AustLit

'His “poems are as urgent and accessible as headlines, though infinitely more beautiful”, the broadcaster Phillip Adams wrote of the Australian poet Philip Hodgins.' (Introduction)

'The poet John Forbes (1950-1998) was famous for his erudition, but it is a feature of his work that has long been overlooked. Outlining how knowledge functions in Forbes’ poetics and compositional process, I argue for foregrounding this knowledge content in readings of his work, before modelling sustained readings of the erudition of two of Forbes’ best-known poems, ‘Stalin’s Holidays’ and ‘Ars Poetica’. These readings focus on the experience of contingent difficulty – that category of difficulty, according to George Steiner, that finds its source in a reader’s lack of knowledge – and the role that research, or ‘homework’ (26), plays in the reading process. While acknowledging that Steiner’s contingent difficulties are intertwined with – and sometimes created by – other categories of difficulty, this article argues for the productiveness of such ‘homework’ early in the interpretative process. Steiner likens contingent difficulties to ‘burrs on the fabric of the text’ (27). I extend this metaphor to propose that contingent difficulties, in their tactile, grip-like quality, enable a reader to engage with a difficult poem, and to proceed with exegesis, when the difficulties the poem otherwise presents seem insurmountable.' (Publication abstract)

'The year 1599 was Shakespeare’s annus mirabilis – a year in which, after a relatively barren period, he wrote four masterpieces: Julius Caesar, Henry V, As You Like It, and Hamlet, spanning the First Folio’s three genres of history, comedy and tragedy. The achievement of this period was crowned with the Bard’s longest and most enigmatic play, Hamlet. For me, Hamlet is Shakespeare’s great open poem – the play more than any other that points to the generative power of language. I think of Shakespeare (always writing by candlelight in a small room above the front bar of a London pub) in love with writing, amazed by what he was writing, unable to keep the profusion of his verse within the tidy lines of a plot.' (Introduction)

''This is an outstanding volume of poetry. It is wonderfully original and deliciously complex. Its intellectual pirouettes and cutbacks are a pleasure to follow, always offering an incredibly agile and aesthetically stimulating journey. With brio and wit, Coleman's poems jag through various allusions, from computer games to Shakespeare, from reality TV to Blue Light Discos. In lesser hands such a dizzying array of references could lead to a kind of vertigo or even a sense of self-indulgent over-referencing. Yet Coleman's omnivorous poems handle disparate elements superbly, holding an openness in tension with their erudite clarity.' - Lachlan Brown

''These poems of great architectural skill and precision are small houses (nothing in excess) of scrutiny - what is watched on the television, what is read in print and on the screen, is analysed in the context of "responsibility". Wry, aphoristic, compiled brick by brick, expression by expression, each poem accords with and flouts the regulations at once - that is, this immaculate crafter of the poem also questions the propaganda of prosody and poetics. Smart, learned, and ironic, the work leads us through the artifice of art and aesthetics, confronting our cultural certainties and pre-judgements. Satire with compassion, wit with deep insight. His is a unique voice.' - John Kinsella' (Publication summary)

'This article aims to reconstruct features of John Forbes’ compositional process in his first decade of serious practice, through analysing drafts and early versions of his poems. I compare early versions of ‘Here’, ‘The Joyful Mysteries’ and ‘Stalin’s Holidays’ to their final incarnations to show how Forbes was resistant to a fixed, or single, idea when writing a poem. In the context of such openness, Forbes’ poems often moved towards a sense of closure, through the pressure his use of form applied and through its more suggestive qualities. Following a comment Forbes made in an interview, I label this process ‘formal association’. I contend that Forbes sought a balance between closure and openness, while arguing that the dynamic interplay of this openness with formal association, during the composition, was crucial to his achievement.' (Publication abstract)