Attention Span 2011 | Pam Brown

Adam Aitken | Tonto’s Revenge | Tinfish | 2011

‘You want to shout Fuck Tourism /but that would be nostalgic.’ A chapbook of poems written while Australian poet Adam Aitken was a visiting writer in Manoa, Hawai’i. Encounters with academic administration, homeless people, bus passengers, a lament for Danno from ‘Hawai’i 5 0’. A nice pocket-size mix.

Louis Armand | Letters From Ausland | Vagabond | 2011-08-02

Louis Armand says ‘We remain, as Zukofsky says, the toy of paradox’. Letters from Ausland brims with paradox and moves in and out of languages, places, thoughts and imagery with an uncontrived precision. These poems are so richly cognitive and intensely imaginative that they can be revisited, read and thought about many times.

Ken Bolton | Sly Mongoose | Puncher & Wattman | 2011

This book is veritably fecund with diverse ideas and references—from Baroque art to Althusser to Jackie Gleason to Juliet Greco to Ron Padgett—inventive notations, appreciation of relationship – both friendship and family—and plenty of terrific jokes. Ken Bolton writes like no-one else in Australia. I could exhaust the lexicon of positive superlatives in praise of these poems because Sly Mongoose is a wonderfully compelling collection.

Ken Bolton, ed. | Coalcliff Days 1979-1982 | Jellied Tongues | 2011

A collection of work by poets and artists who congregated at Coalcliff outside Wollongong, south of Sydney, at the beginning of the 1980s. A silk screen printed cover, drawings, photos, film stills, prose and poems. A big book of early 80s and contemporary gems.

Chris Edwards | People Of Earth | Vagabond | 2011

Playful typography, mistranslations of Mallarmé, renditions of Rilke, cut ups and collage, misquotation, and a long, definitive queer poem—’A revisitation of the plague’. As one critic put it ‘part Goons, part Proust’, this book collects Chris Edwards earlier chapbooks and presents new and ingenious experiments in poetry.

Michael Farrell | thempark | BookThug | 2010

Can’t better the blurb here—’Farrell is caught between a themepark designed by Ashbery and a “thempark” where the others live’ says Michael Davidson. Five stars!

Brian Henry | Lessness | Ahsahta | 2011

More thoughtfulness, exactness and redaction from Brian Henry. Poems that sneak up on your consciousness and lodge there for ages after you’ve read them. A collection of work written over thirteen years from 1995-2008.

Duncan Bruce Hose | One Under Bacchus | inken publisch | 2011

The first poem ‘lyrebird’ and the last ‘An Allegory of Edward Trouble’ are parodic fragmentary rewritings of the legend of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, including the 1970 film with Mick Jagger as the hero. Also poems that parody Laurie Duggan’s (a parodist in his own right) intellectual-Australiana series ‘Blue Hills’ and a homage to Ted Berrigan and more. To quote one poem’s facetious title, this collection is ‘Anglo but Cosmic’.

Kate Lilley | Round Vienna | Vagabond | 2011

A sequence of poems thinking (and joking) about ‘Fraud’s Dora’ and other clever feminist sleights. Illustrated beautifully with Melissa Hardie’s C19 croppings.

Astrid Lorange | Eating and Speaking | Tea Party Republicans Press | 2011

‘One is also chips’ both the sawyer’s, the potato’s and the fictional teacher, Mr. Chips.

This fast set of poems by Stein scholar Astrid Lorange is a tangy gremolada in the bubbling, simmering pot of current innovative poetry.

Dubravka Ugresic | Baba Yaga Laid An Egg | Canongate | 2007

A witty, post modern novel. An adventurous take on the fantastic Slavic legend of Baba Yaga.

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Pam Brown’s most recent title is ‘Authentic Local’ (soi3 modern poets, Papertiger Media, 2010). She has published many books, chapbooks, and an e-book, locally and internationally over four decades and is an associate editor of Jacket2, Polari and Rubric online journals. She lives in Alexandria in Sydney and blogs intermittently at The Deletions.

Brown’s Attention Span for 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003. Back to 2011 directory.