AustLit

'Memory Book: Portraits of Older Australians in Poetry and Watercolours shares and celebrates the fascinating life stories of everyday Australians.

'Based on one-on-one interviews with forty-five participants, the fifteen poets involved in this project have shaped poems that provide unique and lasting remembrances of the experiences, memories and reflections of members of our older generations.

'Some poems focus on a significant moment, while others provide a wider life narrative. The poems capture important stories of travel and work, family and milestones, achievements and struggles; they provide humble advice to younger generations, learned through circumstance, curiosity, or necessity.

'The poems are paired with watercolour portraits by artist Sierra McManus.' (Publication summary)

'Can poetry make things happen? Can poetry bring about change? Does it hold that power? In the wake of the heaving 2020 chronicle of civil rights protests, a global pandemic and environmental disasters, what role can poetry play towards a recovering world? While we – poets, non-poets, regular and irregular poetry readers alike – often turn to poetry in the face of grief, trauma, depression or injustice, is this ‘turning to’ the poem merely borne of tradition, in that we call upon poetry for its ability to speak through inarticulable depths of feeling? Or, do we intuitively sense that part of poetry’s purpose is to provoke or invoke change?' (Introduction)

 (Publication abstract)

'In late 2011, I had a meeting with the founders of the nonfictionLab at RMIT University, David Carlin and Francesca Rendle-Short. I was a new employee at the university, and they were asking me what I might contribute to the fledgling ‘Lab’. Without much thought, I proposed that the literary publication Rabbit, which I had begun as an experimental venture midway through the year, become ‘a journal for nonfiction poetry’. David and Francesca looked at me excitedly. ‘What’s nonfiction poetry?’, they asked. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and we all laughed at how swiftly an authoritative statement was revealed to be a mere spontaneous proposition. When the mood resumed to focus on serious business, I told them that we would find out.' (Introduction)

'This essay begins with an ethical quandary: the author’s academic institution had purchased some very expensive resources for her so that she could complete her research for a book-length verse-biography project on choreographer George Balanchine. The problem is, the resources arrived after she considered that project ‘complete’ (the book was in press). How might a creative practice researcher quash her guilt in this regard?

'The essay follows her process of reopening the project — as a more traditional biographer might do in order to produce a ‘revised’ edition — not only to integrate information from those new resources, but to revisit discarded research notes (the ‘refuse’) that did not yield poems within the initial publication. In assembling new versions of poems from the published book, the author reconsiders the biographical project as an ongoing, ever-evolving and ephemeral process, akin to the revision of ballet repertoire.' (Publication abstract)