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y separately published work icon Condition Red selected work   poetry  
Issue Details: First known date: 1973... 1973 Condition Red
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Notes

  • Many of the poems which appear in this volume were previously published in Australian Poetry Now, Contempa, Leatherjacket, Mok, Poetry Australia, Poetry Magazine (New Poetry), Westerly, and in the anti-war anthology We Took Their Orders and Are Dead.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Confessional Surrealist Feminist : Vicki Viidikas’s Poetics and Politics Prithvi Varatharajan , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 2 no. 18 2018;

'This essay seeks to illuminate the entwined aesthetics of Vicki Viidikas’s poetry. Viidikas was a Sydney poet: she lived in Balmain, and spent long periods of time in India later in life. She was part of the generation of ‘68, which revelled in the countercultural spirit of the 1960s and 70s. Viidikas published three books of poetry in her lifetime: Condition Red (1973), Knäbel (1978), and India Ink (1984), as well as a book of short stories and prose poems, Wrappings (1974). Between 1985 and 1998 she published only a handful of poems in journals; India Ink would be her last book.

'The essay uses formative aesthetic, political, and material influences to read Viidikas’s work from 1973 to 1998. I argue that there are three major aspects in Viidikas’s poetry: the confessional, the surrealist, and the feminist. By contextualising her work in the confessional poetry genre, the surrealism of André Breton, and second wave feminism, I show that these aspects interact and overlap in subtle ways in her poems. Viidikas was steeped in feminist ideals for women’s writing, and was committed to representing female subjectivity in highly personal and uncensored ways. I show that in her poetry, a feminist ethos energises both her confessional voice and her surrealism. I also pay attention to the material circumstances of her poetry’s production, and the social and aesthetic practices of the generation of ‘68. This situated reading of Viidikas’s poetry allows me to look to the last 14 years of her life, when she retreated from publishing. While critics typically focus on her drug addiction in explaining her later marginalisation, I posit that the anti-capitalist values that Viidikas absorbed in her youth played a significant role in her withdrawal, in the 1980s and 90s, from the literary networks that had previously sustained her.' (Publication abstract)

Untitled Kris Hemensley , 1985 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Best of the Ear : The Ear in a Wheatfield, 1973-76 : A Portrait of a Magazine 1985; (p. 77-78)
Goodbye Prince Hamlet: The New Australian Women's Poetry Finola Moorhead , 1975 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Quarterly , Winter vol. 34 no. 2 1975; (p. 169-179) Quilt : A Collection of Prose 1985; (p. 66-73)

— Review of Tactics Jennifer Maiden , 1974 selected work poetry ; Condition Red Vicki Viidikas , 1973 selected work poetry ; Come to Me My Melancholy Baby Kate Jennings , 1975 selected work single work poetry prose ; Mother I'm Rooted : An Anthology of Australian Women Poets 1975 anthology poetry ; Living Alone Without a Dictionary Carol Novack , 1974 selected work poetry ; Madam Blackboots Stefanie Bennett , 1974 selected work poetry
Untitled Rosemarie Widdowson , 1975 single work review
— Appears in: Blacksmith , vol. 2 no. 1 1975; (p. 25-26)

— Review of Condition Red Vicki Viidikas , 1973 selected work poetry
Three Kinds of Exploration Rae Desmond Jones , 1974 single work review
— Appears in: Makar , February vol. 9 no. 3 1974; (p. 45-48)

— Review of Condition Red Vicki Viidikas , 1973 selected work poetry ; The Paradise Poems Shelton Lea , 1973 selected work poetry ; Sediments of Seclusion Walter Billeter , 1973 selected work poetry
Three Kinds of Exploration Rae Desmond Jones , 1974 single work review
— Appears in: Makar , February vol. 9 no. 3 1974; (p. 45-48)

— Review of Condition Red Vicki Viidikas , 1973 selected work poetry ; The Paradise Poems Shelton Lea , 1973 selected work poetry ; Sediments of Seclusion Walter Billeter , 1973 selected work poetry
Untitled Rosemarie Widdowson , 1975 single work review
— Appears in: Blacksmith , vol. 2 no. 1 1975; (p. 25-26)

— Review of Condition Red Vicki Viidikas , 1973 selected work poetry
Goodbye Prince Hamlet: The New Australian Women's Poetry Finola Moorhead , 1975 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Quarterly , Winter vol. 34 no. 2 1975; (p. 169-179) Quilt : A Collection of Prose 1985; (p. 66-73)

— Review of Tactics Jennifer Maiden , 1974 selected work poetry ; Condition Red Vicki Viidikas , 1973 selected work poetry ; Come to Me My Melancholy Baby Kate Jennings , 1975 selected work single work poetry prose ; Mother I'm Rooted : An Anthology of Australian Women Poets 1975 anthology poetry ; Living Alone Without a Dictionary Carol Novack , 1974 selected work poetry ; Madam Blackboots Stefanie Bennett , 1974 selected work poetry
Untitled Kris Hemensley , 1985 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Best of the Ear : The Ear in a Wheatfield, 1973-76 : A Portrait of a Magazine 1985; (p. 77-78)
Confessional Surrealist Feminist : Vicki Viidikas’s Poetics and Politics Prithvi Varatharajan , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 2 no. 18 2018;

'This essay seeks to illuminate the entwined aesthetics of Vicki Viidikas’s poetry. Viidikas was a Sydney poet: she lived in Balmain, and spent long periods of time in India later in life. She was part of the generation of ‘68, which revelled in the countercultural spirit of the 1960s and 70s. Viidikas published three books of poetry in her lifetime: Condition Red (1973), Knäbel (1978), and India Ink (1984), as well as a book of short stories and prose poems, Wrappings (1974). Between 1985 and 1998 she published only a handful of poems in journals; India Ink would be her last book.

'The essay uses formative aesthetic, political, and material influences to read Viidikas’s work from 1973 to 1998. I argue that there are three major aspects in Viidikas’s poetry: the confessional, the surrealist, and the feminist. By contextualising her work in the confessional poetry genre, the surrealism of André Breton, and second wave feminism, I show that these aspects interact and overlap in subtle ways in her poems. Viidikas was steeped in feminist ideals for women’s writing, and was committed to representing female subjectivity in highly personal and uncensored ways. I show that in her poetry, a feminist ethos energises both her confessional voice and her surrealism. I also pay attention to the material circumstances of her poetry’s production, and the social and aesthetic practices of the generation of ‘68. This situated reading of Viidikas’s poetry allows me to look to the last 14 years of her life, when she retreated from publishing. While critics typically focus on her drug addiction in explaining her later marginalisation, I posit that the anti-capitalist values that Viidikas absorbed in her youth played a significant role in her withdrawal, in the 1980s and 90s, from the literary networks that had previously sustained her.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 16 Oct 2017 13:44:36
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