AustLit

'Faced with the 'globalisation of violence' against humans and the wider Earth community, a key question of our time is: Where can humanity turn for inspiration?

'Voices in international law, the UN system, labour and social movements, intellectual circles, religious and ethical traditions are calling for a shift from 'Just War' to 'Just Peace'. At the heart of this book is a wider call, for a 'Just and Ecologically Sustainable Peace'.

'This book reflects the conviction that the arts, literature, activism and scholarly research can together contribute to the kinds of cultural shift requisite for a peace that flows from and extends to human relations with the natural world.

'Six artworks by peace artist William Kelly and five commissioned poems in response to those works, form the framework of the book. Interspersed with poems are creative prose and short thematic essays (of 1000-1200 words) from selected Indigenous, ecological, feminist and religious scholars and activists.' (Publication summary)

'If we are to speak, what is it we must speak? If we are allowed to speak, what is it we must say? Who constitutes the ‘we’ that speaks? Anne Elvey’s new collection frames such questions against the contemporary world and its multiple challenges. These poems in turn explore environmental encounters, subtle and overt expressions of the political, the elisions of history, the embodiment of the world and the nature of grace, through poetry sharply attuned to its subject matter. For Elvey, poetry has an obligation not only to chart intimate moments, but also to draw those moments towards the numinous matter of our Earthy habitats.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'This essay focuses on the materiality of breath. Breath is encoded in languages and texts, for example, through the quality of letters/characters, punctuation, citation and space. Breath connects human bodies with their habitats, with air and atmosphere, with ecological exigencies of climate and pollution, and with the entanglements of social and ecological violence. I explore a focus on breath as a way of engaging with the materiality of a poem against a contemporary background where air and atmosphere are strained. In the context of climate change, I offer a reading of three poems by Jill Jones, Natalie Harkin and Susan Hawthorne. I focus on the interlinked materialities of breath and text and the ways a poem might speak into the strained breath of a climate change and pollution affected Earth.' (Publication abstract)