‘The precise punctuation of your breath’: Jordie Albiston’s oeuvre

Background: In an interview with Joan Fleming, Australian poet Jordie Albiston stated ‘I have always seen a poem as a problem that needs to be solved… For poetry – as opposed to mathematics – there may be numerous possible final solutions’ (2017). Each of Albiston’s poems exhibits this desire to use poetic craft – metre, rhythm, balance, unity, sonic qualities of words, metaphor, space and more – to express an idea or concept; they also exhibit an awareness of a poem’s power to generate a unique ‘event’ for the reader. This extended essay offers a rare, detailed survey of the late poet’s works and her remarkable contributions to poetry formalism. Contribution: In analysing several poems from across the extensive oeuvre of the late poet Jordie Albiston, this long essay not only surveys and pays tribute to her unique contributions to poetry and literature, but also provides an extended analysis of her specific craft, including her ideas on constraint, freedom and form; her attending to the ‘music’ of a poetic line; her approach to establishing the ‘event’ of the poem; and her engagement with historical documents to generate documentary poetry. Significance: This essay was commissioned as part of ‘Rewriting Kinship’, a literary collaboration between RMIT’s non/fictionLab and widely-read online literary review Sydney Review of Books (SRB). My essay was paired with another essay on a related topic, co-written by acclaimed and award-winning writer-poets Miriam Wei Wei Lo (Perth) and Alvin Pang (Singapore). SRB has published articles by leading Australian writers including Jeff Sparrow, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Lisa Gorton, David Malouf and many more.