Agreed - JS Harry's is disturbing and hilarious at once, a stand-out. The
idea of a huntsman spider in cargo pants haunts me still.
Caleb
On Sat, Aug 9, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Various literary prizes have been releasing their shortlists - the Age Book
> of the Year last week and the Victorian Premier's Literary Prize last night
> (Queensland next week, on August 14). Some interesting books on the poetry
> shortlists, including our very own John kinsella (and his partner Tracy
> Ryan) and another former Petc member Anthony Lawrence. JS Harry's Not
> Finding Wiittgenstein, about a philosophical rabbit who (among other
> things)
> goes to Iraq is indeed a gem, and is my pick for the Age Poetry Book of the
> Year, but we shall see!
>
> Age Book of the Year:
>
> Not Finding Wittgenstein, J.S.Harry, Giramondo
>
> Not Finding Wittgenstein is a spectacularly original work, sending Peter
> Rabbit ("Peter Henry Lepus") on a serio-comic quest in which he tries to
> write a rabbit History of Philosophers, converses with Bertrand Russell and
> Ludwig Wittgenstein, and crosses war-torn Iraq with a journalist, a
> huntsman
> spider, and a camel.
>
> Not only does Harry manage to make all this make sense, but she also
> presents us with an utterly unique way of seeing the world in all its
> horror
> and complexity. Throughout, Harry offers some of her most innovative and
> lyrical work. This is, in my view, a master work. .
>
> Shades of the Sublime & Beautiful, John Kinsella, Fremantle Press
>
> Using Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas
> of
> the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) as its ironic intertext, Kinsella's latest
> work takes a characteristically clear-eyed view of Australian landscape.
> Throughout the collection, Kinsella considers the relationship between
> history, landscape, violence and aesthetics.
>
> His connections are often startling and always open to the complex ways in
> which "experience" and "poetry" are intertwined, so that his work is both
> profoundly sensate and deeply lettered, intensely political and powerfully
> personal. His poetry is, as ever, energetic, intense, original, and
> brilliantly inventive.
>
> Bark, Anthony Lawrence, University of Queensland Press
>
> Bark shows once again the peculiar power of Anthony Lawrence's vision.
> Attuned to the poetics of space and the quiddity of things and animals,
> Lawrence's poems repeatedly offer us new ways of seeing. By taking the
> usually unnoticed or unthought-of (marine stingers, the sport of luge,
> wombats) Lawrence fashions extraordinary poetic essays that involve his
> considerable wit, style, and formal skill.
>
> Lawrence's fascination with landscape, seascape, and animals is
> unsentimental and bracingly aware of humans' ambiguous relationship to
> those
> things. As such, his poems move powerfully between the modes of praise and
> protest.
>
> Typewriter Music, David Malouf, University of Queensland Press
>
> David Malouf's late return to poetry (where his career began) is a welcome
> development in the career of one of Australia's best-known and most
> successful writers. Typewriter Music brilliantly illustrates Malouf's
> profound metaphorical skills. The collection's poems are poems of
> transformation, taking the details of everyday life and fashioning
> something
> rich and strange out of them.
>
> Malouf's poems of love, ageing, and mortality are moving and insightful.
> Seven Last Words of the Emperor Hadrian is a minor masterpiece, showing
> Malouf's inventiveness and abundant linguistic talents.
>
> Scar Revision, Tracy Ryan, Fremantle Press
>
> Scar Revision is concerned with the literal and metaphorical scars of
> grief,
> parenthood, and love, tracing moments of intensity, and the long intensity
> of familial and personal history. Ryan's compelling poems are both direct
> and metaphorical, marked by their striking imagery and rhythmic skill, as
> well as their skilful blend of demotic and lyrical language.
>
> They are also notable for the way they balance seriousness of purpose with
> an arresting sense of humour. The book is a powerfully coherent collection,
> offering brilliant poetic models of how we "revise" the scars caused by
> experience and loss.
>
> Victorian Premier's Poetry Prize:
>
> Event, Judith Bishop (Salt Publishing)
>
> Judith Bishop's Event is distinguished by the sophistication and
> originality
> of its varied subject matter, its attention to craft and form, and above
> all
> by the intensity of its language, which confidently creates striking
> effects
> - sometimes dark, sometimes brilliant, often daring.
>
> Press Release, Lisa Gorton, (Giramondo Publishing)
>
> The consistent poise and thoughtfulness of Lisa Gorton' poetic voice in
> Press Release is remarkable, whether modulating into intellectual
> speculation, wry humour, or an elegiac tenderness utterly unsentimental or
> self-regarding. Many poets have written about the Mallee: Gorton's sequence
> manages to be original, technically varied, and at once witty and poignant.
>
> As We Draw Ourselves, Barry Hill, (Five Islands Press)
>
> Barry Hill has several earlier collections, but the judging panel found in
> As We Draw Ourselves the element of fresh directions we were privileging in
> well-known contenders. That poetry about art can be a way of exploring what
> it is to be human is a traditional enough theme, but Hill's tri-partite
> locating of his texts in China, Italy and Australia extends the thematic
> range, and, in particular, allows the admirable delicacy and elegance of
> the
> poems in the opening Chinese section to contrast strikingly with the more
> robust quality of the Italian.
>
> --
> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>
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