To celebrate the holiday season, and to thank our readers, Quemar has placed Jennifer Maiden's Drones and Phantoms collection online as a free download until the 1st of January 2019. This collection shows essential aspects of her work, and was awarded the 2015 Australian Literary Studies Gold Medal.
Maiden has also just audio recorded one of the collection's vivid story poems, Clare and Manus, for Quemar. Click on the title below to listen:
Clare and Manus
The Judges' Citation when Drones and Phantoms won the ALS Gold Medal in 2015:
'The ALS Gold Medal has been awarded annually, from 1928 (apart from a brief hiatus between 1975-82). The Australian Literature Society awarded it until 1928, and ASAL for the last 32 years. I was privileged to work with two of my ASAL colleagues, Susan K. Martin and Paul Salzman on the judging panel for 2015, on your behalf. And what a phenomenon it was!
Over 60 works of literature by the great and illustrious, to first time writers.
The shortlist of five works, announced on May 4, was:
The Golden Age, Random House, a novel by Joan London. Drones and Phantoms, Giramondo Poets, poetry by Jennifer Maiden, Earth Hour, UQP, poetry by David Malouf, When the Night Comes, Hachette, a novel by Favel Parrett, Nest, Hachette, a novel by Inga Simpson.
The judging panel had a cornucopia of fine literature to judge, and we had our small disagreements. How interesting it is to hear another’s sense of a work, and to measure how it meets with, or doesn’t meet with, one’s own impressions. But about the shortlist we had no disagreements. There were several other works which could have/should been shortlisted, though it would no longer have been short.
But for 2015, the winner of the ALS Gold Medal is…the author of 19 poetry collections and 2 novels, a three times winner of the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, two-time winner of the C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry, and many other national prizes. She is, of course, Jennifer Maiden, for Drones and Phantoms.
Jennifer’s works include:
1974: Tactics. (UQP, 1974)
1975: The Problem of Evil. (Prism, 1975)
1990: The Winter Baby. (Angus & Robertson, 1990)
1993: Acoustic Shadow. (Penguin, 1993)
2005: Friendly Fire (Giramondo, 2005) ISBN 1-920882-12-X
2010: Pirate Rain (Giramondo, 2010) ISBN 978-1-920882-59-4
2012: Liquid Nitrogen (Giramondo, 2012) ISBN 978-1-920882-99-0
2013: The Violence of Waiting (Vagabond Press, 2013)
And Drones and Phantoms - awarded the 2015 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for its sharp, ferocious, funny, poetic rendition of contemporary Australia – and America, and Ethiopia, and feminists (ethically secure and insecure), and human evil– from the highly personal to the incisively political, often in purposeful collision:
It opens:
When I was young, I wrote that poor men
Do not belong in rich men’s houses, thinking
Of Forbes visiting more comfortable
Poets who were into Real Estate, but
There is also the memory of a sanguine
Real Estate mogul saying
Privately that they liked it when
The Labor Party was in power, as
Labor cost less to bribe.
That’s the opening “Diary Poem: Uses of Live Odds”.
This is not a politically correct volume of poems. It is not personal in any light, confessional, love-me kind of way. It’s muscly, and funny, and bristles with incongruities: Tony Abbot and Queen Victoria in mutual puzzlement; Hilary Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt stepping together out of time; Lady Diana and Mother Teresa, “both the most vulnerable of creatures”.
It’s poetry that stabs at the moral evils and stupidities of our day, revealing their quotidian disguise, but also the monstrous human, as in “Maps in the mind”, which would like to paper over human violence, but discovers
The isle of the dead is always rock
and piled rock huts with a block
for proclaiming sorrow,
impatient as rape, tomorrow
too hot, too cold
like maps-in-the-mind of Manus Island,
like maps of Manus Island.
You can hear the musicality of rhyme, the way flip, popular images topple over into deep political insights, orchestrated in the firm, often deceptively jaunty rhythms. But there is never anything less than steely revelation in these poems. And what is revealed is the humanity of the poetic voice and art, in jagged juxtaposition with the capacity for monstrosity - recognized in the most shambling of protagonists like Tony Abbot, discoursing with Queen Victoria at a backburn where fireman Tony “wiped the black/fine fire sweat from face”, enduring a sermon on the dubious wisdom of excluding the “most eager”, the refugee, from our shores. “My dear Albert would have seen/an extravagance of a similar nature/to that of real war.” [Tony] sighed/like fire lost in the branch tops, said/ “But, Ma’am, inside me everything is war.” (24-5)'
The full collection can be downloaded by clicking on the cover image below.
Maiden has also just audio recorded one of the collection's vivid story poems, Clare and Manus, for Quemar. Click on the title below to listen:
Clare and Manus
The Judges' Citation when Drones and Phantoms won the ALS Gold Medal in 2015:
'The ALS Gold Medal has been awarded annually, from 1928 (apart from a brief hiatus between 1975-82). The Australian Literature Society awarded it until 1928, and ASAL for the last 32 years. I was privileged to work with two of my ASAL colleagues, Susan K. Martin and Paul Salzman on the judging panel for 2015, on your behalf. And what a phenomenon it was!
Over 60 works of literature by the great and illustrious, to first time writers.
The shortlist of five works, announced on May 4, was:
The Golden Age, Random House, a novel by Joan London. Drones and Phantoms, Giramondo Poets, poetry by Jennifer Maiden, Earth Hour, UQP, poetry by David Malouf, When the Night Comes, Hachette, a novel by Favel Parrett, Nest, Hachette, a novel by Inga Simpson.
The judging panel had a cornucopia of fine literature to judge, and we had our small disagreements. How interesting it is to hear another’s sense of a work, and to measure how it meets with, or doesn’t meet with, one’s own impressions. But about the shortlist we had no disagreements. There were several other works which could have/should been shortlisted, though it would no longer have been short.
But for 2015, the winner of the ALS Gold Medal is…the author of 19 poetry collections and 2 novels, a three times winner of the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, two-time winner of the C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry, and many other national prizes. She is, of course, Jennifer Maiden, for Drones and Phantoms.
Jennifer’s works include:
1974: Tactics. (UQP, 1974)
1975: The Problem of Evil. (Prism, 1975)
1990: The Winter Baby. (Angus & Robertson, 1990)
1993: Acoustic Shadow. (Penguin, 1993)
2005: Friendly Fire (Giramondo, 2005) ISBN 1-920882-12-X
2010: Pirate Rain (Giramondo, 2010) ISBN 978-1-920882-59-4
2012: Liquid Nitrogen (Giramondo, 2012) ISBN 978-1-920882-99-0
2013: The Violence of Waiting (Vagabond Press, 2013)
And Drones and Phantoms - awarded the 2015 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for its sharp, ferocious, funny, poetic rendition of contemporary Australia – and America, and Ethiopia, and feminists (ethically secure and insecure), and human evil– from the highly personal to the incisively political, often in purposeful collision:
It opens:
When I was young, I wrote that poor men
Do not belong in rich men’s houses, thinking
Of Forbes visiting more comfortable
Poets who were into Real Estate, but
There is also the memory of a sanguine
Real Estate mogul saying
Privately that they liked it when
The Labor Party was in power, as
Labor cost less to bribe.
That’s the opening “Diary Poem: Uses of Live Odds”.
This is not a politically correct volume of poems. It is not personal in any light, confessional, love-me kind of way. It’s muscly, and funny, and bristles with incongruities: Tony Abbot and Queen Victoria in mutual puzzlement; Hilary Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt stepping together out of time; Lady Diana and Mother Teresa, “both the most vulnerable of creatures”.
It’s poetry that stabs at the moral evils and stupidities of our day, revealing their quotidian disguise, but also the monstrous human, as in “Maps in the mind”, which would like to paper over human violence, but discovers
The isle of the dead is always rock
and piled rock huts with a block
for proclaiming sorrow,
impatient as rape, tomorrow
too hot, too cold
like maps-in-the-mind of Manus Island,
like maps of Manus Island.
You can hear the musicality of rhyme, the way flip, popular images topple over into deep political insights, orchestrated in the firm, often deceptively jaunty rhythms. But there is never anything less than steely revelation in these poems. And what is revealed is the humanity of the poetic voice and art, in jagged juxtaposition with the capacity for monstrosity - recognized in the most shambling of protagonists like Tony Abbot, discoursing with Queen Victoria at a backburn where fireman Tony “wiped the black/fine fire sweat from face”, enduring a sermon on the dubious wisdom of excluding the “most eager”, the refugee, from our shores. “My dear Albert would have seen/an extravagance of a similar nature/to that of real war.” [Tony] sighed/like fire lost in the branch tops, said/ “But, Ma’am, inside me everything is war.” (24-5)'
The full collection can be downloaded by clicking on the cover image below.
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Jennifer Maiden is a featured poet in the current edition of the Rochford Street Review, contributing three new poems from her upcoming collection, brookings: the noun, plus a poem from her first collection with Quemar Press, Appalachian Fall, a poem from her Selected Poems: 1967-2018, and a poetry chapter from the final poetry and prose novel in her experimental Play With Knives quintet, George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds.
The new poems from brookings: the noun, What Did They Do with the Bits?, brookings in fur, and Rope, can be read at:
https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2018/11/07/featured-writer-jennifer-maiden-three-new-poems/
The poems Rich Men' Houses (from Appalachian Fall), Mary Rose (from Selected Poems 1967-2018), and Solstice Eve from (Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds) are on the Rochford Street site at:
https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2018/11/07/featured-writer-jennifer-maiden-excerpts-from-appalachian-fall-playing-with-knives-five-and-selected-poems-1967-2018/
The new poems from brookings: the noun, What Did They Do with the Bits?, brookings in fur, and Rope, can be read at:
https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2018/11/07/featured-writer-jennifer-maiden-three-new-poems/
The poems Rich Men' Houses (from Appalachian Fall), Mary Rose (from Selected Poems 1967-2018), and Solstice Eve from (Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds) are on the Rochford Street site at:
https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2018/11/07/featured-writer-jennifer-maiden-excerpts-from-appalachian-fall-playing-with-knives-five-and-selected-poems-1967-2018/
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In light of these three new poems from brooking: the noun, Maiden has audio recorded the poem brookings in fur for Quemar Press. Click on the title below to listen:
brookings in fur |
Jennifer Maiden will be appearing and reading from her latest works as part of the renowned and welcoming Live Poets at Don Bank series of events. She will be reading on the 28th of November. The event will take place in North Sydney from 07:30 PM to 10:30 PM. More details are available at:https://www.facebook.com/livepoetsdonbank
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Following the growing interest in Jennifer Maiden's new poem White Helmets from her forthcoming collection, brookings: the noun, Quemar asked her to record the poem in audio. White Helmets looks at ways in which words and organisations presenting themselves as humanitarian can be dangerously deceptive constructs. Click on the title below to listen. The text of the poem can be read in our preview of brookings: the noun on the Forthcoming page.
White Helmets
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White Helmets
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In light of the release of Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds - an experiment across poetry, prose, Russia, Sydney's Western Suburbs, the self and action - she audio recorded one of the poetry chapters with the work's exhilarating pace, 'The Woman from ASIO'. Click on the title below to listen:
The Woman from ASIO |
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A new poem which will be in Jennifer Maiden's upcoming collection 'brookings: the noun', was published this month in Australian Poetry Journal 8.1. The poem is entitled 'Butterfly Bullets' and considers the concept of these dum-dum bullets, which fragment outwards upon entry, to then analyse the use of them, the spectrum between overt violence and public opinion, and the possibility of metamorphosis. Maiden recorded the poem in audio for Quemar. Click on the title below to listen:
Butterfly Bullets |
Quemar Press is pleased to be a member of the Small Press Network now.
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Maiden's final novel in her anticipated Play With Knives quintet - Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, is available now from bookstores. We thank our readers for their great response to the works. We were grateful to the distinguished and irreplaceable late Professor Peter Pierce for his wonderful support, and his analysis of the original Play With Knives novel in his book The Country of Lost Children : An Australian Anxiety. Later, in the Sydney Morning Herald, he wrote that the novel was 'one of the most chilling but underrated Australian novels of the early 1990s'. |
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Last week, Quemar placed Jennifer Maiden's new poem, 'On the Edge of Lake Geneva', online, in our preview of her forthcoming collection, 'brookings: the noun'. She recorded this haunting poem in audio for Quemar. You can click on the titles below to listen:
On the Edge of Lake Geneva (Part One) On the Edge of Lake Geneva (Part Two) The text of the poem can be read in Quemar's preview of 'brookings: the noun' on the Forthcoming page. About the Poem In 'On the Edge of Lake Geneva', across all time, Borges speaks with overview to the archetypal Critic. Here, Borges talks of his grief about not receiving the Noble Prize for Literature, his conservative politics, and his re-embrace of Democracy later. No longer blind in this state of being, he and the Critic look at Mont Blanc, and discuss how Modernism can be misused by Conservatives. Ultimately, the otherworldly Critic offers to cross time and use his skills to arrange the Noble Prize for Borges, but Borges declines, as it was not given when it would have had significance to him. The Critic then asks, 'then why am I with you?' and Borges explains. This poem is Jennifer Maiden's work at its finest, in all its grasp of the essential and ability to transcend. ___________________________________________________________________ |
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Following the release of the final novel in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, an experiment across poetry, prose, action and the self, she has just recorded a lively excerpt in audio from chapter 23, on political violence as a psychological pathology including reference to the Marquis de Sade. Click on the title below to listen:
Chapter 23 excerpt The text of the chapter can be read in the sample on the Books For Purchase page. ___________________________________________________________________ |
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In response to requests for Jennifer Maiden's Julie Bishop poems, Quemar was pleased to add the poems Orchards and Animism to our sample from Maiden's new Selected Poems 1967-2018. She also recorded Orchards as audio.
These poems can be read in our Selected Poems 1967-2018 sample on the Books For Purchase Page. Click on the title below to listen to the audio of the poem 'Orchards' Orchards |
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Jennifer Maiden opening Play With Knives Five
The final novel in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, is available now.
At the Books for Purchase page, you can find information on how to purchase or obtain it.
From Quemar's Press release:
The last novel in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds experiments across poetry, prose, style, person, action and sense of self.
Clare was the central character in what the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature calls Maiden's 'impressive' first Play With Knives novel. Set in Sydney's Western Suburbs, it was first published in 1990, and centres on Clare and George's survival as Clare is released from prison. The Quintet outlines the growth of these characters...
Whether in Russian winter light, or the light of a Mount Druitt mall at midnight, this work experiments to create platforms where aspects of reality or experience can integrate, as they move between a sense of self and overview, between action and the ability to transcend it.
At the Books for Purchase page, you can find information on how to purchase or obtain it.
From Quemar's Press release:
The last novel in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds experiments across poetry, prose, style, person, action and sense of self.
Clare was the central character in what the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature calls Maiden's 'impressive' first Play With Knives novel. Set in Sydney's Western Suburbs, it was first published in 1990, and centres on Clare and George's survival as Clare is released from prison. The Quintet outlines the growth of these characters...
Whether in Russian winter light, or the light of a Mount Druitt mall at midnight, this work experiments to create platforms where aspects of reality or experience can integrate, as they move between a sense of self and overview, between action and the ability to transcend it.
This Saturday, the 1st of September 2018, Jennifer Maiden took part in a panel at the Rose Scott Women Writers' Festival with other terrific writers Fiona Wright and Rozanna Lilley. The panel was chaired expertly by the ABC's Kate Evans, and the discussion was entitled 'Crossing Over' and focused on relationships between poetry, biography, academic research, humour and other genres of writing. It centered on the physical and emotional experience for writers when they use or combine these forms, and on how such forms are at once independent and interconnected.
Photographs of the event, which show the lively rapport between the participants, are available below.
Photographs of the event, which show the lively rapport between the participants, are available below.
Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley, Fiona Wright, Kate Evans
Jennifer Maiden, Fiona Wright, Kate Evans
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Jennifer Maiden, Fiona Wright mugging for camera with Kate Evans
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Jennifer Maiden, Fiona Wright, Kate Evans
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Rozanna Lilley, Jennifer Maiden
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Rozanna Lilley, Jennifer Maiden
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Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley, Fiona Wright
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Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley
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Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley, Fiona Wright
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Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley, Fiona Wright, Kate Evans
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Kate Evans, Jennifer Maiden, Rozanna Lilley, Fiona Wright
With the last novel in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, 'George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds', days from release, she has audio recorded a poetry chapter from this experimental novel across poetry, prose, style, person, action and sense of self.
This chapter spans an idea of the dead as icon, Natasha's sorrow at Petya's death in War in Peace, Putin's sorrow for the death of his brother in the Siege of Leningrad, and ultimately focuses on the female hero, Clare, who killed her siblings as a child and is jealous of other's guiltless grief, as she holds her infant son, Corbyn. Clare was the central character in what the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature called Maiden's "impressive' first Play With Knives novel. Set in Sydney's Western Suburbs, it was first published in 1990, and centres on Clare and George's survival as Clare is released from prison. The Quintet outlines the growth of these characters. Click on the title below to listen.
On the death of brothers
This chapter spans an idea of the dead as icon, Natasha's sorrow at Petya's death in War in Peace, Putin's sorrow for the death of his brother in the Siege of Leningrad, and ultimately focuses on the female hero, Clare, who killed her siblings as a child and is jealous of other's guiltless grief, as she holds her infant son, Corbyn. Clare was the central character in what the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature called Maiden's "impressive' first Play With Knives novel. Set in Sydney's Western Suburbs, it was first published in 1990, and centres on Clare and George's survival as Clare is released from prison. The Quintet outlines the growth of these characters. Click on the title below to listen.
On the death of brothers
In 2019, Quemar Press will publish a collection of new poems by Jennifer Maiden, titled 'brookings: the noun'. This week, a poem from it, 'The Thousand Yachts: Two', was published in Stilts, a new, strong free online journal. The poem continues her much acclaimed dialogue between Slessor & the archetypal critic. It can be read with fine new poems from other terrific writers in the journal at:
https://www.stiltsjournal.com/single-post/2018/08/17/The-Thousand-Yachts-Two-Jennifer-Maiden
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https://www.stiltsjournal.com/single-post/2018/08/17/The-Thousand-Yachts-Two-Jennifer-Maiden
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George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, the fifth and last book in Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives Quintet, is now at the printers. In preparation for the release of this experiment across poetry, prose, genre and persona, Maiden recorded an excerpt from chapter 35 in audio, in the prose of the male first person, George Jeffreys. Click on the title below to listen:
Excerpt from chapter 35, Persephone's Garden
This scene is included in Quemar's preview of the novel on the Forthcoming page, with the first 34 chapters.
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Excerpt from chapter 35, Persephone's Garden
This scene is included in Quemar's preview of the novel on the Forthcoming page, with the first 34 chapters.
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Diary Poem: Uses of the Appalachian Fall: 2 'that stole a child'? What sunless one is out there in the hills' blue shadows that they know will come and take away the very flesh of living, what one moonlessly will trap their staring soul alone scared torchlit with its possum-eyes in wire, so that the next step can never happen, never the next new scent or difference in wild between cob and seed or apple, pear and melon: that future tasting on the tongue, but gone? The dance is a ballet so moves like a rumour, glides lithely then springs up with terror, like a gunshot in the crags at the horizon. Then mellow, mellow, mellow, like a child swathed and swaddled mellowly in slumber, since children taste sleep like solid supper, if the appetite's more sudden in possession. There is the use here of suddenness to own and suddenness to defend the hearth's power. But I crave now mellowness like some song by slaves about Gilead's balm: not any quiver when the mountain monster enters like a zephyr and carries off the child in its arms. When it cradles up in rugs the smiling sleeper and carries off the future in its arms. Then what would need to be involved again except the monochrome ballet and staid water forever like some millstream grinding down? Why would the dance resort to any figure, wild erratic and mechanical as a gun? Unless he came to return the rumoured life, if by him stolen: if not, steal into woods to bring it home? If it's all about the loss and something out there, the idea of use is not in temporal bounds. Nor is there any need to trust the hunter. All within the dance stretch out uncaught, on the ground. |
Terence Koo, Jennifer Maiden
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Last Wednesday night, poets Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball collaborated with pianist Terence Koo at a unique event organised by Girls on Key. At the event, the poets read their work to the piano, in spontaneous timing, without any rehearsal. Maiden read her Uses of the Appalachian Fall 2, while Koo played refrains from the Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts. Maiden requested this hymn, as it was used by Copland for Martha Graham's ballet, Appalachian Spring: one of the inspirations for Maiden's Appalachian Fall collection. Another aspect of the collection was the influence of the Appalachian area of America on President Trump's election.
Quemar has uploaded an audio excerpt of the performance. In light of the subtlety of the voice and the piano, there were some issues in recording. Taking that into account, the performance was stunning. You can listen to the excerpt by clicking on the title below: Diary Poem: Uses of the Appalachian Fall 2 The full text of the poem is also available on the left. The excerpt starts at the line 'that future tasting on the tongue, but gone?' Photographs of the event are available below. The poem, Uses of the Appalachian Fall, is available in Maiden's collection, Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, and in her Selected Poems 1967-2018. Both books were published by Quemar Press in 2018, and are available for purchase on the Books for Purchase page. |
Terence Koo, Jennifer Maiden
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Terence Koo, Jennifer Maiden
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Terence Koo, Magdalena Ball, Jennifer Maiden
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Terence Koo, Magdalena Ball. Jennifer Maiden
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Terence Koo, Jennifer Maiden
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Terence Koo, Jennifer Maiden
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Terence Koo, Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey
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Jennifer Maiden reading Appalachian Fall
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Quemar Press' unique study of the post-war Surrealist artist, Vera Rudner, is now available for purchase on the Books for Purchase page.
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Following the interest surrounding George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds - Jennifer Maiden upcoming novel in poetry and prose, the fifth novel in the powerfully transcendent Play With Knives books, Maiden performed the latest prose chapter in audio for Quemar. Here, she reads in 1st person, as the male hero George Jeffreys. You can click on the title below to listen:
The Summer Dacha
The first 33 chapters are available in our preview on the Forthcoming page.
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The Summer Dacha
The first 33 chapters are available in our preview on the Forthcoming page.
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In light of the enthusiastic response we received to the latest chapters in our preview of Jennifer Maiden's forthcoming novel Play With Knives: Five - chapter 30, Solstice Eve (poetry), and chapter 31,The World Cup (prose) - Quemar asked her to record the remarkable, transcendent and haunting poetry chapter in audio. You can click on the title below to listen:
Solstice Eve The text of this poem, and the chapters 1-31 in our preview can be read on the Forthcoming page. |
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Quemar's upcoming study on the essential Surrealist painter, Vera Rudner, will be available for purchase within weeks.
The official publication date will be the 1st of August, 2018. 
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Stemming from Jennifer Maiden's reading of her work at the launch of Anne Elvey's powerful protest ebook anthology, Hope for Whole: Poets Speak up to Adani, Quemar asked Maiden to audio record a recent poem with a focus on survival and environment. The poem Exit Pursued by a Polar Bear and a Carbon Credit Salesman, looks at Carbon Credits in relation to pollution caused by war. It is from her latest collection, Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, which was published this year by Quemar Press.
You can listen by clicking on title below:
Exit Pursued by a Polar Bear and a Carbon Credit Salesman
You can listen by clicking on title below:
Exit Pursued by a Polar Bear and a Carbon Credit Salesman
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Last Sunday, Jennifer Maiden read with other poets Michael Aiken, Michelle Cahill, Jonathan Dunk, Michele Seminara and Anne Elvey at the Sydney launch of Anne Elvey's strong new e-book anthology Hope for whole: Poets Speak up to Adani, a dynamic protest against the Adani coal mine. At the event Maiden read her poem, Adani, from the e-book and her Quemar Press Selected Poems 1967-2018, and her poems On the Seventh Day He Excavated and My Heart has an Embassy from her collections with Quemar, Appalachian Fall and Selected Poems 1967-2018. Following the launch, she recorded On the Seventh Day He Excavated in audio for Quemar. The poem is about Appalachia and mountaintop mining. It was dedicated to Anne Elvey.
You can click on the title below to listen: On the Seventh Day He Excavated Hope for whole: Poets Speak up to Adani is available as a free download from Plumwood Mountain at: https://plumwoodmountain.com/hope-for-whole-ebook/ Quemar Press' photographs of the launch are below: |
Jennifer Maiden reading
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Anne Elvey, Jennifer Maiden
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Anne Elvey, Jennifer Maiden
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Michael Aiken, Jennifer Maiden, Michelle Cahill, Jonathan Dunk, Anne Elvey, Lilli Barto
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Angela Stretch
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Lilli Barto
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Anne Elvey
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Michael Aiken
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Michelle Cahill
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Jonathan Dunk
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Jennifer Maiden
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Michele Seminara
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Michael Aiken, Michele Seminara, Jennifer Maiden, Michelle Cahill, Jonathan Dunk, Anne Elvey, Lilli Barto
Audience member and writer Jenni Nixon with Jennifer Maiden
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Michele Seminara, Michael Aiken, Jennifer Maiden, Michelle Cahill, Jonathan Dunk, Lilli Barto
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Michael Aiken, Michele Seminara, Jennifer Maiden, Michelle Cahill, Jonathan Dunk, Anne Elvey, Lilli Barto
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To mark Jennifer Maiden's collection, Drones and Phantoms (2014), Quemar asked her to record two of its poems in audio, the title poem, Drones and Phantoms, and So That's Who Those Motorbikes Were. The poem, Drones and Phantoms, partly juxtaposes and looks at then Prime Minister Gillard's support of American Foreign Policy, and American policy on deploying drones. In light of the recent royal wedding, Maiden also recorded So That's Who Those Motorbikes Were. In this poem, Princess Diana sits, speaking of her life, death and sons, with Mother Teresa, out of all time, in some beautiful part of Wimbledon Common. You can click on the title below to listen:
Drones and Phantoms & So That's Who Those Motorbikes Were
Drones and Phantoms & So That's Who Those Motorbikes Were
Drones and Phantoms, Jennifer Maiden's 2015 ALS Gold Medal awarded collection ceaselessly shifts and widens the political window, with an unhindered, intact sense of self. Here, compartmentalisation, in all senses, can be transcended and analysed - whether it is a character's personal, political disintegration, the act of reading when it is broken into elements, a Denmark zoo's dismemberment of a giraffe or situations where discourse itself turns to disparate shards. In this collection, 'not cut up, the politics is still poetry, the giraffe the man, and there is no part less'.
The work sparks new focus. We have had enthusiastic comments on it lately, sometimes stemming from Maiden's recent audio recording of a poem from it, 'Uses of Dismemberment'
This collection is rare now, as former publishers have stated that 200 copies were pulped by them in March 2017, in the course of pulping 5,450 of their excess stock books in general at that time. Its rights reverted to the author in January, 2018, but only a handful remained for the author to purchase. However, we are pleased to be able to offer the irreplaceable collection in a full electronic scanned version, as a $3.00 download in support of Quemar Press, and our work in the future.
This Electronic copy is available for purchase on our Books for Purchase Page.
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The work sparks new focus. We have had enthusiastic comments on it lately, sometimes stemming from Maiden's recent audio recording of a poem from it, 'Uses of Dismemberment'
This collection is rare now, as former publishers have stated that 200 copies were pulped by them in March 2017, in the course of pulping 5,450 of their excess stock books in general at that time. Its rights reverted to the author in January, 2018, but only a handful remained for the author to purchase. However, we are pleased to be able to offer the irreplaceable collection in a full electronic scanned version, as a $3.00 download in support of Quemar Press, and our work in the future.
This Electronic copy is available for purchase on our Books for Purchase Page.
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As we continue our celebration of Jennifer Maiden's new Selected Poems 1967-2018 from Quemar Press, she recorded one of its poems in audio for us. The poem entitled, Diary Poem: Uses of Dismemberment, has characteristic unswerving humanity.This poem looks at the levels of prestige and tenuous moral justification surrounding the concept of dismemberment in literature, surgery, society, and that of a giraffe in a Denmark zoo and its aftermath. You can click on the title below to listen:
Diary Poem: Uses of Dismemberment
Diary Poem: Uses of Dismemberment
Following enhanced interest in one of Jennifer Maiden's poems from her Quemar Press Selected Poems 1967-2018, she recorded it in audio for Quemar. Its title is Positional Asphyxia, and it has an unusual, controversial history. It was first published in her collection Pirate Rain in 2009. When that collection was reviewed by Geoffrey Lehmann in The Australian, he quoted the poem in full. This came to the attention of a Dublin periodical, which requested the poem. It became the subject of a polarising debate, with one editor saying he would resign if they did not publish it. They published it.The poem looks at violence and political trauma with balance in the context of the bombing of Qana. You can click on the title below to listen:
Positional Asphyxia
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Positional Asphyxia
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To celebrate Quemar's new paperback combining Jennifer Maiden's powerful contemporary novels in poetry and prose, Play With Knives: Three: George and Clare and the Grey Hat Hacker & Play With Knives: Four: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies, Quemar asked her to record a section of the prose from Play With Knives: Four. She recorded part of the chapter entitled The Haystack in the Floods, written from the first person viewpoint of the male narrator George Jeffreys, looking for a child disappeared in sinister, uncertain circumstances.
You can click on the chapter title below to listen:
Excerpt from chapter, 'The Haystack in the Floods'
You can click on the chapter title below to listen:
Excerpt from chapter, 'The Haystack in the Floods'
Play With Knives: Three & Play With Knives: Four - Jennifer Maiden's recent, cutting-edge novels in poetry and prose - are available in one paperback volume from Quemar Press.
It is available for purchase on the Books For Purchase page.
From Quemar's Press Release:
Play With Knives: Three: George and Clare and the Grey Hat Hacker is a sequel to Maiden’s original two Play With Knives novels and those of her later poems which feature the characters George Jeffreys and Clare Collins. The ‘Grey Hat Hacker’ in the title is George’s grandson, Idris, known on the Internet as ‘Red Idris’, a daring political hacker and leaker. In another sense, the ‘Grey Hat Hacker’ is also death, ‘the blind swipe of the pruner and his knife busy about the tree of life’, as Robert Lowell has it.
Clare (who murdered her siblings as a child) and George (her ex-probation officer and partner) now work as observers for a human rights organisation. They are house-sitting by the sea in Thirroul, in grief after they are unable to stop a round of executions by the Indonesian Government. They realise that a dispatch was not part of the executions, and that they had both fallen in love with one of the condemned as they tried to rescue her. Dealing with their own trauma, they spend time on their emotional and physical relationship. Maiden’s aptitude for explicit, relational love scenes is at its height here.
Later, Idris, targeted by political assassins, takes refuge with George and Clare. Clare’s friend Sophie (a French woman who was saved, with her baby, by Clare in France) is now Idris’ girlfriend. She and Florence, her now seven year old daughter, come to stay with them. Sophie works with Idris to piece together ‘Frankenphone, The Unhackable Hacker’, allowing them to learn when the attack on Idris will be - information which is encrypted in Quantum in Europe. George and Clare plan to smuggle Idris to safety, and unexpected events follow.
In Play with Knives: Three: George and Clare and the Grey Hat Hacker, Maiden glides back and forth between third person verse and first person prose, enjoying the advantages of both forms together. This also allows the forms to blend into each other, bringing illuminated lyricism to the prose and energised narrative to the verse.
Play With Knives: Four: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies juxtaposes prose and verse, combining them and illuminating the thriller in a continuous pace and pattern - but as well as being a 'thriller' Play With Knives: Four is something wild and undefinable - glinting in the dark like an animal spirit or a quantum diamond. Through verse, in the heatwave wind on backsteps, the heroes Clare and George are asked to visit a fifteen year old Indigenous boy incarcerated in a Western Suburbs Correctional Centre. In prose, George promises to find a missing baby, while watching her dog still perform tricks for her. Through verse, in the winter's 'spinning stars', the heroes learn why a drug and telecommunications criminal organiser is concerned with diamonds that could be used for quantum computing. At night, In prose, they attempt to rescue the missing baby from the criminals in an actual cave in the N.S.W. Blue Mountains named after the god Baal. In verse, the pregnant hero Clare goes into labour in an early spring of 'shivering wattle'. The third person verse presents and facilitates mysterious true-to-life processes within the plot, such as spontaneous beauty, coincidence or serendipity. In the plot Clare experiences an empathetic dream-vision about Jimmy, the boy at the Correctional Centre, and an apple half from an anti-miscarriage spell turns into an apple plant, when it might not. Another aspect of the verse is the explicit love imagery between George and Clare, which is always in-keeping with the verse's encompassing aesthetic quality. The first person prose is a force for incarnate description and present action. In both novels, line spacing changes with tempo. On another level, nothing in the novels, and neither Clare nor George, are compartmentalised in any way. Having murdered as a child, Clare feels she can only survive by acknowledging her murders and not being forgiven, especially not by George. That everything stays connected is vital to them. Anything that happens in the verse shades the prose, and the two forms blend for the reader, incarnating the verse and expanding the prose, creating characters who wish to be complete in humanity, and also creating unfragmented, unexpected thrillers - or works which again escape all genres.
‘[Maiden] works with sudden free shifts of perspective, vital to her vision of how art works as a movement between outside and inside points of view, perspectives of justice and compassion….From the first, Maiden’s novels have taken a steady interest in violence, its motives and its consequences. They are—and seek to be—uneasy and unsettling…With needling intelligence, Maiden considers, in these works, what virtue is, and empathy…. Clare has been violent, and she has suffered violence. Through both Clare’s guilt and Clare’s compassion, Maiden brings the knowledge of state violence into kitchens and bedrooms and loving human relationships…With the novels, the study of love and violence in the story of George and Clare finds its closest and most intimate, most unsettling expression.’ - Lisa Gorton.
'Compelling' - Anna Couani.
‘[The]novels explore guilt and innocence, good and evil, and the individual versus the state or government, using changing tense and viewpoints. The grand conception is fairly ambitious, but Maiden handles it all smoothly and the stories read like…thrillers…Maiden doesn’t flinch…At no point does Maiden overly simplify the issues she explores, whether it’s the implications of love and intimacy, or the morality of war, refugees, or the nature of violence and suffering… there’s a richness to the language that draws on Maiden’s poetic skill and linguistic precision. The multi-genres novels contain elements of the thriller, mystery, and romance, all of which keep the reading fast paced…engrossing reading that takes the reader to new places from both a literary and a political/theoretical perspective’ - Magdalena Ball.
‘A great achievement' - Tim Thorne.
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It is available for purchase on the Books For Purchase page.
From Quemar's Press Release:
Play With Knives: Three: George and Clare and the Grey Hat Hacker is a sequel to Maiden’s original two Play With Knives novels and those of her later poems which feature the characters George Jeffreys and Clare Collins. The ‘Grey Hat Hacker’ in the title is George’s grandson, Idris, known on the Internet as ‘Red Idris’, a daring political hacker and leaker. In another sense, the ‘Grey Hat Hacker’ is also death, ‘the blind swipe of the pruner and his knife busy about the tree of life’, as Robert Lowell has it.
Clare (who murdered her siblings as a child) and George (her ex-probation officer and partner) now work as observers for a human rights organisation. They are house-sitting by the sea in Thirroul, in grief after they are unable to stop a round of executions by the Indonesian Government. They realise that a dispatch was not part of the executions, and that they had both fallen in love with one of the condemned as they tried to rescue her. Dealing with their own trauma, they spend time on their emotional and physical relationship. Maiden’s aptitude for explicit, relational love scenes is at its height here.
Later, Idris, targeted by political assassins, takes refuge with George and Clare. Clare’s friend Sophie (a French woman who was saved, with her baby, by Clare in France) is now Idris’ girlfriend. She and Florence, her now seven year old daughter, come to stay with them. Sophie works with Idris to piece together ‘Frankenphone, The Unhackable Hacker’, allowing them to learn when the attack on Idris will be - information which is encrypted in Quantum in Europe. George and Clare plan to smuggle Idris to safety, and unexpected events follow.
In Play with Knives: Three: George and Clare and the Grey Hat Hacker, Maiden glides back and forth between third person verse and first person prose, enjoying the advantages of both forms together. This also allows the forms to blend into each other, bringing illuminated lyricism to the prose and energised narrative to the verse.
Play With Knives: Four: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies juxtaposes prose and verse, combining them and illuminating the thriller in a continuous pace and pattern - but as well as being a 'thriller' Play With Knives: Four is something wild and undefinable - glinting in the dark like an animal spirit or a quantum diamond. Through verse, in the heatwave wind on backsteps, the heroes Clare and George are asked to visit a fifteen year old Indigenous boy incarcerated in a Western Suburbs Correctional Centre. In prose, George promises to find a missing baby, while watching her dog still perform tricks for her. Through verse, in the winter's 'spinning stars', the heroes learn why a drug and telecommunications criminal organiser is concerned with diamonds that could be used for quantum computing. At night, In prose, they attempt to rescue the missing baby from the criminals in an actual cave in the N.S.W. Blue Mountains named after the god Baal. In verse, the pregnant hero Clare goes into labour in an early spring of 'shivering wattle'. The third person verse presents and facilitates mysterious true-to-life processes within the plot, such as spontaneous beauty, coincidence or serendipity. In the plot Clare experiences an empathetic dream-vision about Jimmy, the boy at the Correctional Centre, and an apple half from an anti-miscarriage spell turns into an apple plant, when it might not. Another aspect of the verse is the explicit love imagery between George and Clare, which is always in-keeping with the verse's encompassing aesthetic quality. The first person prose is a force for incarnate description and present action. In both novels, line spacing changes with tempo. On another level, nothing in the novels, and neither Clare nor George, are compartmentalised in any way. Having murdered as a child, Clare feels she can only survive by acknowledging her murders and not being forgiven, especially not by George. That everything stays connected is vital to them. Anything that happens in the verse shades the prose, and the two forms blend for the reader, incarnating the verse and expanding the prose, creating characters who wish to be complete in humanity, and also creating unfragmented, unexpected thrillers - or works which again escape all genres.
‘[Maiden] works with sudden free shifts of perspective, vital to her vision of how art works as a movement between outside and inside points of view, perspectives of justice and compassion….From the first, Maiden’s novels have taken a steady interest in violence, its motives and its consequences. They are—and seek to be—uneasy and unsettling…With needling intelligence, Maiden considers, in these works, what virtue is, and empathy…. Clare has been violent, and she has suffered violence. Through both Clare’s guilt and Clare’s compassion, Maiden brings the knowledge of state violence into kitchens and bedrooms and loving human relationships…With the novels, the study of love and violence in the story of George and Clare finds its closest and most intimate, most unsettling expression.’ - Lisa Gorton.
'Compelling' - Anna Couani.
‘[The]novels explore guilt and innocence, good and evil, and the individual versus the state or government, using changing tense and viewpoints. The grand conception is fairly ambitious, but Maiden handles it all smoothly and the stories read like…thrillers…Maiden doesn’t flinch…At no point does Maiden overly simplify the issues she explores, whether it’s the implications of love and intimacy, or the morality of war, refugees, or the nature of violence and suffering… there’s a richness to the language that draws on Maiden’s poetic skill and linguistic precision. The multi-genres novels contain elements of the thriller, mystery, and romance, all of which keep the reading fast paced…engrossing reading that takes the reader to new places from both a literary and a political/theoretical perspective’ - Magdalena Ball.
‘A great achievement' - Tim Thorne.
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Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey, Vera Rudner
In mid 2018, Quemar Press will publish our new, short paperback study of the compelling surrealist artist Vera Rudner. This will be the first full book to feature her work. She escaped from Nazi Berlin and painted in Australia in the 40s and early 50s, exhibiting with other great Surrealists like Sidney Nolan. Rudner's small but essential body of work moves from deconstructed still-life to deconstructed war-field. Quemar is working in close consultation with the artist and Quemar's publisher Katharine Margot Toohey met with her recently about Quemar's forthcoming book. She had already expressed much enthusiasm for Jennifer Maiden's poem (in Quemar's Appalachian Fall) about her painting Sacrilege and in honour of her work and the new book, Maiden wrote a new poem about her painting Be Back in the Morning. A recording of this new poem can be heard by clicking on the title below:
Vera Rudner's painting Be Back in the Morning
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Jennifer Maiden reading her Be Back in the Morning poem to Vera Rudner
Jennifer Maiden, Vera Rudner
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Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey, Vera Rudner
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Vera Rudner photographed by Katharine Margot Toohey
Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey, Vera Rudner
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Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey, Vera Rudner
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Katharine Margot Toohey, Vera Rudner
Jennifer Maiden, Vera Rudner
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Vera Rudner enjoying Jennifer Maiden Quemar Press books
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Vera Rudner, Katharine Margot Toohey
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In view of current events in Syria, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to record her poem Premature Burial, from her new Quemar Selected Poems. The poem was written in 1991, during the first US Gulf War, after a 6 month media embargo on an incident in the middle east when American troops ran thousands of Iraqis down with tanks, burying them in sand. 'Burial' here is also perilous psychological suppression and compartmentalisation in war. It is the last poem in her Gulf War Sequence of poems. Click on the title below to hear the audio recording:
Premature Burial
Premature Burial
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Quemar has asked Jennifer Maiden to perform her wide-reaching poem, My heart has an Embassy, in celebration of Quemar's new Selected of her work, and in light of the current uncertain situation involving Julian Assange and his access to communication in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The poem, written on the night he originally moved into the embassy, was featured and analysed by the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Their analysis and the full text of the poem are available at: http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/my-heart-has-an-embassy-2/ The poem is included in Maiden's Selected Poems 1967-2018, and her 2012 collection, Liquid Nitrogen. You can click on the title below to listen to the audio performance:
My heart has an Embassy
This weekend, there was a very positive review of Quemar's new Selected of Jennifer Maiden's work, Selected Poems 1967-2018, in the print editions of Sydney Morning Herald and The Melbourne Age. The review was written by the apt and accomplished critic and author, Geoff Page, who wrote:
'Jennifer Maiden is a key yet relatively isolated figure in contemporary Australian poetry. Never a member of any coterie or "school", she has produced 23 collections over the 51 years covered in this new Selected Poems. Her work has won a swag of prizes including the NSW Premier's Prize for Poetry three times. Her appeal, especially since Friendly Fire in 2005, which won the Age book of the year award, has reached well beyond those readers who make a point of keeping up with Australian poetry.'
The review can also be read at the online Fairfax papers. It is in the online Sydney Morning Herald at:
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/jennifer-maidens-selected-poems-review-morally-complex-yet-accessible-poetry-20180328-h0y33d.html
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My heart has an Embassy
This weekend, there was a very positive review of Quemar's new Selected of Jennifer Maiden's work, Selected Poems 1967-2018, in the print editions of Sydney Morning Herald and The Melbourne Age. The review was written by the apt and accomplished critic and author, Geoff Page, who wrote:
'Jennifer Maiden is a key yet relatively isolated figure in contemporary Australian poetry. Never a member of any coterie or "school", she has produced 23 collections over the 51 years covered in this new Selected Poems. Her work has won a swag of prizes including the NSW Premier's Prize for Poetry three times. Her appeal, especially since Friendly Fire in 2005, which won the Age book of the year award, has reached well beyond those readers who make a point of keeping up with Australian poetry.'
The review can also be read at the online Fairfax papers. It is in the online Sydney Morning Herald at:
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/jennifer-maidens-selected-poems-review-morally-complex-yet-accessible-poetry-20180328-h0y33d.html
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As it is set at Easter, Quemar asked Jennifer Maiden to record the poem In the International Pavilion from her new Selected Poems 1967-2018. In 2016, this poem was featured and analysed by the Griffin International Poetry Prize. The full text and analysis are available on their website at: http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/in-the-international-pavilion/ The poem connects cats, Fukushima, an ambivalent Easter fair and an equinoctial moon. Click on the title below to listen to the recording:
In the International Pavilion |
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Following Quemar's release last week of the faceted, topical poem, Novichok, as part of our preview of Jennifer Maiden's upcoming novel in verse and prose, Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Malachite and the Diamonds, she has just recorded the poem in audio for Quemar. This poem is illuminating as a stand-alone piece or as an intricate part of the novel. Click on the title below to listen
Novichok
The text of the poem is available in the novel preview on the Forthcoming page.
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Novichok
The text of the poem is available in the novel preview on the Forthcoming page.
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We're proud to continue our free download titles, as we are proud of our paperback books for purchase. In July this year, we will release officially the paperback companion book to our paperback compilation of Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives & Play With Knives: Two: Complicity. The upcoming paperback will combine our thrilling Maiden titles in poetry and prose Play With Knives: Three: George and Clare and the Grey Hat Hacker & Play With Knives: Four: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies. This book is currently with our printers.
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In celebration of Quemar's new Selected of Jennifer Maiden's work, Selected Poems 1967-2018, Maiden recorded Uses of Cosiness in audio, one of the 228 poems included in it. Uses of Cosiness focuses on the sense and intrinsic politics in Sylvia Plath's poetry. In the recording, Maiden describes how she added this poem to the Selected. She explains that, while, in general she would not change any poem before adding it, the version of this poem in the Selected was created in an unusual process. Here, she reads both versions.
You can click on the title below to listen:
Diary Poem: Uses of Cosiness
You can click on the title below to listen:
Diary Poem: Uses of Cosiness
Jennifer Maiden's awaited new selected from Quemar Press, Selected Poems 1967-2018, is now available for purchase on the Books for Purchase Page, in a paperback and an electronic edition.
From Quemar's Press Release:
This new Selected of Jennifer Maiden’s poetry was chosen by her from her twenty-two poetry collections and five novels. The poems chosen are now arranged approximately in the order they were written. The cover depicts the author and a rope swing, as such a swing could represent many aspects of her work: its technical rhythmic continuity, like metronomic beats of poetry, the possibility of moving weightlessly between levels of a hierarchy in trauma, and being able to survive the problem of evil in a space between an ideal and what is real, all happening with the author keeping hold of the ropes and in control of speed and direction. This Selected glides from 1967 to 2018, between the personal, the political, between levels of lucent life study and platforms where those in power can speak with the person who inspired them across time. It spans her first collections, Tactics and The Problem of Evil to her latest collection, Appalachian Fall, new uncollected work and the recent verse and prose novels. For the first time, all the collection poems involving the characters from Play With Knives, human rights' observers Clare (who murdered her siblings as a child) and George (her ex-probation officer and her partner) are included. The entire Selection has 228 poems - wild succinct poems to expansive ineradicable classic poems from her collections which have received accolades such as the ALS Gold Medal, The Victorian Prize for Literature, three Kenneth Slessor Prizes, two C.J. Dennis Prizes, two Age Poetry Book of the Year Awards, The overall Age Book of the Year, The Christopher Brennan Award for Lifetime Achievement and a shortlisting in the Griffin International Poetry Prize.
Here the poems build into an unshakable, timeless, transcendent momentum.
From Quemar's Press Release:
This new Selected of Jennifer Maiden’s poetry was chosen by her from her twenty-two poetry collections and five novels. The poems chosen are now arranged approximately in the order they were written. The cover depicts the author and a rope swing, as such a swing could represent many aspects of her work: its technical rhythmic continuity, like metronomic beats of poetry, the possibility of moving weightlessly between levels of a hierarchy in trauma, and being able to survive the problem of evil in a space between an ideal and what is real, all happening with the author keeping hold of the ropes and in control of speed and direction. This Selected glides from 1967 to 2018, between the personal, the political, between levels of lucent life study and platforms where those in power can speak with the person who inspired them across time. It spans her first collections, Tactics and The Problem of Evil to her latest collection, Appalachian Fall, new uncollected work and the recent verse and prose novels. For the first time, all the collection poems involving the characters from Play With Knives, human rights' observers Clare (who murdered her siblings as a child) and George (her ex-probation officer and her partner) are included. The entire Selection has 228 poems - wild succinct poems to expansive ineradicable classic poems from her collections which have received accolades such as the ALS Gold Medal, The Victorian Prize for Literature, three Kenneth Slessor Prizes, two C.J. Dennis Prizes, two Age Poetry Book of the Year Awards, The overall Age Book of the Year, The Christopher Brennan Award for Lifetime Achievement and a shortlisting in the Griffin International Poetry Prize.
Here the poems build into an unshakable, timeless, transcendent momentum.
To celebrate Quemar's new Selected of Jennifer Maiden's work, Selected Poems 1967-2018, she performed a topical poem from it, Uses of Small Dogs, with its ineradicable last lines: ...all mercies/now interdependent as species'.
You can listen by clicking on the title below:
Diary Poem: Uses of Small Dogs
As well as being included in the Selected, the poem was originally published in Maiden's collection, The Fox Petition (2015). The fine critic and writer, Sarah Holland-Batt recently commented 'God, I love that book' in an interview quoted in the Sydney Review of Books.
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You can listen by clicking on the title below:
Diary Poem: Uses of Small Dogs
As well as being included in the Selected, the poem was originally published in Maiden's collection, The Fox Petition (2015). The fine critic and writer, Sarah Holland-Batt recently commented 'God, I love that book' in an interview quoted in the Sydney Review of Books.
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Quemar Press wishes to thank Magdalena Ball and MacLean's Booksellers for the Newcastle launching of Appalachian Fall: Jennifer Maiden's new collection and Quemar's first paperback. The staff and management of MacLean's facilitated the event expertly, while remarkable writer and critic, Magdalena Ball, chaired it, and led a dynamic Q&A session with Maiden. Maiden also read poems from the collection, then signed copies.
A transcript is available on the Commentary page
Magdalena Ball's Compulsive Reader has a complete audio recording of the event at:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader/2018/02/14/jennifer-maiden-launches-her-poetry-book-appalachian-fall
A transcript is available on the Commentary page
Magdalena Ball's Compulsive Reader has a complete audio recording of the event at:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader/2018/02/14/jennifer-maiden-launches-her-poetry-book-appalachian-fall
Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball
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Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball
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Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball
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Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball
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Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball
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Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball
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Book Signing: Jennifer Maiden and Magdalena Ball with enthusiastic readers
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MacLean's owner and staff with Jennifer Maiden
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Katharine Margot Toohey
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Jennifer Maiden, Magdalena Ball and Katharine Margot Toohey
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Writers Professor Robert Adamson and Jennifer Maiden read at the launch of the Liberation Prison Project's exhibition at Western Sydney University's Margaret Whitlam Galleries, Parramatta. The exhibition is of artwork by prisoners engaged with the project in several regions, such as Latin America or North America. It is also interconnected with the project's focus on meditation in incarceration and its possibility of incarnation and transcendence. The launch by Juno Gemes was chaired by Ven. Thubten Chokyi. Details about the exhibition are available at:
http://www.publicnow.com/view/F54A9CED0CEE9C17B273A9FF9CBE6D42ACED33BE?2018-02-08-00:30:22+00:00-xxx6071
Maiden read her powerful, recent poem 'And Suddenly the Guns', at the event. The poem was included in Play With Knives: Four: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies, and it will be in her upcoming Selected Poems 1967-2018. In the midst of a fierce Western Sydney heatwave, it analyses a youth correctional centre. Quemar is pleased to have audio of her performing it. You can listen by clicking on the title below:
And Suddenly the Guns
http://www.publicnow.com/view/F54A9CED0CEE9C17B273A9FF9CBE6D42ACED33BE?2018-02-08-00:30:22+00:00-xxx6071
Maiden read her powerful, recent poem 'And Suddenly the Guns', at the event. The poem was included in Play With Knives: Four: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies, and it will be in her upcoming Selected Poems 1967-2018. In the midst of a fierce Western Sydney heatwave, it analyses a youth correctional centre. Quemar is pleased to have audio of her performing it. You can listen by clicking on the title below:
And Suddenly the Guns
Ven. Thubten Chokyi
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Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden
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Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden
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Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden
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Robert Adamson
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Jennifer Maiden
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Ven. Thubten Chokyi, Jennifer Maiden
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Juno Gemes
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Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden
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Juno Gemes, Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden
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We are celebrating the fact that our upcoming paperback Selected Poems 1967-2018 by Jennifer Maiden is at the printer. In light of this, Jennifer Maiden recorded her very early poem, Dew, for Quemar. This is the first poem in this Australian and NZ Selected of her work, which has 366 pages and is comprised of 228 poems.
You can listen by clicking on the title below:
Dew
We have just released the Selected's cover to our Forthcoming page,
From the back cover:
The cover depicts the author and a rope swing, as such a swing could represent many aspects of her work: its technical rhythmic continuity, like metronomic beats of poetry, the possibility of moving weightlessly between levels of a hierarchy in trauma, and being able to survive the problem of evil in a space between an ideal and what is real, all happening with the author keeping hold of the ropes and in control of speed and direction.
You can listen by clicking on the title below:
Dew
We have just released the Selected's cover to our Forthcoming page,
From the back cover:
The cover depicts the author and a rope swing, as such a swing could represent many aspects of her work: its technical rhythmic continuity, like metronomic beats of poetry, the possibility of moving weightlessly between levels of a hierarchy in trauma, and being able to survive the problem of evil in a space between an ideal and what is real, all happening with the author keeping hold of the ropes and in control of speed and direction.
Quemar Press is very pleased by our readers excitement that we have published Play With Knives: Two: Complicity in paperback, combined with the first Play With Knives. To clarify, this is the first time Play With Knives: Two was ever published in print. Its unpublished manuscript enjoyed a tenacious underground reputation and advocacy from literary figures such as Dorothy Porter, John Frow and John Hanrahan (as an article in Australian Book Review, Hanrahan wrote an open letter Where You Go, I Will Follow to Jennifer Maiden in which he recommended the manuscript strongly to publishers)
To celebrate, Jennifer Maiden has performed an excerpt from the novel in audio for Quemar, as the hero, George Jeffreys, in first person.
Click on the title below to listen:
Play With Knives: Two: Complicity Excerpt
The novels Play With Knives & Play With Knives: Two: Complicity, combined in a paperback book, are available for purchase on our Books for Purchase page.
To celebrate, Jennifer Maiden has performed an excerpt from the novel in audio for Quemar, as the hero, George Jeffreys, in first person.
Click on the title below to listen:
Play With Knives: Two: Complicity Excerpt
The novels Play With Knives & Play With Knives: Two: Complicity, combined in a paperback book, are available for purchase on our Books for Purchase page.
Jennifer Maiden opening copies of her new Quemar Press paperback, 'Play With Knives & Play With Knives: Two: Complicity'
Jennifer Maiden's Play With Knives & Play With Knives: Two: Complicity in one 296 page paperback volume - now released from Quemar Press.
It can be purchased on our Books for Purchase page for $21.00 (Australian) with free postage worldwide.
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It can be purchased on our Books for Purchase page for $21.00 (Australian) with free postage worldwide.
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Recently Jennifer Maiden visited the 95-year-old surrealist artist Vera Rudner, who has said she was pleased by Maiden's poem in Appalachian Fall on her painting, Sacrilege: ''I felt honoured to be included in it. You saw many things in Sacrilege that in my mind's eye I was seeing.''. Rudner showed Maiden accomplished and extraordinary paintings she painted over 60 years ago, and a book on Surrealism by Butler and Donaldson, which included her two works in the Australian National Gallery, Sacrilege and Kaleidoscopia.
Vera Rudner with her paintings Kaleidoscopia and Sacrilege.
Jennifer Maiden and Vera Rudner with Appalachian Fall, in front of Rudner's painting, Suburbia
Jennifer Maiden and Vera Rudner in front of Rudner's painting, Tree of Life
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Jennifer Maiden and Vera Rudner in front of Rudner's painting, Suburbia
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Jennifer Maiden has recorded an unusual poem in audio for Quemar, one from her new collection and Quemar's first print book, Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power. Cobham is unusual in the sense that it involves indigenous solitary confinement at a Sydney Western Suburbs youth detention centre. While she is not herself indigenous, and so would not presume indigenous experience, the poem discusses the need to still write the poem, and to refer to current, specific as well as earlier or general indigenous issues. Click on the title below to listen:
Cobham
As the poem states, Cobham is also a setting in Maiden's recent novel, Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies, available as a free download on the Books page.
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The critic, Magdalena Ball, has written a brilliant, sharply focused review of Appalachian Fall, concluding: 'a multi-layered, complex and powerful book that crosses genre and illuminates the state of the human race in all its frail, dangerous beauty'
Her review can be read at Compulsive Reader:
http://www.compulsivereader.com/2018/01/07/a-review-of-appalachian-fall-by-jennifer-maiden/
Appalachian Fall can be purchased from our Books for Purchase page, and from Gleebooks, Collected Works and Readings.
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Cobham
As the poem states, Cobham is also a setting in Maiden's recent novel, Play With Knives: Five: George and Clare, the Baby and the Bikies, available as a free download on the Books page.
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The critic, Magdalena Ball, has written a brilliant, sharply focused review of Appalachian Fall, concluding: 'a multi-layered, complex and powerful book that crosses genre and illuminates the state of the human race in all its frail, dangerous beauty'
Her review can be read at Compulsive Reader:
http://www.compulsivereader.com/2018/01/07/a-review-of-appalachian-fall-by-jennifer-maiden/
Appalachian Fall can be purchased from our Books for Purchase page, and from Gleebooks, Collected Works and Readings.
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We are very happy to invite our readers to the Newcastle launching of Appalachian Fall at MacLean's Bookstore on the 13th of February, 2018, 6pm, including a discussion between Jennifer Maiden and the vibrant critic and poet, Magdalena Ball.
In early 2018, Quemar will officially release our first print book, Jennifer Maiden's Appalachian Fall, a print volume of her novels Play With Knives and Play With Knives: Two: Complicity, proudly giving Play With Knives: Two its first print publication, and a new print Selected of Maiden's poetry from 1967-2018, chosen by her.
To preview Quemar print books, she has just recorded the poems Diary Poem: Uses of the Appalachian Fall: 2, from Appalachian Fall, and Council from the new Selected. She has said that Uses of the Appalachian Fall was a hugely enjoyable poem to write , as she was able to 'give the horse its head' in terms of lyricism and sensuous physical structure. She commented 'I just gave the horse its head and indulged myself in sumptuous lyricism. Although, it still has meaning, of course - the dark positive/negative hill spectre is partly Trump.' Click on the title below to listen:
Diary Poem: Uses of the Appalachian Fall: 2
The recent focus on redaction in Australian poetry reminded Quemar of Maiden's early poem about redaction, Council, written in 1978. She agreed to perform it, too, in audio for Quemar, incorporating the blank 'redacted' sections into the performance. You can listen by clicking on the title below:
Council
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To preview Quemar print books, she has just recorded the poems Diary Poem: Uses of the Appalachian Fall: 2, from Appalachian Fall, and Council from the new Selected. She has said that Uses of the Appalachian Fall was a hugely enjoyable poem to write , as she was able to 'give the horse its head' in terms of lyricism and sensuous physical structure. She commented 'I just gave the horse its head and indulged myself in sumptuous lyricism. Although, it still has meaning, of course - the dark positive/negative hill spectre is partly Trump.' Click on the title below to listen:
Diary Poem: Uses of the Appalachian Fall: 2
The recent focus on redaction in Australian poetry reminded Quemar of Maiden's early poem about redaction, Council, written in 1978. She agreed to perform it, too, in audio for Quemar, incorporating the blank 'redacted' sections into the performance. You can listen by clicking on the title below:
Council
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Jennifer Maiden has made an audio recording of her poem Missing Elvis: 2: All Ways Winds, written in 2001 at Christmas. The poem will be in her upcoming Selected Poems from Quemar Press. At the time it was written, there were bushfires over the New South Wales Blue Mountains, and the Australian Government hired an American skycrane, named Elvis to extinguish them. In this poem, he is also the spirit of the popular 50s singer, and he and the poet discuss American war and its simplifying effects. The poem was also published in her English Bloodaxe collection, Intimate Geography. It was published first in her collection, Friendly Fire, available on our Books for Purchase page. Click on the title below to listen:
Missing Elvis: 2: All Ways Winds, Christmas 2001
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Missing Elvis: 2: All Ways Winds, Christmas 2001
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While we are working on Marie de France's Gugemer and Bernat Metge's Lo Sompni (The Dream), we are also working on some new Jennifer Maiden titles: her novel set in Russia and the Western Suburbs of Sydney, fifth in the Play With Knives books (great response to brilliant chapters four and five in the preview on the Forthcoming page last week), the first combined print volume of Play With Knives and Play With Knives: Two: Complicity (currently at our Printers), and an Australian and NZ Selected of her poetry from 1969 to 2018, chosen by her.
A poem Look, I'm Standing on No Floor from her choice for this Selected appears in her Bloodaxe Intimate Geography collection( http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/intimate-geography-1021 ) and in Margaret Bennett's skilful and analytical book, Thrive Beyond Traumas: A Guide for Trauma Workers and their Managers. Bennett, the former Director of the New South Wales Torture and Trauma Rehabilitation Service, incorporates this poem by Maiden on how trauma relates to a hierarchy. Bennett quotes the Indigenous psychologist, poet and academic, Professor Dennis McDermott that it was 'the best poem he had read addressing these issues'. Critic Martin Duwell also wrote in Jacket: 'I think of this poem as one of the best of its decade [the 90s]'
In view of the impact of this poem, Quemar Press asked Jennifer Maiden to perform the poem in a new audio recording. Click on the title below to listen:
Look I'm Standing on No-floor
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Recently, Jennifer Maiden's collection, The Metronome, was included on the shortlist at the Victorian Premier's Literary awards. Quemar is still pleased to offer our electronic edition for $5.00 (Australian Dollars) on the Books for Purchase page.
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A poem Look, I'm Standing on No Floor from her choice for this Selected appears in her Bloodaxe Intimate Geography collection( http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/intimate-geography-1021 ) and in Margaret Bennett's skilful and analytical book, Thrive Beyond Traumas: A Guide for Trauma Workers and their Managers. Bennett, the former Director of the New South Wales Torture and Trauma Rehabilitation Service, incorporates this poem by Maiden on how trauma relates to a hierarchy. Bennett quotes the Indigenous psychologist, poet and academic, Professor Dennis McDermott that it was 'the best poem he had read addressing these issues'. Critic Martin Duwell also wrote in Jacket: 'I think of this poem as one of the best of its decade [the 90s]'
In view of the impact of this poem, Quemar Press asked Jennifer Maiden to perform the poem in a new audio recording. Click on the title below to listen:
Look I'm Standing on No-floor
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Recently, Jennifer Maiden's collection, The Metronome, was included on the shortlist at the Victorian Premier's Literary awards. Quemar is still pleased to offer our electronic edition for $5.00 (Australian Dollars) on the Books for Purchase page.
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Quemar's first print book, Appalachian Fall by Jennifer Maiden, has just received a succinct and thorough review across Fairfax mainstream media, such as the Sydney Morning Herald. The reviewer, Geoff Page, concludes: 'Appalachian Fall... readily satisfies the expectations that Maiden's intrigued and loyal readers have developed since Friendly Fire back in 2005'.
The review can be read at:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/appalachian-fall-review-jennifer-maidens-morally-complex-poetry-20171124-gzsizc.html
The review can be read at:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/appalachian-fall-review-jennifer-maidens-morally-complex-poetry-20171124-gzsizc.html
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In response to the positive reactions to her collection Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, Jennifer Maiden has performed an audio recording of the short lyric The Civil Guard: 2, of which the poet Tim Thorne has just commented: 'There are also two blistering poems on Spain/Catalonia, one of which in particular, "The Civil Guard: 2", shows that Maiden's talents go way beyond the discursive to the ferociously lyrical.'
To hear the recording, click on the title below:
The Civil Guard: 2
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To hear the recording, click on the title below:
The Civil Guard: 2
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Of the many enthusiastic responses to Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power so far, one of the most moving for Quemar is that of the almost 95 year-old painter Vera Rudner, who wrote of the poem in it about her great painting Sacrilege: ''I felt honoured to be included in it. You saw many things in Sacrilege that in my mind's eye I was seeing.''
This is the link to the painting at the National Gallery in Canberra: https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?irn=167342
Jennifer Maiden has now recorded that poem, Sacrilege, in audio.
Click on the title below to listen:
Sacrilege
Appalachian Fall is available on our Books for Purchase page
This is the link to the painting at the National Gallery in Canberra: https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?irn=167342
Jennifer Maiden has now recorded that poem, Sacrilege, in audio.
Click on the title below to listen:
Sacrilege
Appalachian Fall is available on our Books for Purchase page
Sacrilege - Vera Rudner 1948
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Many thanks to those who have purchased Jennifer Maiden's new collection, Appalachian Fall: Poems about Poverty in Power, and for their enthusiastic response upon receiving the book in the post. We hope it will be a great success, too.
We have received several queries about the nature of the purchase of Appalachian Fall. The advance copies are complete ones and the same as they will be in a shop. If in a shop, the Recommended Retail Price will be at least $21.00 and the electronic edition will not be included.
We are offering the book and download for $18.50, and the download by itself for $5.00. We are not charging postage anywhere. We are posting the book through Australia Post mail as soon as the order is placed, and it has always been received very promptly (there have been inquiries as to whether these were only advance orders). If the purchaser does not wish to use PayPal, other arrangements such as cheque can be made via our contact page, and we have already been happy to do so.
To clarify further, the collection has 23 more poems than the sampler, which can still be downloaded through the cover image on the Books for Purchase page. In the collection, but not in the sampler, are new poems such as those on Brigitte Bardot, Nora Barnacle, Bruce Beaver, Christopher Brennan, Vera Rudner, polar bears, carbon credits, Twin Peaks, Jane Austen and Tanya Plibersek, May Holman, Carols at Kings, the poem as essay, Appalachian terrors, mountaintop mining and extraordinary autobiographical pieces.
We have received several queries about the nature of the purchase of Appalachian Fall. The advance copies are complete ones and the same as they will be in a shop. If in a shop, the Recommended Retail Price will be at least $21.00 and the electronic edition will not be included.
We are offering the book and download for $18.50, and the download by itself for $5.00. We are not charging postage anywhere. We are posting the book through Australia Post mail as soon as the order is placed, and it has always been received very promptly (there have been inquiries as to whether these were only advance orders). If the purchaser does not wish to use PayPal, other arrangements such as cheque can be made via our contact page, and we have already been happy to do so.
To clarify further, the collection has 23 more poems than the sampler, which can still be downloaded through the cover image on the Books for Purchase page. In the collection, but not in the sampler, are new poems such as those on Brigitte Bardot, Nora Barnacle, Bruce Beaver, Christopher Brennan, Vera Rudner, polar bears, carbon credits, Twin Peaks, Jane Austen and Tanya Plibersek, May Holman, Carols at Kings, the poem as essay, Appalachian terrors, mountaintop mining and extraordinary autobiographical pieces.
Following support and requests from our readers, complete advance copies of Jennifer Maiden's new 150-page, 40-poem collection, Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, are now available from Quemar Press in our own exclusive print and electronic editions.
Quemar Press is offering the Print Edition for $18.50 (Australian dollars) with free postage world-wide. The Electronic Edition is included with purchase of the Print Edition.
We are also offering the Electronic Edition separately for $5.00 (Australian dollars), to cover the costs of printing this fine and extensive new collection.
The editions can be purchased from our Books for Purchase page.
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Quemar Press is offering the Print Edition for $18.50 (Australian dollars) with free postage world-wide. The Electronic Edition is included with purchase of the Print Edition.
We are also offering the Electronic Edition separately for $5.00 (Australian dollars), to cover the costs of printing this fine and extensive new collection.
The editions can be purchased from our Books for Purchase page.
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To celebrate the release next week of full advance copies of the print edition of Jennifer Maiden's Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power, and the electronic edition, she has recorded the poem Rich Men's Houses from it, in audio for Quemar. The text of the poem is available in the sampler on the Forthcoming page.
The poem is about political corruption and Maiden's own witnessing of the Luna Park fire. You can click on the title below to listen:
Rich Men's Houses
The poem is about political corruption and Maiden's own witnessing of the Luna Park fire. You can click on the title below to listen:
Rich Men's Houses
Quemar Press readers will be pleased to know that Jennifer Maiden's new collection Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power is at the Printers and that we hope to offer complete advance copies of electronic and print editions for purchase in November. Our official publication date is very early 2018.
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Quemar Press is delighted that the excellent and judicious editor Sarah Holland-Batt has chosen the poem Metronome from Jennifer Maiden's poetry collection The Metronome for the Black Inc 2017 Best Australian Poems anthology.
Maiden has recorded the poem as an audio file for Quemar. Click on the title below to listen:
Metronome
The Metronome collection is available from Quemar's Books for Purchase page in Quemar's electronic edition, and from Giramondo in the Giramondo print edition
Maiden has recorded the poem as an audio file for Quemar. Click on the title below to listen:
Metronome
The Metronome collection is available from Quemar's Books for Purchase page in Quemar's electronic edition, and from Giramondo in the Giramondo print edition
Sarah Holland-Batt and Jennifer Maiden at Qld Poetry Festival
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Jennifer Maiden Reading Dulcinea and I were Enchanted from Appalachian Fall
With the release of Appalachian Fall: Poems About Poverty in Power approaching, Jennifer Maiden has made an audio recording of her new poem from it about Gough Whitlam and Don Quixote, 'Dulcinea and I were Enchanted'. The text is available on the Forthcoming page. You can click on the title below to listen:
Dulcinea and I were Enchanted
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Dulcinea and I were Enchanted
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Jennifer Maiden has just performed three of her poems in the above YouTube video for Quemar. She began by reading two poems, Below One's Best and Mandela in New York, from Intimate Geography, her collection from Bloodaxe Books (available at http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/intimate-geography-1021) She concluded with George Jeffreys Woke Up in Thirroul Again, from her forthcoming Quemar collection Appalachian Fall. The text of that poem can be read on our Forthcoming page.
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Quemar has added an audio performance of Jennifer Maiden reading her succinct, powerful latest poem, The Civil Guard. It was written yesterday (20th September, 2017) when the Spanish Guardia Civil commenced dawn raids against the Catalan election process. The text is available in our Appalachian Fall preview on the Forthcoming page. You can listen by clicking on the title below:
The Civil Guard
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The Civil Guard
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In the lead-up to the release of Jennifer Maiden's next collection: Appalachian Fall: Poems about Poverty in Power, Quemar now adds a new poem to our preview on the Forthcoming page. Victoria and Tony: 7: The Veil involves Tony Abbott and Queen Victoria in a discussion of same-sex marriage. Maiden also recorded the pro- gay marriage poem in audio for Quemar. It can be heard by clicking the title below:
Victoria and Tony: 7: The Veil
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Victoria and Tony: 7: The Veil
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To accompany The round, pretty eyes of the Hebrides, the new Duet poem about President Trump and his mother, in our preview of Jennifer Maiden's Appalachian Fall collection, Quemar has uploaded a new audio recording of Maiden reading it:
The round, pretty eyes of the Hebrides
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The round, pretty eyes of the Hebrides
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Quemar has released audio of Jennifer Maiden reading one of her poems from her upcoming collection, Appalachian Fall, titled 'Posing a Political Threat'. Upon request, she read it aloud at two events of the Queensland Poetry Festival (late August, 2017).
Her audio recording for Quemar can be heard below, while the text of the poem is available in our preview of the collection on the Forthcoming page.
Posing a Political Threat
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Her audio recording for Quemar can be heard below, while the text of the poem is available in our preview of the collection on the Forthcoming page.
Posing a Political Threat
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Jennifer Maiden appeared at the Queensland Poetry Festival in late August, 2017, reading her work at three events, and discussing it in a one-on-one conversation with Australian poet and scholar, Sarah Holland-Batt. At the readings Maiden read poems from her up-coming collection from Quemar Press, Appalachian Fall, including her latest poem, George Jeffreys 23 (available as a preview on our Forthcoming page). She also read from her newest collections, The Metronome, and The Fox Petition.
In correspondence before their illuminating and articulate one-on-one discussion, Jennifer Maiden wrote and sent Sarah Holland-Batt the following note, which Holland-Batt printed out and Maiden read aloud during the session:
'The difference between what I do and other things called political poetry or satire is that they consist of commentary or caricature, both of which place the writer in a superior or inferior position. My work is imaginatively empathetic from an equal basis, which is a more fluid and internal position politically and therefore much more insurrectionary. It isn't a traditional Marxist philosophy that discounts the individual in favour of historic events. It's more like AJP Taylor's belief that history depends on the peculiar traits of individuals - hence his interpolation that of course in politics the impossible always happens. My work is not conservative in that I don't believe my characters are inevitably in power or will inevitably retain it, or that the reader and I have no right to inhabit them. By personality, of course, I don't mean public persona but rather the inner individual and also the effect their persona has or doesn't have on that individual. Also the equal positioning allows one to examine a much wider range of politicians, not just those safe to hate in left or right wing terms.'
Quemar Press received very positive feedback regarding Maiden's work at the events, and we would like to thank Margaret Bennett, who was in the audience, for taking and sending Quemar the photographs we used to create the collage above.
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In correspondence before their illuminating and articulate one-on-one discussion, Jennifer Maiden wrote and sent Sarah Holland-Batt the following note, which Holland-Batt printed out and Maiden read aloud during the session:
'The difference between what I do and other things called political poetry or satire is that they consist of commentary or caricature, both of which place the writer in a superior or inferior position. My work is imaginatively empathetic from an equal basis, which is a more fluid and internal position politically and therefore much more insurrectionary. It isn't a traditional Marxist philosophy that discounts the individual in favour of historic events. It's more like AJP Taylor's belief that history depends on the peculiar traits of individuals - hence his interpolation that of course in politics the impossible always happens. My work is not conservative in that I don't believe my characters are inevitably in power or will inevitably retain it, or that the reader and I have no right to inhabit them. By personality, of course, I don't mean public persona but rather the inner individual and also the effect their persona has or doesn't have on that individual. Also the equal positioning allows one to examine a much wider range of politicians, not just those safe to hate in left or right wing terms.'
Quemar Press received very positive feedback regarding Maiden's work at the events, and we would like to thank Margaret Bennett, who was in the audience, for taking and sending Quemar the photographs we used to create the collage above.
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Quemar has released a new audio recording of Jennifer Maiden reading Diary Poem: Uses of Catalonia. The poem, which is sympathetic to different kinds of Independence, whether it is that of Julian Assange or Catalonia, is from her most recent collection, The Metronome. Click below to listen:
Diary Poem: Uses of Catalonia
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Diary Poem: Uses of Catalonia
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Jennifer Maiden will be participating in the Queensland Poetry Festival at the end of August 2017. She will reading her work at two events, and taking part in a one-on-one conversation with Sarah Holland-Batt. The details are available from:
http://www.queenslandpoetryfestival.com/site/performer/jennifer-maiden/
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http://www.queenslandpoetryfestival.com/site/performer/jennifer-maiden/
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The Metronome, Jennifer Maiden's latest collection recently received involved, astute reviews from Louise Jaques for the NSW Writers' Centre, Alice Allan for the eco-journal, Plumwood Mountain, and, earlier, from Jill Jones for Australian Book Review.
NSW Writers' Centre review
Plumwood Mountain review
Australian Book Review review
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NSW Writers' Centre review
Plumwood Mountain review
Australian Book Review review
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Jennifer Maiden has recorded new audio versions of two poems: her newly completed Wind-rock from Appalachian Fall (the text of Wind-rock is available now as part of the Preview on the Forthcoming Page) and a new reading of her popular poem Mary Rose (In transcript further down this page) from The Metronome (available here in an electronic version on Books for Purchase and in a print edition from Giramondo). Click on the poem titles below to hear the audio:
Wind-rock
Mary Rose
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Wind-rock
Mary Rose
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There are excellent reviews of Jennifer Maiden's The Metronome in The Sydney Morning Herald by Geoff Page, and in The Australian by Peter Craven. Page's SMH review mentions Quemar Press and Maiden's Quemar Press Play With Knives novels.
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/poetry-review-paws-for-thought-20170322-gv43kl.html
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/the-metronome-jennifer-maidens-nod-to-history-in-topical-verse/news-story/9c15c8c17f6e2015ee968848c328d6c7
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http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/poetry-review-paws-for-thought-20170322-gv43kl.html
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/the-metronome-jennifer-maidens-nod-to-history-in-topical-verse/news-story/9c15c8c17f6e2015ee968848c328d6c7
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Jennifer Maiden discusses satire, interviewed by Australian poet Robert Adamson at the launch for the Giramondo print edition of Maiden's 'The Metronome'.
Transcript:
A. And it works both ways because at the time being they're working as satirical poems really well, and, you know, satirising the particular people, but they will work in the long run as well.
M. Yeah, uh, when you say 'satire'.
A. Well 'satire' might not be the right word, actually, I thought about that. Yeah.
M. Yeah. I.
A. Yeah, I think I'm wrong about that. I didn't mean to say that.
M. One of the best critics in Australia, Lisa Gorton, has said that I write satire. So I'm a bit wary of saying I don't write satire because I respect Lisa so much, but I don't like satire. I don't write satire.
A. I agree.
M. It's a very conservative form, and I don't like it.
A. No, I agree with you. Yeah, no no, you're right. Compare your work to, say, Jonathan Swift. It's a whole different generosity, as I said, in your work... In Swift and people like that, there is a viciousness in most satire.
M. And they're conservative.
A. And conservative as well.
M. They want to return to something. They want to return to the earlier ideal.
A. No, that's true, that's true. You're right, you're right. I think that's what satire was acquired from.
M. Yeah.
A. Yeah, I know. That's really good to talk about that.
M. Yeah. Even the trendy, new TV satires are basically conservative.
A. Yeah.
M. They're on the ABC or they're sort of, you know, on the make comedians or something like that. They're not... they're conservative.
A. Yeah. And that's why I was careful about using the word 'political', too. It's, it it seems inadequate to to the weight of your poetry as I read it through. Your poetry was much broader than just... being labelled 'political' can put people off, and not let them open up to the riches in, and spiritual side of, your work.
M. Well, one, one of the things we're trying to do, isn't it, when we write so called 'political' poetry is actually broaden the definition of politics.
A. Yeah, yeah.
M. Yeah. To include poetry.
A. Yeah, yeah.
M. Anyone got any requests?
Audience member: Could you read us something, please?
M. What?
Audience member: Could you read us something?
M. [laughing] Could I read something.
Transcript:
A. And it works both ways because at the time being they're working as satirical poems really well, and, you know, satirising the particular people, but they will work in the long run as well.
M. Yeah, uh, when you say 'satire'.
A. Well 'satire' might not be the right word, actually, I thought about that. Yeah.
M. Yeah. I.
A. Yeah, I think I'm wrong about that. I didn't mean to say that.
M. One of the best critics in Australia, Lisa Gorton, has said that I write satire. So I'm a bit wary of saying I don't write satire because I respect Lisa so much, but I don't like satire. I don't write satire.
A. I agree.
M. It's a very conservative form, and I don't like it.
A. No, I agree with you. Yeah, no no, you're right. Compare your work to, say, Jonathan Swift. It's a whole different generosity, as I said, in your work... In Swift and people like that, there is a viciousness in most satire.
M. And they're conservative.
A. And conservative as well.
M. They want to return to something. They want to return to the earlier ideal.
A. No, that's true, that's true. You're right, you're right. I think that's what satire was acquired from.
M. Yeah.
A. Yeah, I know. That's really good to talk about that.
M. Yeah. Even the trendy, new TV satires are basically conservative.
A. Yeah.
M. They're on the ABC or they're sort of, you know, on the make comedians or something like that. They're not... they're conservative.
A. Yeah. And that's why I was careful about using the word 'political', too. It's, it it seems inadequate to to the weight of your poetry as I read it through. Your poetry was much broader than just... being labelled 'political' can put people off, and not let them open up to the riches in, and spiritual side of, your work.
M. Well, one, one of the things we're trying to do, isn't it, when we write so called 'political' poetry is actually broaden the definition of politics.
A. Yeah, yeah.
M. Yeah. To include poetry.
A. Yeah, yeah.
M. Anyone got any requests?
Audience member: Could you read us something, please?
M. What?
Audience member: Could you read us something?
M. [laughing] Could I read something.
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The paper edition of Jennifer Maiden's The Metronome was launched by Professor Robert Adamson, with an introduction by the print publisher Professor Ivor Indyk, at Gleebooks Bookshop on 26th March, 2017. In his speech, Professor Adamson said that Jennifer Maiden was a great poet, and that The Metronome was a proof of his claim.
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Jennifer Maiden reading her poem, Mary Rose, heard by Australian poet Robert Adamson, at the launch of the Giramondo paper copy of her collection, The Metronome. Mary Rose is included in The Metronome. Quemar Press' electronic edition of The Metronome can be purchased for $5.00 (Australian dollars) securely through PayPal from the 'Books for Purchase' page.
Transcript:
M. I'll do one called 'Mary Rose'
A. Great. Great.
M. I love 'Mary Rose'. Okay.
One thing among the many things I love
about Gen Y is that they’re ready to accept
transgender in anything, as if Caitlyn Jenner
was the best fan fiction ever. I’m thinking of Emily Bronte
having baked the bread for her family,
charging over the moors, with a rapturous dog
and a headful of Heathcliff and Cathy. I’m thinking
of the first and one of the best English
novels, Defoe’s Roxana, written in a saucy
female first person: never marry a fool, she says,
ladies, whatever: you must never marry a fool. I’m
thinking of Alfred Hitchcock, after Marnie, eager
to film Barrie’s Mary Rose. He’d seen the play
in England as a boy: in England, where the police
locked him as a child in a cell, to frighten
any trace of crime away, his parents quite okay
with that: Oh, God. The plot of Mary Rose
is that a little girl on a remote Scots island goes
AWOL into mystery, returns the same, but later
visits as young bride with baby, does
the moonlight flit forever, until one
day her grown-up son returns to find
her, by accident: the child-ghost-mother,
perching on his knee: a little ‘ghostie’,
transcending any fear. I think, from memory,
they part again, but everything seems better. He
should have made that movie, despite
studio screams about money. After Marnie,
he was opened like an oyster in the dark. The Hitchcock
blonde, of course, is Hitchcock, hence
his tendency to beat her, but now here
Marnie was allowed an understanding, maybe
relief from retribution: we escape
those hours in the killing cell at last. I’m
thinking of Gen Y with real thanksgiving. When I
was young and used male first person in my
novels, my feminist critics - as if I wasn’t one -
were horrified that I seemed to want to be
a dull man when I was still really such an
interesting real-life woman. Really. Now they’ve
grown old as me, some still seem to disparage
transgender as if they had monopoly austerely
on anything female, or indeed maybe
on all things that can stop the living body
claiming its other half in any way. Gen Y
would have no problem with moorbound Emily
in perfect English hymn metre writing ‘There let
thy bleeding branch atone’, or Keats, becoming
Lamia so he could face the autumn, writing ‘You
must be mine to die upon the rack
if I want you’ to an unfazed Fanny Brawne. The psyche
well-expressed splits like an atom. Its energy
flies wild as the unconfined electrons
of lightning finding home.
Transcript:
M. I'll do one called 'Mary Rose'
A. Great. Great.
M. I love 'Mary Rose'. Okay.
One thing among the many things I love
about Gen Y is that they’re ready to accept
transgender in anything, as if Caitlyn Jenner
was the best fan fiction ever. I’m thinking of Emily Bronte
having baked the bread for her family,
charging over the moors, with a rapturous dog
and a headful of Heathcliff and Cathy. I’m thinking
of the first and one of the best English
novels, Defoe’s Roxana, written in a saucy
female first person: never marry a fool, she says,
ladies, whatever: you must never marry a fool. I’m
thinking of Alfred Hitchcock, after Marnie, eager
to film Barrie’s Mary Rose. He’d seen the play
in England as a boy: in England, where the police
locked him as a child in a cell, to frighten
any trace of crime away, his parents quite okay
with that: Oh, God. The plot of Mary Rose
is that a little girl on a remote Scots island goes
AWOL into mystery, returns the same, but later
visits as young bride with baby, does
the moonlight flit forever, until one
day her grown-up son returns to find
her, by accident: the child-ghost-mother,
perching on his knee: a little ‘ghostie’,
transcending any fear. I think, from memory,
they part again, but everything seems better. He
should have made that movie, despite
studio screams about money. After Marnie,
he was opened like an oyster in the dark. The Hitchcock
blonde, of course, is Hitchcock, hence
his tendency to beat her, but now here
Marnie was allowed an understanding, maybe
relief from retribution: we escape
those hours in the killing cell at last. I’m
thinking of Gen Y with real thanksgiving. When I
was young and used male first person in my
novels, my feminist critics - as if I wasn’t one -
were horrified that I seemed to want to be
a dull man when I was still really such an
interesting real-life woman. Really. Now they’ve
grown old as me, some still seem to disparage
transgender as if they had monopoly austerely
on anything female, or indeed maybe
on all things that can stop the living body
claiming its other half in any way. Gen Y
would have no problem with moorbound Emily
in perfect English hymn metre writing ‘There let
thy bleeding branch atone’, or Keats, becoming
Lamia so he could face the autumn, writing ‘You
must be mine to die upon the rack
if I want you’ to an unfazed Fanny Brawne. The psyche
well-expressed splits like an atom. Its energy
flies wild as the unconfined electrons
of lightning finding home.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden
Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden
Ivor Indyk, Jennifer Maiden, Robert Adamson
|
Ivor Indyk, Jennifer Maiden
|
Ivor Indyk, Jennifer Maiden
|
Jennifer Maiden, Robert Adamson
|
Jennifer Maiden, Robert Adamson
Jennifer Maiden, Robert Adamson
|
Juno Gemes, Katharine Margot Toohey
|
Signing The Metronome
|
Juno Gemes, Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden
|
Phyllis Perlstone, Jennifer Maiden
|
Jennifer Maiden, Katharine Margot Toohey, Robert Adamson, Chris Mansell
|
Katharine Margot Toohey, Jennifer Maiden, Joanne Burns
|
Jennifer Maiden, Ivor Indyk
|
Chris Mansell, Juno Gemes, Richard Tipping, Jennifer Maiden, Robert Adamson, Katharine Margot Toohey
|
Jennifer Maiden with The Metronome
|
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
Critic and author, Magdalena Ball, from the online review, Compulsive Reader, has published an in-depth audio interview with Jennifer Maiden, in which they discuss the Play With Knives trilogy, and The Metronome:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader/2017/02/12/jennifer-maiden-on-play-with-knives
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http://www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader/2017/02/12/jennifer-maiden-on-play-with-knives
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Giramondo print edition of Jennifer Maiden's The Metronome is available now from their website:
http://giramondopublishing.com/
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http://giramondopublishing.com/
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Jennifer Maiden's latest poetry collection, Giramondo's print edition of The Metronome, will be launched at Gleebooks (in Glebe, New South Wales, Australia), 4 for 4:30 pm, Sunday, 26th of March, 2017. Professor Robert Adamson will be launching it. You can RSVP at the Gleebooks website:
http://www.gleebooks.com.au/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=277262
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http://www.gleebooks.com.au/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=277262
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Jennifer Maiden's three Play With Knives novels are still available as free downloads from Quemar Press. The English publisher of her Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books has recently uploaded a video in which she introduces and reads four of her political poems. It includes three of her poems that feature George Jeffreys, Clare Collins and other characters from the Play With Knives books. Her introduction to these poems analyses and describes her theory behind the plot and characters. The video is currently available on Bloodaxe's twitter and Facebook, and permanently available on their Vimeo site:
https://twitter.com/BloodaxeBooks
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bloodaxe-Books/17150289985
https://vimeo.com/200746566
Bloodaxe has released the video now to promote their upcoming book and DVD set, In Person: World Poets, and also their published selected of Jennifer Maiden's work, Intimate Geography: Selected Poems 1991-2010. Her poems from the video were published originally by Giramondo.
https://twitter.com/BloodaxeBooks
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bloodaxe-Books/17150289985
https://vimeo.com/200746566
Bloodaxe has released the video now to promote their upcoming book and DVD set, In Person: World Poets, and also their published selected of Jennifer Maiden's work, Intimate Geography: Selected Poems 1991-2010. Her poems from the video were published originally by Giramondo.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Jennifer Maiden's new poetry collection, The Metronome, is available from Quemar Press as a PDF file for $5.00 (Australian dollars)
The 'Buy Now' button leads to the secure Paypal site. After filling in a form on the Paypal site with payment details, you will be brought to a new Quemar Press webpage where you can download the collection. All payments are done securely through Paypal (including credit card payments) not Quemar Press as such. Purchase and download on the same device, because the download link will be lost if the process is interrupted. After the download is completed, it can be transferred to other devices.
The 'Buy Now' button leads to the secure Paypal site. After filling in a form on the Paypal site with payment details, you will be brought to a new Quemar Press webpage where you can download the collection. All payments are done securely through Paypal (including credit card payments) not Quemar Press as such. Purchase and download on the same device, because the download link will be lost if the process is interrupted. After the download is completed, it can be transferred to other devices.
Due to the topical relevance of Jennifer Maiden's new poetry collection, The Metronome, which deals partly with the current U.S. elections and includes their result in an epilogue, Quemar Press has now uploaded its electronic edition on 9th November, 2016, immediately after the outcome of the U.S. elections. The print edition, to be published by Giramondo, will follow in February 2017. Quemar Press offers its electronic edition of The Metronome for $5.00 (Australian dollars), under agreement with Giramondo.
If you have any problems purchasing or downloading, contact Quemar Press using the Contact page.
Requests for email of possible review or educational copies can be made with the form on the Contact page.
Maiden's early novels, Play With Knives and Play With Knives: Two: Complicity, which involve two of the characters from The Metronome - Clare and George - are still available as free downloads from the Books page.
EXCERPT FROM THE METRONOME
George Jeffreys: 20:
George Jeffreys Woke up in Washington
George Jeffreys woke up in Washington, thirsty, in
a hotel room in November. Results of the election
would be on TV tonight. Clare sat, glistening, in an
armchair, nude and reading. He laughed,
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. I asked you to sit
like that, and then I fell asleep.’ She
said, ‘That’s okay’, then lied: ‘I thought that
that was part of what you were doing.’
She’d found in his tin trunk a copy
of Kathleen Tynan’s biography of Kenneth.
George opened some Pol Roger, and saw
she’d turned up the air-conditioner. It was too early
for exit polls, but of course Clinton
would take California tonight, and Trump take Texas.
He watched Clare kneeling naked in the narrow
armchair, with a round glass of champagne
in her hand, and the sombre champagne light
of the Washington window flooding down, reflected
back by the silver in her skin. ‘Little fox,
little cat, little lion’, he sighed,
without lifting his voice or moving, as
the gestalt and the alcohol kicked in.
She smiled, ‘It must have been odd, with
the Tynans…’ the TV caught her eye. She added:
‘If Clinton loses just one firewall State, then
everything springs open.’ He nodded, all of any day’s
ironic understatement in his eyes...
His sleep had been advantageous. Before it, she was hunched
in her old gone-to-earth position, fingers
clasped on knee or elbow. Now she lolled
back with her arms on the edges: discarding
familiarity’s fake indifference, to recognise terror,
the way the body has of always lying
that one thing is another. She knew now she was simply
frightened he would die, and she felt better. The Fall
night fell huge in frozen clouds behind her:
in sumptuous grey-rose. On
the TV now the exit polls were crowding, although
his eyes still watched her, as accepting as still water.
He had beautiful eyes in repose.
And the Exit Polls continued as expected:
Trump had the southern states, and she some coast. George said now,
‘I met Trump a few times in the City. At a couple of bars and a dinner.
He gave money to Prisoners of Conscience, maybe thought
we were the CIA one, by mistake. At any rate, we agreed
on nothing but being against Globalism - though that was ever
at those boring troughs, a cheerful bond in hate.’
Clare’s hair was waterfalling
on the chairtop. On the bed, George held its silver
satin clip like a nestling in his hand. He said, ‘Spread
both your arms.’ She did, and laughed ‘Maria Cross’, naming one
of his burden books, of essays by Conor O’Brien.
It saw women in sex in fiction
as a crucified Christ, both saviour and martyr, more victim.
She trailed
her outstretched fingers down the chairsides. A Washington of night
sprang behind her in the window. The position raised her breasts,
looking tidy and white around rose-dark areolae. She could see
he wasn’t depressed now. He had been, and she’d felt guilty
in Thredbo that her fighting for the brumbies undermined
his general defences. The animal - like the refugee -
thing is always endless, and can kill outright, without
the yield-factor in a skyscraper for storm.
She moved somewhat,
tried Pre-Raphaelite postures. It was less like an execution, more now
like Andromeda on the rock, he thought.
And then from what
would one rescue? On TV, the firewall states weren’t going Clinton.
George’s mobile rang. And it was Trump...: ‘George.
I thought they’d set me up to lose, but, Christ, they may
have set me up to win, and why? And why?’ ‘It may be Syria’,
said George. ‘Or revenge for the Russian uranium. Who knows?
Or they think Hillary is sick. How explicit was
your promise to the Clintons? But, anyway, it’s early days
yet’, and Clare said: ‘Her firewalls may be holding.’
Someone
helped Trump turn off his mobile, from wherever he had
needed for a minute to pause time. George said, ‘I hope
they don’t know he rang me, or they’ll find me
somewhere under a bush like Dr. Kelly.’...
Continued in The Metronome
PREFACE
The Metronome in the title of Jennifer Maiden’s new collection is a reassuring sign of life through every problematic aspect of austerity, like the metronome that was used as a comfort noise on the radio during the siege of Leningrad. The poems themselves calibrate events and processes and are also metronomes.
An important symbol of the metronome in the collection is the Asian Lucky Cat (Maneki Neko) which beckons customers and money with a paw that still maintains a vigilant binary rhythm. It holds a coin and represents great riches. Its left paw, in this case, is also raised in what could be seen as the socialist salute. Maiden’s sketch of a Lucky Cat is included in the cover design, as are photos of her hand and face while she (the poet) deals the poems rhythmically, like cards.
The metronome standing, keeping binary pace, proving reality and calling the game of anything untrue, is represented by many elements in the poems: conversations between the living and dead; the need for transgender in art; the bisexuality of the imagination; dialogues as political duets. Her characters as such also act as steadying metronomes for each other.
Here Countess Markievicz and Jeremy Corbyn discuss the economic confines of austerity and the nature of patriotism on Ben Nevis, Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt try to comfort a disintegrating Hillary Clinton, Malcolm Turnbull and William Bligh speak about the similarities between hunting men in politics and hunting animals for art (watched by a parrot Bligh killed to paint a watercolour). After misreading her constituents, Tanya Plibersek invokes Jane Austin in Sydney, and Yannis Varoufakis and Harold Wilson address Marxism, technology, the E.U., and revolutions in tandem by the Yarra River. Bernie Sanders demonstrates socialism with his arms around a cat. On Nauru, Maiden’s character Clare Collins steps through the results of charismatic financial faith, risk and desperation to rescue a detention centre victim. Elsewhere, Clare walks with metronomic precision after trying to save wild horses, and then reunites with her partner, George Jeffreys. Later, in Washington, the two address death, sexuality, and survival and observe the Presidential election results.
This last poem concludes an epilogue that consists of three poems clustered around a line from Keats: ‘You must be mine to die upon the rack if I want you’, to analyse austerity carefully through the lenses of use and need.
The Metronome collection, is anti-austerity in all senses - in finances, in politics, in gender, in art and in humanity, as in the lines on Malcolm Turnbull:
‘even his mother had returned at last, as
if time ticked like a metronome of mercy’.
Katharine Margot Toohey
QUEMAR PRESS
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