AustLit

'Since his first book A Letter to Marco Polo, published in 1985, Adam Aitken has always seemed, at least to me, the quintessential Asian-Australian poet. The double-barrelled quality extends right down to the genetic level because he is not merely the child of an immigrant Asian family but the product of a marriage between an Australian man and a Thai woman.' (Introduction)

'Since his first collection, Letter to Marco Polo (1985), Adam Aitken has been at the forefront of the diversification of Australian poetry as it moved, slowly but irreversibly, to incorporate multicultural and transnational voices. Aitken has always been a world citizen. He was born in London in 1960 to an Anglo-Australian father and Thai mother, with his childhood thereafter spent between the United Kingdom, Thailand, Malaysia, and Australia. As a young man, he attended Sydney University and embarked upon a long career as a poet, editor, and teacher which was recently recognised with the 2021 Patrick White Award.' (Introduction)

'Revenants creates a liminal zone of perception in Adam Aitken’s oeuvre. Drawing on travel, ‘place’, family memories and indeed his own memoir work, literature and an ongoing commitment to trace and critique the impacts of colonialism, there’s also a restive negotiation between the failed diplomacies of day-to-day life and the consequences of living with the dead that are and aren’t one’s ‘own’.' (Introduction)