CONTRIBUTORS

Autumn Royal

Autumn Royal creates drama, poetry and criticism on unceded Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung land. Autumn is an arts worker and the Interviews Editor at Cordite Poetry Review. Her poetry collections include She Woke and Rose, Liquidation and The Drama Student, which was shortlisted for the 2023 Queensland Premier’s Judith Wright Calanthe Award.

Transplants, I

—For Shin Hae-uk It was reported that no one knew her well enough to befriend her—this is the genius of her con as this word clips onto this word and so on, forming a pattern beneath the bustline of her …

Posted in INVISIBLE WALLS | Tagged

Transplants, III

—For Shin Hae-uk This is no small thing—the borders glossing the room are large enough for her to visualise being placed somewhere other than this location. Room for error, she figures, while performing her daily stretches to increase muscle and …

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Transplants, II

—For Shin Hae-uk In another room, there is a three-seater couch that your position only permits you to look at—never to sit on. The executives share feedback about how the cushions are as soft as a baby’s belly before feeding. …

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Poesy

‘When people speak out in favor of a life of madness, they mean the cute, nice madness, not the disgusting or dangerous kind. The disgusting and dangerous kind is prioritized in language but not in life.’ — Aase Berg The …

Posted in 106: OPEN | Tagged

Acting in Awe

The phone kept ringing & even though I was holding scissors to cut the cord it only took three more slow rings for me to become defenceless, cloaking my dressing gown over my shoulders as I announced myself into the …

Posted in 93: PEACH | Tagged

[Regarding] The Pain of Others

‘What does it mean to protest suffering, as distinct from acknowledging it?’ – Susan Sontag Since many of the plotlines explored throughout my plays have started leaking into my current reality, I’m now publicly admitting to embracing other people’s anguishes …

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged

‘We can wake up if we wish’: Autumn Royal Interviews Cecilia Vicuña

Cecilia Vicuña is a multidisciplinary Chilean artist who describes her practice as dwelling in the not yet. Vicuña forms and disentangles meaning with poetry, oral performances, filmmaking, criticism and activism.

Posted in INTERVIEWS | Tagged ,

Documentation: Molten Upset’s Poetry & Noise

Hannah Earles reads from poems written on her bed sheets while Natasha Havir Smith plays electric violin. Molten Upset is a collective name for us – Autumn Royal and Lisa Lerkenfeldt – and we were stimulated by a kind of …

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Autumn Royal Reviews Martin Langford and Dan Disney

Matters of identity in relation to land are a major concern for poets writing in Australia. In the introduction to The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (2009) John Kinsella points out that since its earliest forms Australian poetry expresses ‘a sense of urgency about communicating the uniqueness and significance of the Australian landscape, and the relationship between individuals and community and country/place’.

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Review Short: Bel Schenk’s Every Time You Close Your Eyes

Bel Schenk’s third poetry collection, Every Time You Close Your Eyes, is sparsely written, yet deeply self-aware. Taking the form of a verse narrative, the book is a series of poems exploring events commonly referred to as the ‘New York City blackouts of 1977 and 2003’, similar in circumstance, yet as Schenk demonstrates, vastly different due to the temporal space between them.

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‘in the elevator, heading for the 23rd floor’

[After Hong-Kai Wang’s A Conceptual Biography of Chris Mann] ‘i mean am i Wrong to prefer your version of me?’ – Chris Mann ‘It begins with affections. It departs from one’s desire to construct a biography of an artist’s life …

Posted in 68: NO THEME IV | Tagged , ,

Review Short: Omar Musa’s Here Come the Dogs

Primarily known as a performance poet and rapper, Omar Musa has embarked on another textual form with his latest publication, Here Come the Dogs. Written in a combination of verse and prose, Here Comes the Dogs offers an intimate portrait of three young men negotiating issues of identity and marginalisation in an unnamed Australian city. Musa, who is Malaysian-Australian, positions his poetry and prose in a manner that allows for his book to confront themes surrounding cultural and ethnic identities, intersectional discrimination and problematic expressions of masculinity and power.

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Review Short: Rebecca Jessen’s Gap

Winner of the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards for Best Emerging Author, Gap is Rebecca Jessen’s debut verse novel and a bold entrance into a strong line of Australian verse novels.

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Along the Highway, 1999

Written by: Autumn Royal Sound production by: Daniel Jenatsch Spoken by: Autumn Royal, Daniel Jenatsch, and Harriet Gregory [audio:http://cordite.org.au/audio/Highway99.mp3|titles=Along the Highway, 1999] Along the Highway, 1999 (7:23) Sun sparks against the cold curve of moon, sand returns to the colour …

Posted in 63: COLLABORATION | Tagged , ,

Review Short: Todd Turner’s Woodsmoke

The poetry in Todd Turner’s debut collection Woodsmoke explores topographies of land and memory. Comparable to the approach of Australian poets such as Philip Hodgins and Brendan Ryan, many of Turner’s poems explore human interactions with rural landscapes. Turner’s biographical note indicates that his ‘parents were from farming families in the town of Koorawatha, situated on the Western Plains of New South Wales’ (v). Like Hodgins and Ryan, Turner is unafraid to include autobiographical references within many of his poems.

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Palm—Reading

After Louise Cotton’s Palmistry and Its Practical Uses My reason curls around—possibility—the practice of cheirosophy—the prediction of character as demarcated by the hand— each line & mark—sparks a meaning that deepens as the reader traces the heart line towards—Jupiter’s etching. …

Posted in 61: NO THEME III | Tagged

Boiling Water

– after Emily Dickinson There’s nothing to shatter on this evening. The window is open, the neighbours may look. With my mouth held shut I fill the saucepan. Black marks, once boiled-over, flake into the water. I dwell in possibility, …

Posted in 59: GONDWANALAND | Tagged

Review Short: Rachael Briggs’s Free Logic

Winner of the 2012 Thomas Shapcott Prize, Free Logic is the debut collection from poet and philosopher Rachael Briggs. The book is divided into nine sections, each poetically exploring themes of love, identity, and sexuality. Briggs infuses her poetic explorations with surreal allegories, moments of metamorphosis and a constant teasing of the ‘logical’, which allow for her poetry to forge an opening towards new possibilities. Briggs strikingly connects insightful fantasies with philosophical considerations.

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