Wright’s Poetic Prose Epic | AustLit: Discover Australian Stories

Wright’s Poetic Prose Epic single work criticism

Author:agent Françoise Palleau-Papin

Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Wright’s Poetic Prose Epic

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'While G.S. Fraser sees good free verse as “verse which does not scan regularly but seems always on the verge of scanning regularly” (1970, 74), I argue that Alexis Wright’s epic prose in Carpentaria sounds as if it were verging on poetry from the English tradition, blended with a local Indigenous oral tradition and Waanyi language. Using structuring devices occasionally borrowed from the English poetic tradition as well as from Waanyi, her prose achieves mnemonic functions, inscribing the novel as a memorial epic in a new epic diction, and glorifying the act of writing, as well as the use of orality.'(Publication abstract)

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y Commonwealth : Essays and Studies Alexis Wright vol. 44 no. 2 2022 24301365 2022 periodical issue Abstract
'This special issue on Alexis Wright’s work includes ten academic articles, seven of which focus on Wright’s Carpentaria (2006), while three discuss the author’s two other novels – Plains of Promise (1997) and The Swan Book (2013) – and oeuvre as a whole. The issue also contains art and poetry by Australian Indigenous creative artists, as well as the reprint of a review of Carpentaria and a reflexive essay on translating Wright’s works into Chinese. From the centrality of Indigenous epistemologies in Wright’s oeuvre to her narrative creativity, representation of country, commitment to a sovereignty of the mind, humour, and refusal of genres, the various contributions to the special issue propose original analyses and approaches to better understand Wright’s nuanced, complex novels and non-fiction works.' (Publication summary)

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