Final Theory

1. Research Background This full-length collection of poetry addresses the question of how to represent the themes of climate change and habitat destruction through poetic language, form and voice. This research question locates the book within both national and international literary contexts. It is influenced at a local level by other Australian, book-length poetry collections that have addressed related themes, including Lisa Jacobson's 'The Sunlit Zone' and Lisa Gorton's 'Hotel Hyperion'. These ask, why is the long poem suited to the representation of historical time and public issues? What would a contemporary local epic sound like? My text makes frequent references to other local poets whose investigation of environment, ecopoetics and colonisation have informed the work; including Jill Jones, John Mateer and Lionel Fogarty. In this way, my text is interested in declaring its debt to a palimpsest of texts, and to showing a research process at work in the poem itself. Formally it is also influenced by long-form, international poetry works such as those by Anne Carson and Jorie Graham in the US, and Kendrick Smithyman and Stephen Oliver in NZ. These prompt questions including, how can one represent the individual voice and public or geopolitical history at the same time? How can large temporal and spatial settings be approached through narratives of individual lives and places? 2. Research Contribution In responding to these contexts and the questions they raise, my publication has attempted to create a book-length narrative poem that is thematically both regional and global; influenced by Australian literary voices but not explicitly identified as local in terms of narrative setting. I believe this makes an original contribution to the research question, because it declares the always-international nature of Australian poetry and poetics; and shows how this reflects the way we understand a global experience such as climate change. (cont. on coversheet )