CONTRIBUTORS

Ali Alizadeh

Ali Alizadeh is a Melbourne-based author and scholar. His literary interests include Marxist theory, Horror, Continental philosophy and history. Among his favourite authors are Shirley Jackson, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Richard Matheson, Alain Badiou, H.D., and Bertolt Brecht. His books include the collections of poetry Towards the End and Ashes in the Air, the novels The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc and Transactions, and a work of aesthetic theory, Marx and Art. He is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University, Melbourne.

Hidden Signs of a City

How does one read a city? More specifically, how does a poet decode, and in turn re/present, the language of a man-made space? In Australia (and other 'New World' constructs) much poetry has been devoted to the natural world; but …

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Ali Alizadeh Reviews Charles Simic

An interesting aspect of Serbian-born Charles Simic's being chosen as the United States' 15th Poet Laureate is that Simic, partly due to his experience of a European childhood during the Second World War, has often been something of an 'anti-war' poet. What makes this dimension of Simic's work somewhat odd is that the United States is, of course, currently engaged in an interminable 'war on terror'.

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The Suspect

Over there, in the Other land, I was gharb-zadeh, Farsi to the effect of west- smitten. Over here, in 'Our' land, I am Muslim immigrant, nomenclature with grave allusions: unemployment, anger, and unpredictable police attention. Over there I was an …

Posted in 30: EXPERIENCE | Tagged

Ali Alizadeh Reviews Dimitris Tsaloumas

In a recent article titled 'Only Pinter remains to question authority', English literary theorist and thinker Terry Eagleton bemoans the decline of politically-engaged writing in English. He criticises, among others, the once radical, now conservative migrant writers like V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie who, after an initial period of producing exciting work, have become 'more interested in adopting than challenging the conventions of their place of refuge'.

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Ali Alizadeh Reviews Anthony Joseph

One of the great challenges facing artists from post-colonial and/or ethnic minority backgrounds is meeting the demands of two potentially conflicting ideals. As surrogate – and often unwilling – cultural ambassadors, such artists are required to be 'responsible' and represent the reality of their communities/ethnicities for a mainstream Western audience; but as artists they need to be adequately 'irresponsible' in order to produce provocative new works that do not merely replicate but (as Russian Formalists would have it) violate reality.

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Ali Alizadeh Reviews Ian McBryde and Tim Sinclair

Two recent Australian poetry titles – one from a 'cult' adult (and at times 'adults only') poet, another from a newcomer writing for 'young adults'; the former published by a new small press and the latter by one of the world's most recognisable publishing empires; the former experimental and minimalist and the latter conventional and extensive; and so on – offer formally different yet discursively complimentary views of the state of the poetic word.

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Ali Alizadeh Reviews Mohsen Soltany Zand

There is a spectre haunting Australian poetry – it is the spectre of spoken word. The explosion of spoken word publications (mostly in the form of CDs) and live events (such as poetry soirees, 'slams' and 'open microphones') across Australia's poetry scene over the past decade or so may in due course determine the future of Australian poetry.

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Wandering in Wuhan

I am astounded to find that ancient and medieval poetry occupies a uniquely central presence in Wuhan's contemporary identity; that, in spite of ideological and legal issues and restrictions, new cutting-edge poetry grows across China's cyberspace; and that all of this is happening in spite of a rapid, and some might say rabid, modernisation and commercialisation.

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Writer in Prison

Your cell is a cavern; the guards grinding teeth outside your grotto marginally refined ape-men; you the last human in the world of triumphant beasts. Is your pen the key to emancipation? No. The lock has no keyhole and welded …

Posted in 23: EDITORIAL INTERVENTION | Tagged

Call Me Filth

Ali Alizadeh is Cordite's reviews editor.

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Ali Alizadeh Reviews Geoff Goodfellow

The concept of working-class poetry may seem like an oxymoron to the uninitiated. Isn't poetry, after all, as Harold Bloom would have it, “the crown of imaginative literature”; an elitist, royalist member of the family of letters, on par with other 'high art' and upper-class forms and genres such as Classical music, opera and ballet?

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Ali Alizadeh Reviews Ouyang Yu

´Multiculturalism', when all has been said and (often very little) has been done about it, remains a difficult, even paradoxical, idea. It is an English-language term invented by, and used for the purposes of, the dominant Anglo-Celtic culture; yet it supposedly represents the reality of being from the ´minor' cultures that, at least in Australia, do not have English as a first language.

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Ali Alizadeh Reviews Ian McBryde

In the media release for Ian McBryde's latest collection, Domain, Peter Porter states that World War II and the Holocaust &#151 the content of McBryde's collection &#151 have been “subjects defiant of poetry”. Here, I think, Porter is trying to make a claim for this collection's uniqueness.

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