reading revival: a poetry book blog

reading revival is devoted to promoting australian poetry books and related discussion through reading one book - firstly, duty by geraldine mckenzie. i will choose a new book roughly every 3 months

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

the first poem 'adenfrorde' offers a postcolonial critique of australia. the definitions of adenfrorde are apt even if ironically applied ('a paradise of the intellect'). australia - aka australia felix - was repeatedly described by poets & colonial marketing people as a new eden. mckenzie uses the history, derivations, definitions, applications of the word adenfrorde to create a prose poem that has a strong cohesiveness, but is still very flexible, & describes colonial folly in terms of language itself. language processes become a metonym for those of colonisation. 'the extreme unlikeliness of a given situation to produce any form of satisfaction'; 'one experiences sensations of joyousness and epiphany in the naive belief that the natural world is beautiful and that one is a part of it'; 'Eden forward!' 'dispute whether Eden is flawed or Eden is the flaw'; 'an individual who is perceived to be somewhat foolish but harmless'- all have (post)colonial resonance.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home


visitor stats