AustLit

'It’s a putting oneself into a space of deliberate uncertainty. Stepping into the unknown. A practicing in that space. Training. It’s about thinking provisionally. Speaking small. Not for all.

'It’s about languaging. Being attentive to words, to meaning. To the meaning that can be smuggled in however unwittingly.

'It’s about taking seriously – which might have nothing whatsoever to do with being serious.'  (Introduction)

'A ground-breaking insight into the experience of disability, from a distinguished poet who has lived with Marfan Syndrome, including severe spinal curvature, and whose poems give voice to those who are often treated as ‘other’ or alien. 

'The poems are visceral and intimate, they comfort and discomfort at the same time – empathy for the other seems to falter, only to expand and deepen.

'The poems in Human Looking speak with the voices of the disabled and the disfigured, in ways which are confronting, but also illuminating and tender. They speak of surgical interventions, and of the different kinds of disability which they seek to ‘correct’. They range widely, finding figures to identify with in mythology and history, art and photography, poetry and fiction. A number of poems deal with unsettling extremes of embodiment, and with violence against disabled people. Others emerge out of everyday life, and the effects of illness, pain and prejudice. The strength of the speaking voice is remarkable, as is its capacity for empathy and love. ‘I, this wonderful catastrophe’, the poet has Mary Shelley’s monstrous figure declare. The use of unusual and disjunctive – or ‘deformed’ – poetic forms, adds to the emotional impact of the poems.'

Source : publication summary

'There are complex, fundamental questions around how we relate to non-human animals. How can we find a way to organise our systems so they are not exploitative or degrading and are not poisoning the land and water we all depend on? What might a genuinely sustainable ethic of cross-species interdependence look like? Are our cultural stories and mythologies about animals harmful or helpful?'  (Introduction)

'“The shape of sound” is not just a metaphor. Sound is literally shapely. It’s physical, forceful; it can be overwhelming. Fiona Murphy’s debut memoir reminds us that while the “prevailing assumption is that deaf people hear nothing ... I feel sound rolling over my skin. I see it shimmer off other faces. I taste it in my mouth. Sometimes, it is all too much.”' (Introduction)

'One of the supreme, and indeed painful, ironies of pain is that it is so very hard to communicate, yet it always demands to be given voice. Not only as involuntary cry or anguished moan, but in visceral metaphor, as ‘knife’ or ‘burning’, or in memoir or narrative accounts that seek to ‘flesh out’ this terribly isolating state of being. These attempts at giving language to pain seem to invariably fall short. We may listen to, or read, accounts of pain and feel pained ourselves, but this feeling is mostly the sorrow of realising the other person and their suffering is unreachable, and that the pain cannot be taken away.' (Introduction)

'Is an anthology greater than the sum of its parts? Does it effectively capture its milieu? Who’s been included, who left out? Is it genuinely of the moment? Will it endure? The case of Solid Air is even more complex. This is a collection of spoken word that’s been published as a book, rather than as a downloadable album, a film to be streamed, or a live show on tour (though there have been a string of impressive launches). Voice turned to ink, accent and emphasis turned into font, the unfolding of a poem in time turned into a presence on paper which is there in its entirety at one glance. Is this the stage surrendering to the supposed dominance of the page? Should I consider these poems purely in their physical form here, or as reminders of their performance elsewhere? Of course, editors David Stavanger and Anne-Marie Te Whiu know you’ll ask these questions, and it’s proof of their adept curation of voices that – while such questions persist after reading, transformed into something more productive – the poems themselves overwhelm any theoretical position or argument about what or who this anthology represents.' (Introduction)