwards to a world that seems fraught with intimations of apocalypse. And, as with the earlier books, the poems are divided into large sections with related titles in a way that stresses that these are not self-contained poetic subjects. In The Wind-up Birdman of Moorabool Street there were future, present and past sections; in Rendition for Harp & Kalashnikov the three sections were homophonic puns – “Soar”, “Sore” and “Saw”. Here the two sections are “Save Us” and “Save As”, the former generally made up of poems focussing on individuals and the second on wider, public concerns. It’s perhaps worth pointing out that the title of the latter (which doubles as the title of the whole collection) is something of a motif in Johnson’s work. It appears as early as in the poem, “Future Ark”, from The Wind-up Birdman of Moorabool Street where the saving of species is done digitally – “inside the darkened hull, / /under haloes of urgent ultraviolet, / you hit save as”. A somewhat similar scenario of a future flood generated by climate catastrophe appears in “Ultima Thule: Swimming Lessons” from Rendition for Harp & Kalashnikov and the same pun, “save as”, is deployed at the end. At any rate, the way her books are structured suggests a desire to see relationships between poems that look outward towards the gathering storm and those that focus on individuals, especially family members. These latter poems tend not to explore inner lives but rather lives under great stress and as such could be seen as intimate versions of those that focus on planet-wide matters.' (Introduction) -
Colonial Haunts : A Poet’s Dark Self-effacement
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 439 2022; (p. 48)
— Review of Save As 2021 selected work poetry
-
Colonial Haunts : A Poet’s Dark Self-effacement
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 439 2022; (p. 48)
— Review of Save As 2021 selected work poetry -
A. Frances Johnson: Save As
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 17 2022;
— Review of Save As 2021 selected work poetry 'The poems of Amanda Frances Johnson’s fourth book have the same kind of double focus as those of her earlier collections. They look towards personal and family history as well as outwards to a world that seems fraught with intimations of apocalypse. And, as with the earlier books, the poems are divided into large sections with related titles in a way that stresses that these are not self-contained poetic subjects. In The Wind-up Birdman of Moorabool Street there were future, present and past sections; in Rendition for Harp & Kalashnikov the three sections were homophonic puns – “Soar”, “Sore” and “Saw”. Here the two sections are “Save Us” and “Save As”, the former generally made up of poems focussing on individuals and the second on wider, public concerns. It’s perhaps worth pointing out that the title of the latter (which doubles as the title of the whole collection) is something of a motif in Johnson’s work. It appears as early as in the poem, “Future Ark”, from The Wind-up Birdman of Moorabool Street where the saving of species is done digitally – “inside the darkened hull, / /under haloes of urgent ultraviolet, / you hit save as”. A somewhat similar scenario of a future flood generated by climate catastrophe appears in “Ultima Thule: Swimming Lessons” from Rendition for Harp & Kalashnikov and the same pun, “save as”, is deployed at the end. At any rate, the way her books are structured suggests a desire to see relationships between poems that look outward towards the gathering storm and those that focus on individuals, especially family members. These latter poems tend not to explore inner lives but rather lives under great stress and as such could be seen as intimate versions of those that focus on planet-wide matters.' (Introduction) -
A Longing for Place Brendan Ryan Launches ‘Save As’ by A Frances Johnson
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , vol. 36 no. 1 2023;
— Review of Save As 2021 selected work poetry'I am honoured to be asked to launch Amanda Johnson’s fourth book of poetry, Save As. I have known Amanda for some years, and like the person herself, I found this collection of poetry to be playful, funny, critical, smart and a pleasure to be immersed in.' (Introduction)
