AustLit

‘Only idiots and government leeches live in Western Sydney,’ Zekay said to me as he tied up his oily brown hair into a topknot. He was standing in the middle of the grass at Central Park Mall, his hairy arms spread out like he was Jesus on the cross. Zekay was a University of Technology Sydney film student who lived in Surry Hills and loved to call himself the Son of Man while scratching the wiry pubes under his arms. I had met Zekay on Tinder, drawn by his curly hair and long lashes. His skin was as white as bleached notebook paper.' (Introduction)

'In 1973, I was a post-graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, working on my Master’s degree in music composition. My principle teacher at the time was Kenneth Gaburo, well known for his work in compositional linguistics which crossed boundaries between music, language, writing, performance, and dance. I was also very good friends with two fellow post-graduate students, Peter Gordon, composer, and Kathy Acker, writer, who at the time were partners. Kathy was mainly working with the performance poet David Antin at the time. Many were the late-night trips to VG’s Donut Shop in Carlsbad, California, in which Peter, Kathy and I discussed artistic issues that seemed quite urgent to us at the time. William S Burroughs, with his cut-up method, and the collage poetics of John Cage were both enormously influential on us, and Kathy introduced me to the work of Jackson Mac Low, who, many years later, I became friends with. And, as mentioned, both Gaburo’s and Antin’s experiments with language-based composition were very important to us.' (Introduction)

'Dr. Jordie Albiston is one of Australia’s premiere contemporary poets. She is the recipient of numerous literary prizes, and the author of nine collections of poetry, three of which are documentary in nature.' (Introduction)