AustLit

Author's note: The title for this series is taken from Jorge Luis Borges, who claims it refers to ‘a certain Chinese encyclopedia’ documented by Franz Kuhn. ‘In its distant pages,’ he writes, ‘animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs;’ and on to ‘(n) those that at a distance resemble flies.’ These divisions thus provide the Emporium’s structure: each pair of poems starts out from a category. Each pair corresponds between the animal and the classification. Each pair considers things, their names and their natures.'