Creative Folio: 2020-2021 Poems

Background: In 2020 I questioned W. H. Auden’s statement—that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’—and interrogated how poets have turned to poetry during turbulent times as a space to address timely political matters, in an essay for Sydney Review of Books. This folio of poems represents a poetic counterpart to that critical discussion, specifically exploring what poems—as ‘nonfiction’—might ‘do’ with contemporary news, media and/or political data, and what it might ‘make happen’ for readers, audiences and the poets themselves. Contribution: Each poem in this folio grapples with real-world media encounters (news stories, political drama, global and/or local issues) through a parallel strand of critical response to books, films and other media. In drawing ‘connections between unconnected things’, which Susan Howe says is ‘the unreal reality of Poetry’—in other words, in drawing a discussion of current affairs into close relation with an interrogation of popular and literary discourse—the poems attempt to navigate ethical pathways through the mediated experiences of our daily lives. Tools of poetry—enjambment, space, consistency of lines, metaphor, repetition, suggestiveness etc.—are deployed to further extend the possibilities of how the “news-related” poem might impart contemporary lived experience in new ways. Significance: ‘Heating and Cooling’ was published in Island magazine no. 161 (March 2021) as a consequence of being Highly Commended in the prestigious national award, the 2020 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize and re-published in Best of Australian Poems 2021. ‘Demolition Man’ was commissioned by Meanjin poetry editor Bronwyn Lea for inclusion in the special 80th year anniversary issue of the journal. I was commissioned, by UNESCO City of Melbourne Director David Ryding, to write ‘Out of Our Hards’ for the 2020 initiative ‘Poet Laureates of Melbourne’; it was re-published in a limited edition print publication for circulation at City of Literature international events.