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Abstract
Song in the Grass is Kate Fagan's most personal collection to date. Each of its five sequences moves out in a widening circle from where the poet is standing in life. The collection is an almanac of significant changes; in particular, new lives begun in the Blue Mountains during a transfiguring time of parenthood, against a backdrop of climate uncertainty.A precise language of environmental observation is braided into stories of family and kin networks. Careful descriptions of place anchor this collection in ecological watchfulness. Birds are sentinel to environmental change, and symbols of spiritual transformation. Song in the Grass includes over sixty different species of endemic or migratory Australian birds.Archival practices of all kinds" what one poem describes as 'a lyrical index'" offer touchstones for this sonically rich collection, in which poetry becomes a way of sustaining love over distance, a collective music, and a compass for navigating in-common emergencies.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | Penrith, N.S.W. |
| Publisher | Giramondo Publishing |
| Edition | 9781923106048 |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2024 |
| Event | Book launch of 'Song in the Grass' in Margaret Whitlam Gallery, featuring live readings and performances by musical collaborators: Feature event for 'Word Up!' Exhibition - Margaret Whitlam Gallery, Parramatta, Australia Duration: 29 Aug 2024 → 29 Nov 2024 https://www.whitlam.org/events/word-up |
Research Statement
Research background
Each of the five poetic sequences in Song in the Grass moves outward in a widening circle from where the author is standing in life. The collection is an almanac of significant changes; in particular, new lives begun in the Blue Mountains during a transfiguring time of parenthood (or what the collection calls ‘the long bridge of motherhood’), against a backdrop of climate uncertainty. A precise language of environmental observation is braided into stories of family and kin networks. Descriptions of place anchor this collection in ecological watchfulness; Song in the Grass includes over sixty different species of endemic or migratory Australian birds.
Research contribution
Song in the Grass experiments with archival poetics – what one poem describes as ‘a lyrical index’, and what one reviewer gathers as ‘lists, hymns, elegies and lyrics’ (The Saturday Paper) – to explore how poetry can become both a collective music and a compass for navigating in-common emergencies. The title sequence responds to A Fool’s Errand by Dermot Healy, a long meditation upon migrating geese which understands them not as metaphors for human experience, but as sentinels of non-human worlds, who navigate scales far beyond our ‘selves’. Song in the Grass contributes to an expanding global oeuvre of ecological poetries, and innovates by exploring new intersections between ecological attention and archival and list forms. Critic J. Taylor Bell writes of the book: “This is experiment and lucidity in equal turns – ecopoetry with the hauntological reverberations of language. It’s echopoetry […] What is the point of a song if, soon enough, there will be no grass left on which to sing it?” (ABR) An entire poetic sequence, ‘Notes to a Bird’, was written for a series of collaborations undertaken with Australian composers; the resulting settings have been performed across Australia, including by Queensland Opera, the Luminescence singers, and in London, Seoul and Chilé.
Research significance
Song in the Grass has been reviewed in leading national venues, including The Saturday Paper and the Australian Book Review, and was featured at the Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival. The title sequence, ‘Song in the Grass’, was commissioned directly by world-leading Irish author Dermot Healy to for a 4-volume series of books celebrating his lifetime’s work, appearing first in Writing the Sky (Dalkey Archive Press) alongside writings by Irish luminaries including Colm Tóibín, Annie Proulx, Roddy Doyle and Patrick McCabe. Leading poetry critic Professor Ann Vickery reviewed the book in Cordite, writing: “[Song in the Grass] calls to its readers to attend to our interconnected lives, to intergenerational care, and to being alive to the deep ecologies we find our home in.”
Keywords
- poetry
- environmental humanities
- music
- ecological literature
- lyricism
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Light Glances Between Things: For String Orchestra
Crossman, B., 2024Research output: Creative Works › Composition