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The title of Joanne Burns’ new collection brush highlights the reader’s first experience of a poem, its initial electricity; and the way the poem offers a surface of words that proceeds to reveal their possibilities or intentions. The central sequence ‘road’ is an animated display of the fashions of being in contemporary life – these poems are cheeky, playful, mercurial, surreal. Then there is the sequence called ‘bluff’, which excoriates twenty-first century financial culture with bite, hilarity and a sense of the absurd. There is a section devoted to personal memoir, including a five-part poem featuring Bondi beach, and a suite of memory fragments depicting twentieth-century modes of travel. The final group of poems, ‘wooing the owl (or the great sleep forward)’, explores the night, sleep and dreams, with their strange tones and surprising perspectives. There are 80 poems in the collection, most of them short, stressing the compressed pleasure that only poetry can offer. [From the publisher's website]
Notes
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Launched by Peter Kirkpatrick on 11 November 2014 at Gleebooks, Sydney.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Joanne Burns, Brush
2016
single work
review
essay
— Appears in: Long Paddock , vol. 76 no. 2 2016; 'How do the ways we interact with the world impact both our navigation through it, and its impact on the self? In what manner do we internalize and externalize our movements through a modern world that is simultaneously both terrifying and crudely sterile? “does your share portfolio ache” (3) opens joanne burns’ most recent collection, brush. It’s a succinct précis of the wonderfully incongruous juxtaposition that permeates much of the collection. brush is burns’ sixteenth book of poetry, her first collection Snatch published in London in 1972. Burns’ work has long satirised the bizarre edifices of contemporary culture, creating work that subverts the ostensible solemnity of these structures, a practice brush continues. Intentionally distorting clarity in order to explore and emphasise both the spectacular unknown and the absurd “normalities” of modern life, burns’ poems comprise of clever, incisive musings that centre largely on the mundane everyday. Split into six sequences, brush showcases burns’ penchant for asymmetrically collaging techniques and styles in a way that blurs lines, defying poetic convention. The assemblage of poetry, prose and microfiction contained throughout gleefully contravenes protocol and fucks with format while retaining coherency and impact, a way of storytelling that could easily feel clumsy were it not so uncompromising in its sharpness.' (Introduction) -
Nicolette Stasko Reviews Brush by Joanne Burns
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , September no. 19 2016;
— Review of Brush 2014 selected work poetry -
Poetry Book Review: Brush by Joanne Burns
2015
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The NSW Writers' Centre Blog
— Review of Brush 2014 selected work poetry -
Rampant Verbal Flowering
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , April 2015;
— Review of Brush 2014 selected work poetry -
Surreal Inventiveness : Peter Kirkpatrick Launches ‘brush’ by Joanne Burns
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , October 2014 – March no. 13 2015;
— Review of Brush 2014 selected work poetry
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Images, Affinities and Transformations
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , December no. 48.1 2014;
— Review of Brush 2014 selected work poetry -
Australian Poetry
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 17-18 January 2015; (p. 19)
— Review of Drones and Phantoms 2014 selected work poetry ; Brush 2014 selected work poetry ; Curio 2014 selected work poetry ; A Hunger : With the Simplified World and the Incoming Tide 2014 selected work poetry -
Surreal Inventiveness : Peter Kirkpatrick Launches ‘brush’ by Joanne Burns
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , October 2014 – March no. 13 2015;
— Review of Brush 2014 selected work poetry -
Rampant Verbal Flowering
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , April 2015;
— Review of Brush 2014 selected work poetry -
Poetry Book Review: Brush by Joanne Burns
2015
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The NSW Writers' Centre Blog
— Review of Brush 2014 selected work poetry -
Joanne Burns, Brush
2016
single work
review
essay
— Appears in: Long Paddock , vol. 76 no. 2 2016; 'How do the ways we interact with the world impact both our navigation through it, and its impact on the self? In what manner do we internalize and externalize our movements through a modern world that is simultaneously both terrifying and crudely sterile? “does your share portfolio ache” (3) opens joanne burns’ most recent collection, brush. It’s a succinct précis of the wonderfully incongruous juxtaposition that permeates much of the collection. brush is burns’ sixteenth book of poetry, her first collection Snatch published in London in 1972. Burns’ work has long satirised the bizarre edifices of contemporary culture, creating work that subverts the ostensible solemnity of these structures, a practice brush continues. Intentionally distorting clarity in order to explore and emphasise both the spectacular unknown and the absurd “normalities” of modern life, burns’ poems comprise of clever, incisive musings that centre largely on the mundane everyday. Split into six sequences, brush showcases burns’ penchant for asymmetrically collaging techniques and styles in a way that blurs lines, defying poetic convention. The assemblage of poetry, prose and microfiction contained throughout gleefully contravenes protocol and fucks with format while retaining coherency and impact, a way of storytelling that could easily feel clumsy were it not so uncompromising in its sharpness.' (Introduction)