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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'The title of this collection, Revenants, suggests spirits and ghosts who return to the human world through dream and art, not to haunt it, but to remind the living that the present and the past are intertwined. At the heart of the collection is a series of poems about the poet's father, a Melbournian who travelled and worked in Asia as a young man, who married the poet's mother in Bangkok, and whose life and death are commemorated here. The poems have settings in Asia, Australia, Hawai'i, and France, which has become the author's second home. They reflect on the legacy of colonialism, not as theory, but as inherited experience. In them the poet himself may be thought of as a revenant, sharing his awareness of secret histories and local knowledge, stories of migration, the vestiges of forgotten people and places.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Jennifer Mackenzie Reviews Grace Yee and Adam Aitken
2024
single work
review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 February no. 111 2024;
— Review of Chinese Fish 2023 single work novel ; Revenants 2022 selected work poetry -
All Ghosts
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , November 2022;
— Review of Revenants 2022 selected work poetry'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)
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Adam Aitken : Revenant
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: World Literature Today , vol. 96 no. 4 2022; (p. 71)
— Review of Revenants 2022 selected work poetry -
Souveniring Absences : An Award-winning Poet’s Seventh Collection
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June no. 443 2022; (p. 50-51)
— Review of Revenants 2022 selected work poetry'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)
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Adam Aitken : A Forensic Poet with Obsessive Resolve
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 11 May 2022;
— Review of Revenants 2022 selected work poetry
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Adam Aitken : Revenants
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 17 2022;
— Review of Revenants 2022 selected work poetry'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)
-
Adam Aitken : A Forensic Poet with Obsessive Resolve
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 11 May 2022;
— Review of Revenants 2022 selected work poetry -
Souveniring Absences : An Award-winning Poet’s Seventh Collection
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June no. 443 2022; (p. 50-51)
— Review of Revenants 2022 selected work poetry'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)
-
Adam Aitken : Revenant
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: World Literature Today , vol. 96 no. 4 2022; (p. 71)
— Review of Revenants 2022 selected work poetry -
All Ghosts
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , November 2022;
— Review of Revenants 2022 selected work poetry'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)