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'These poems are traces and markings through continuous topographies – streets, shores, bodies. They offer an experience of language underway, of jumping into the midst. Their shifts and discontinuities open up spaces through the immediate, memory, the personal, the difficulties of being situated or identified. Many of them are shards, borrowings and reshapings of forms, overheard dialogue and writings and art by others, signs and relics of the concrete world, tensions in a moment, the overturning of the ordinary like a leaf, and the resistance of playing at edges.
'Jones uses the soundtracks of modern lives – weather and television, music and journeys – as she negotiates difficult harbours and debatable terrains with perhaps more tenderness than previously in these times which seem broken and open. The poems are also voicings of a self under pressure, or close to breaking into the open, imagined, uncertain. They juggle a distrust of too many explanations and a wanting to know, to investigate through word magic and formal strategies.
'More than ever, locations and displacements interest this poet, the incompleteness of all journeys, gaps and mistakes, where gaps are not empty, where absence is presence. The moves in the book work at times against Jones’ usual reception as an urban poet with a broader mapping than before. Some of the writing is sparser and more open, the meditative lyricism is tempered with a humorous scepticism and argument, the poems more intuitive. Longer sequences and serial poems blend the topical and musical with a subtlety of feeling, an ear for taut lineation strung together on a thread of three or four presiding images. ‘The pages colour with the various, speaking skin of it, life.’'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Notes
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Dedication: For Annette.
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Epigraph: Water, is taught by thirst...(Emily Dickinson).
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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‘Reading and Writing to Learn’ : The Problem of Poetry
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 293-306) 'Bonnie Cassidy argues that when teachers are 'faced with the problem of how to read and discuss poetry in Australia...thought and time might be better spent on encouraging confidence in poetry as a relevant medium and substance of our times. Specifically, ...to look at young Australian to enact this regeneration - and schools as the site in which that process will take place, grounding the work of universities.' Cassidy also states in this chapter she will interpret the role that poetry might play in The Australian Curriculum: English, including some of the challenges that the Curriculum poses for a revision of approaches to poetry in schools.' (294)
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Teaching Small ‘l’ Literature : Lessons from English in Australia
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 266-306) 'This essay is structured around quotations taken from early issues of English in Australia, the journal of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE), when that journal played a significant role in the formation of a professional discourse for English teachers at a time of rapid expansion of secondary education during the post-war years. We enter into a dialogue with contributors to these early issues in order to test the currency of their values and beliefs today. What is their attitude towards the teaching of literature in Australia? What are their views specifically with regard to the place of Australian writing in the secondary English curriculum? Does English still have anything in common with what contributors to these early issues understood the subject to be? We are posing these questions, not out of some musty interest in the ghosts of debates past, but in an effort to create a perspective on the present, and to think outside the mental cage of standards-based reforms and construction of subject English that is currently being foisted on the profession by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).' (Authors' introduction, p. 266)
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An Interview with Jill Jones
Ralph Wessman
(interviewer),
2006
single work
interview
— Appears in: Famous Reporter , [August] no. 33 2006; (p. 69-76) -
City Limits
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin , vol. 65 no. 2 2006; (p. 87-91)
— Review of Avenues and Runways 2005 selected work poetry ; Broken/Open 2005 selected work poetry ; The Ancient Capital of Images 2005 selected work poetry -
Jill Jones, Broken/Open
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: Famous Reporter , March no. 32 2006; (p. 98-101)
— Review of Broken/Open 2005 selected work poetry
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Yearning Asides
2005
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 274 2005; (p. 43)
— Review of Broken/Open 2005 selected work poetry -
Songs of Two Cultures
2005
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 24-25 September 2005; (p. 15)
— Review of Smoke Encrypted Whispers 2004 selected work poetry ; Broken/Open 2005 selected work poetry -
Stretching the Boundaries
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 11 February 2006; (p. 28)
— Review of Fragmenta Nova 2005 selected work poetry ; Broken/Open 2005 selected work poetry -
Jill Jones, Broken/Open
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: Famous Reporter , March no. 32 2006; (p. 98-101)
— Review of Broken/Open 2005 selected work poetry -
Beyond the Surface
2005
single work
review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 65 no. 3 2005; (p. 221-225)
— Review of Broken/Open 2005 selected work poetry -
Place and Identity in New Australian Poetry
2005
single work
review
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 50 no. 2005; (p. 96-111) Contends that the map of Australian verse has been progressively configured since 1975, and that this is evident in poems published during the the year 2004 - 2005. -
An Interview with Jill Jones
Ralph Wessman
(interviewer),
2006
single work
interview
— Appears in: Famous Reporter , [August] no. 33 2006; (p. 69-76) -
Teaching Small ‘l’ Literature : Lessons from English in Australia
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 266-306) 'This essay is structured around quotations taken from early issues of English in Australia, the journal of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE), when that journal played a significant role in the formation of a professional discourse for English teachers at a time of rapid expansion of secondary education during the post-war years. We enter into a dialogue with contributors to these early issues in order to test the currency of their values and beliefs today. What is their attitude towards the teaching of literature in Australia? What are their views specifically with regard to the place of Australian writing in the secondary English curriculum? Does English still have anything in common with what contributors to these early issues understood the subject to be? We are posing these questions, not out of some musty interest in the ghosts of debates past, but in an effort to create a perspective on the present, and to think outside the mental cage of standards-based reforms and construction of subject English that is currently being foisted on the profession by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).' (Authors' introduction, p. 266)
-
‘Reading and Writing to Learn’ : The Problem of Poetry
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 293-306) 'Bonnie Cassidy argues that when teachers are 'faced with the problem of how to read and discuss poetry in Australia...thought and time might be better spent on encouraging confidence in poetry as a relevant medium and substance of our times. Specifically, ...to look at young Australian to enact this regeneration - and schools as the site in which that process will take place, grounding the work of universities.' Cassidy also states in this chapter she will interpret the role that poetry might play in The Australian Curriculum: English, including some of the challenges that the Curriculum poses for a revision of approaches to poetry in schools.' (294)