Day One When I was informed that our very first essay conference was to take place two days before my graduation, I’ll admit I was dubious. Such anticipation, such enthusiasm, would surely exhaust itself and leave me slogging on stage with about as much energy as an old sloth, overwhelmed with ideas, questions and a Read More
In a remarkable extension of thought, The Book of the Peony buds, expands and lets fall astounding petals: prose poems and haiku invoking an infinite, unattainable peony. The peony is allegorical. It is approached with the mind. It is the illusory peony of separation, of birth and death. Or, it is the shimmering unity beyond Read More
Phoebe Power’s Shrines of Upper Austria beckons to the wayfarers. An amalgamation of poetry and prose, the collection is a seamless combination of imagery and narration. With its vocal fragments and lyricism, it is both political and perspicacious. Power’s Shrines of Upper Austria reads like the “humming” of a relic folk tune, remembered, re-sung, and Read More
displays of pride, the concupiscent eye bent inward w/ súch deep longing. When readers omit a poem’s title, I’m perturbed. Poets fret over titles. Not just their wording. Should it hold to the left, be centred? Capitalisation? If there is superscription, are italics necessary? Are endnotes too hidden? Are footnotes overly close and distracting? Don’t Read More
Picking up Paolozzi Revealed, I did expect a window into the private life of this creative titan. Instead, this summary of a Masterclass run by the renowned sculptor reads more like a research paper on creativity. But maybe that is indeed, in itself, revealing of Paolozzi, this book seemingly an embodiment of the creative process. In Read More
“The hardest thing of all is to see what is really there” (J A Baker) I clatter down the stairs of the Tower Extension at the University of Dundee, heart pounding inside my chest, hoping that my voice will come back to me and my nerves will disappear like the rolling haar on the Read More
Virtual Walls | Real Walls is the first solo exhibition by pioneering visual artist, Madelon Hooykaas. Born in the Netherlands in 1942, Hooykaas has devoted her artistic life to working with photography, film and video. She makes documentary films and short film installations, but she also “works with” film in a literal sense, interacting and Read More
The great Gaius Valerius Catullus lived, loved and died in northern Italy around the time of Julius Caesar and Cicero. Not much is known about him other than what can be gleaned from his poems, for example, that he had a great fondness of kissing: Give me a thousand kisses, then one hundred, then a Read More
On the cover of Lia Purpura’s marvellous collection of lyric essays, On Looking, there is a close-up photograph of a strange bony object with clavicle-like hollows and spinal protuberances. Our classroom exchanges about exactly what this represents always lead to discussions on Purpura’s themes and poetics. Jessie Greengrass’s second book will spark exactly those kinds Read More
Claire Askew’s debut collection, This Changes Things, opens with “Dukkha”, a starkly beautiful and shocking poem, at once lyrical and political. It moves from a list of basic human needs – simple shelter, water and food – before escalating to include guns, banks and barbed wire to protect property and resources. It ends chillingly: [….] Read More