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'Sydney Spleen takes Baudelaire’s concept of spleen as melancholy with no apparent cause, characterised by a disgust with everything – and combines it with a contemporary irony so as to articulate the causes of our doom and gloom: corporate rapacity, climate change, disaster capitalism, the plague, neo-colonialism, fake news, fascism, and how to raise kids in a world fast becoming obsolete. The backdrop of this collection of poems is sparkling Sydney and its screens, through which the poet mainlines global angst. Fitch’s ‘spleen poems’, with their radical use of form and tone, are as much an aesthetic experience as a literary one – translation becomes homage, satire, song; essays become lyrics, rants, dreams. What is a poem when ‘no one believes in the future now anyway’? Nor is the collection lacking in humour. Sydney Spleen mocks everything in its crystal glass, yet still finds real moments of connection to cherish.'
Source : publisher's blurb
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Warnings, Consequences and Laments
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 28 August 2021; (p. 18)
— Review of Sydney Spleen 2021 selected work poetry ; Whisper Songs 2021 selected work poetry ; Trigger Warning 2021 selected work poetry -
‘A Creepy Little Walk’ : Toby Fitch’s Lyricism and Versatility
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 435 2021; (p. 45)
— Review of Sydney Spleen 2021 selected work poetry'Sydney-based poet and editor Toby Fitch has spent much of the last decade traversing the field of radical French modernist poets, especially Arthur Rimbaud and Guillaume Apollinaire. That engagement ignited Fitch’s imagination. He began inverting, recombining, mistranslating, and mimicking their techniques in his own poetry. In his new collection, Sydney Spleen, he has made a sophisticated, fresh move that enhances his signature playfulness and tongue-in-cheek poetic antics.' (Introduction)
-
‘A Creepy Little Walk’ : Toby Fitch’s Lyricism and Versatility
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 435 2021; (p. 45)
— Review of Sydney Spleen 2021 selected work poetry'Sydney-based poet and editor Toby Fitch has spent much of the last decade traversing the field of radical French modernist poets, especially Arthur Rimbaud and Guillaume Apollinaire. That engagement ignited Fitch’s imagination. He began inverting, recombining, mistranslating, and mimicking their techniques in his own poetry. In his new collection, Sydney Spleen, he has made a sophisticated, fresh move that enhances his signature playfulness and tongue-in-cheek poetic antics.' (Introduction)
-
Warnings, Consequences and Laments
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 28 August 2021; (p. 18)
— Review of Sydney Spleen 2021 selected work poetry ; Whisper Songs 2021 selected work poetry ; Trigger Warning 2021 selected work poetry
