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Abstract
A sonnet dedicated to Australian author Yumna Kassab
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | Melbourne |
| Publisher | Australian Book Review Inc. |
| Edition | No. 474, April 2025 |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2025 |
Research Statement
Research background: ‘Shorebirds’ continues the author’s investigation of eco-poetical modes that are attuned to complex colonial histories within Greater Western Sydney, especially along waterways in the Blue Mountains. This poem is a direct response to the Miles Franklin Award-listed novel 'Politica' by leading Australian author Yumna Kassab, and the poem is dedicated to Kassab.Research contribution: This poem takes a highly canonised and ancient poetic form – the sonnet – and updates it within local eco-poetical and post-colonial contexts. Formal innovations include replacing an historically strict end-line rhyming scheme with an internal pattern of sonic and metaphoric repetition. The traditional clinamen or ‘swerve’ after 8 lines is preserved in the poem’s jump from recollected memory to present experience, and to future possibility. The poem includes a direct reference to a social justice initiative undertaken as part of the U.S. Black Lives Matter movement, and links that community action both to colonial histories of Aboriginal displacement along the Nepean River, and to current international conflicts.
Significance and impact: The ABR is one of Australia’s most eminent and established literary review journals, published nationally since 1961, with a significant national and international readership through its print and digital editions. Inclusion represents impact at the highest national level within the author’s discipline.
Keywords
- Sonnet; Australian birds; Nepean River; Black Lives Matter
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- 1 Textual Works