Hi Alison,
Well, bugger me (excuse french)! If I sound surprised, well, I am. If
I'd picked up this email earlier I would have cracked open da bubbles
(though I'm batching this weekend).
I was watching the telly instead, and while hopeful with wickets
falling before lunch, I was more focused on Flintoff's superb batting
display probably sending Australia's hopes in this match down to
gurgler.
And many congrats to the other poets. An honour to be with that crowd.
Slightly Gobsmacked of Marrickville,
Jill
On Saturday, August 6, 2005, at 06:43 PM, Alison Croggon wrote:
> Some good eggs on the poetry shortlist, including our own Jill Jones
> (yay
> Jill!!! Hope you're cracking open that bubbly!) Good to see Dipti
> recognised, as well as Shearsman getting a guernsey with MTC Cronin's
> book.
>
> Best
>
> A
>
> More or Less Than 1-100
> M.T.C. Cronin
> Shearsman
> More or Less Than 1-100 is astounding as much for its structure,
> rising from
> one line to 50 lines and back again through a sequence of a hundred
> sections, as for the hypnotic flow of its language. The poems'
> conjunction
> of end and beginning might seek to emulate the famous "a' long the /
> riverrun" of Finnegans Wake. Cronin's "ice follows water follows / not
> simply the stream but they who thought of following" , more like
> channelling
> than story-telling, immediately establishes a dense and heightened
> poetry.
> While the purpose and identity of both speaker and addressed is
> withheld,
> her language-world is marvellous and open.
>
> Broken/Open
> Jill Jones
> Salt
> Broken/Open courts the great themes of modern poetry notwithstanding
> Jill
> Jones' obvious affiliation with "language poetry", a practice often
> implying
> the abandonment of traditional subject and object relations and the
> dislocation of syntax and grammar. In her case the celebration of
> language
> itself is variously grafted to her poems of romantic love, the
> experience of
> nature, evocations of the city. Writing that calls attention to itself
> by
> deformation of narrative or extreme elision often jeopardises the
> beauty of
> shape, sound and perception, yet many of these poems are riveting
> examples
> of poetry's pure pleasure.
>
> Domain
> Ian McBryde
> Five Islands Press
> The title poem is a swastika in the middle of the page, constructed
> with
> multiples of the word "domain". Another poem repeats its title in the
> shape
> of the sinister double "s". Such visual poems punctuate McBryde's
> history of
> Nazism's rise and fall but also puncture the expectation one might
> have of
> history as the fact of the matter. The poems are cameos in a
> nightmarish
> newsreel inhabited by spectres rather than reliable persons. Beyond the
> horror and, of course, heroism, one's left with poignant paradox and
> the
> darkest mystery.
>
> Blister Pack
> David McCooey
> Salt
> The crucial contradiction suffusing Blister Pack is between the
> authoritative style of its language and the vulnerability or natural
> limitation of its anxious subject. David McCooey's opinions and
> observations
> are so cleanly spelt out they might be omniscient epigrams rather than
> the
> partialities of the typical citizen the poetry supposes. Although he
> plays
> with language, building poems out of conversational habits to
> represent the
> speech of the day and describe processes of representation, his poetry
> is
> determinedly social and, such is his gift, charmingly sociable.
>
> The Colosseum
> Dipti Saravanamuttu
> Five Islands Press
> The poems in The Colosseum are startlingly bare. The poetry is
> strenuously
> autobiographical, which is always a burden for lyrical language and
> one that
> postmodern work readily relinquishes. Yet this collection could be
> described
> as a postmodern confessional, it being discursive even in the midst of
> its
> often rueful, albeit wryly amused testimony. It keeps its wits while
> baring
> its soul. The inventory of oscillating exultation and despair,
> recorded with
> as much worldly-wise as world-weary self-criticism, traverses Dipti
> Saravanamuttu's islands of origin, yearning and ultimate settlement.
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
>
_______________________________________________________
Jill Jones
Latest books:
Broken/Open. Available from Salt Publishing
http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/1844710416.htm
Where the Sea Burns. Wagtail Series. Picaro Press
PO Box 853, Warners Bay, NSW, 2282. [log in to unmask]
Struggle and radiance: ten commentaries (Wild Honey Press)
http://www.wildhoneypress.com
web site: http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~jpjones
blog1: Ruby Street http://rubystreet.blogspot.com/
blog2: Latitudes http://itudes.blogspot.com/
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