AustLit logo

AustLit

Brook Emery Brook Emery i(A9907 works by) (a.k.a. N. W. Emery)
Born: Established: 1949 Sydney, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Male
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 A Distinctive Poetic Voice: Brook Emery Launches ‘The Owl Inside’ by Ivy Ireland Brook Emery , 2020 single work essay
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , November no. 30 2020;
1 Voltage Across a Membrane i "A ringing in the ears that could be cicadas", Brook Emery , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , December vol. 10 no. 2 2020;
1 Brook Emery Launches Green Point Bearings by Kathryn Fry Brook Emery , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Plumwood Mountain [Online] , November 2018;

— Review of Green Point Bearings Kathryn Fry , 2018 selected work poetry
1 As if / the Moth i "Insects swarm in wing-wrought clouds,", Brook Emery , 2018 single work poetry
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 78 no. 1 2018; (p. 18-20)
1 Return to Sender i "Hussain ... do not think badly of us.", Brook Emery , 2016 single work poetry
— Appears in: Writing to the Wire 2016; (p. 166)
1 The Brown Currrent Brook Emery , 2016 single work poetry
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 3 2016; (p. 63-70)
1 Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan i "I’ve read Ulysses twice, thrice, yet remember", Brook Emery , 2016 single work poetry
— Appears in: Snorkel , January no. 22 2016;
1 A Steady Delete i "Walking the mile or so to school through suburban", Brook Emery , 2016 single work poetry
— Appears in: Snorkel , January no. 22 2016;
1 From 'You Want Ghosts' Brook Emery , 2016 extract poetry
— Appears in: Island , no. 146 2016; (p. 20)
1 3 y separately published work icon Have Been and Are Brook Emery , Australia : GloriaSMH , 2016 10039430 2016 selected work poetry

'The phrase ‘have been and are’ is taken from the last sentence of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species – ‘Endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been and are being evolved’ – and the poems in Brook Emery’s fifth collection are attentive to the implied puzzles of evolution and beauty, fixity and flux. Imagined as ‘transactions’ between readers and writers across time the loosely-linked poems, all of whose titles bar one are quotations, tangle and untangle the interlacings of nature, language, culture and identity in an attempt to discover ‘ground on which to stand’.

'Full of allusions, sometimes personal, sometimes bemused, often reflective and speculative, the poetry is consistently lucid, lyrical and tactile; it thinks through the eye, the ear, the body’s engagement with the world:

'‘… So, I pass through bush, I tread upon;

'I am within the sea, wrapped round, held … ’'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 y separately published work icon Australian Poetry Anthology Sarah Holland-Batt (editor), Brook Emery (editor), Melbourne : Australian Poetry , 2015 9299589 2015 anthology poetry
1 I Almost Understand i "I almost understand this resonance, this hum", Brook Emery , 2015 single work poetry
— Appears in: Falling and Flying : Poems on Ageing 2015; (p. 165-166)
1 Alzheimer's Wing (from With My Father-In-Law) i "As insubstantial as torn cicada wings", Brook Emery , 2015 single work poetry
— Appears in: Falling and Flying : Poems on Ageing 2015; (p. 65)
1 Walking i "High above the cliffs a seahawk cranks its wings", Brook Emery , 2015 single work poetry
— Appears in: Prayers of a Secular World 2015; (p. 144)
1 A Spring Day like This Brook Emery , 2015 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Best Australian Poems 2015 2015;
1 The Poems Are Their Own Defence : Brook Emery Launches ‘Open House’ by David Brooks Brook Emery , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , April - June no. 14 2015;

— Review of Open House David Brooks , 2015 selected work poetry
1 What Were They Then i "Well here I am then right in the thick of it,", Brook Emery , 2014 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Best Australian Poems 2014 2014; (p. 56)
1 I Remember Very Little i "I remember very little, a lingering fear that I was drowning - my mouth was open and I", Brook Emery , 2014 single work
— Appears in: Writ Poetry Review , September no. 1 2014;
1 Not so Much As a Thought : Poetry and Philosophy Brook Emery , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , July vol. 4 no. 1 2014;
'‘Not So Much a Thought’ explores the real or professed dichotomies between thought and feeling, mind and body, the personal and the universal to consider the general relationship between philosophy and poetry. Beginning with Brook Emery’s own poetry and broadening to consider the views of Romantic and modern poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Wallace Stevens, Robert Gray), literary critics (Samuel Johnson, Marjorie Perloff, Hank Lazer) and philosophers (Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty) it argues that philosophy and poetry are not antagonistic, as has often been assumed, but that they are different ways of thinking and saying. It concludes that a poem is inevitably a form of reasoning even if it does not employ, in Heidegger’s phrase, ‘the logic of calculating reason’. ' (Publication abstract)
1 The Right Time i "Here I am supervising end-of-school exams", Brook Emery , 2014 single work poetry
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Journal , vol. 4 no. 1 2014; (p. 118)
X