Poetry portfolio 2018 (Bonny Cassidy)

Background - This folio has its precursor in my 2016 lyric essay, 'grounds'. It develops the question: what is the use of ecological metaphors to decolonial thought? It furthers this, asking: how am I entangled in colonial history; can I represent this through poetic voice and mode? It shows these questions lead to a necessary breakdown of borders between poetry, essay, performance and text. It interprets the influence of anti-colonial writers who use hybrid forms, such as Natalie Harkin and Alison Whittaker, and contemporary Australian spoken word artists like David Stavanger. Contribution - 'Flag for entangled self (proposal)' translates postcolonial theories of the entangled settler self into poetic image. It uses the lexicon of vexillology to construct new emblems that publicly represent my complex identity as a settler. 'Six landscapes and how to do them' furthered these themes by parodying common tropes of neocolonial Australian landscape poetry; purging these from my own poetics via a range of voices, structures and techniques to playfully challenge the reader to do the same. 'Monument' was a live performance for Avantwhatever Festival of sonic arts; a site-specific work at Merri Creek, Melbourne, for an audience of sound artists and listeners. It conveyed my questions to an interdisciplinary audience, through rehearsal, body language and vocal technique - new creative skills and challenges for me. Significance - 'Flag' was invited by Amberflora (May 2018), an international online zine, in response to my editing ecopoetics journal, Plumwood Mountain. 'Monument' was commissioned (July 2018) in recognition of my experimentation in hybrid text. I applied new vocal skills by recording 'Six landscapes' for Australian Poetry's audio archive. I published the poem in Australian Poetry Journal (Sept 2018), guest edited by senior poet and critic Gig Ryan, to reach a wide Australian audience. I have received unsolicited emails from readers commending the poem's impact.