Source
Australian Poetry JournalVolume
9Issue
1Pagination
91 - 91Publisher
Australian PoetryPlace of publication
Melbourne, Vic.ISSN
2203-7519Language
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, these two poems investigate how defamiliarisation as a poetic technique might find new application in our present climate emergency. In the two poems here I defamiliarise a shopping centre escalator and a household plant in order to estrange readers from modernity and in order to draw attention to the strong connections between modernity and the Anthropocene.
Research Significance
The value of these two poems is attested to by: their publication in the peak national poetry journal The Australian Poetry Journal; the publication of one of them (‘Escalator’) in the international journal Wisconsin Review (US); and their inclusion in my new book of poems with the prestigious University of Queensland Press (which only publishes four poetry collections annually by writers such as David Malouf), a book named as one of the most anticipated releases of 2021 by The Australian.Publication classification
J3 Poems
