'This piece adopts the voice of public declaration to assert poetic practice as survivable resistance to abuses of power. It proposes that poetry is the best means to identify, expose and reconfigure what is implicit in dominant discourses that discredit the way a survivor of sexual assault may communicate. It is found that a poetic use of language that is allusive, evocative and associative can reinvigorate annihilated perspectives so as to add them to public discourse. Poetic methods can be employed to resist and subvert the supposed supremacy of linear and logical narrative structures considered essential for sense making and validity. Furthermore, they can be employed to excavate family and state histories to resurrect, sometimes from fragments, the perspectives of those that have been silenced.' (Publication abstract)

(Publication abstract)

'In this fourth major poetry collection, Claire Gaskin re-envisions the myth of Antigone by focusing on her sister Ismene. Assuming the voice of a contemporary Ismene, she asks us to consider what survivable resistance might look like for those who live on after tragedy? What kind of avenues are available to resist autocratic and patriarchal structures of power? How might we imagine a future that is different to our past and instigate real change at both a personal and public level?

'Ismene’s accommodation of and respect for difference is privileged in these poems, as is her credo of care in situations that seem overwhelmingly difficult or impossible: ‘remember those who love you love you still’. The poems identify and expose inner and outer silencing devices and refuse to be silenced. Powerfully evocative and cumulative in its reflective intensity, Ismene’s Survivable Resistance demonstrates how creative engagement can enable connections between the seemingly fragmentary and how poetic form not only provides a crucial means to hear those who have survived abuses of power but can also be the vehicle for change.'(Publication summary)