Pagination
1-1Location
Sydney, N.S.W.Language
engResearch statement
POETRY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND DEFAMILIARISATION
Research background
Poetry’s power to defamiliarise language and to challenge the automatism of perception was first theorised by the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky in 1917, notably at a revolutionary moment for the Soviet Union. The critical concept of defamiliarisation, however, has fallen out of favour--along with New Formalism more generally--because of its association with the 'purely' aesthetic. However, might defamiliarisation find new valency in the unfamiliar age of the Anthropocene?
Research Contribution
Contributing to knowledge generated in the Field of Research 190402 Creative Writing, this sequence of poems investigates how defamiliarisation, as a poetic technique that extends to both form and content, might find new application in our present climate emergency. Here, in poems about the polar bear, the glow worm, the sea turtle and the southern brown kiwi, I draw attention to animal lives and experiment with typography in order to defamiliarise human ways of knowing.
Research Significance
The value of this sequence of poems is attested to by: its commissioning by Red Room Poetry as part of my short-listing for the $10,000 national Red Room Poetry Fellowship; and its inclusion in my new book of poems (Trigger Warning) with the prestigious University of Queensland Press (which only publishes four poetry collections annually by writers such as David Malouf), a book which was already named as one of the most anticipated releases of 2021 by The Australian.Publication classification
JO3 Original Creative Works – Textual WorkCopyright notice
[2019, Maria Takolander]Publisher
Red Room Poetry
