Campus Review Vol. 29 Issue 4 - April 2019 | Seite 25

faculty focus
campusreview.com.au
There are some significant overlaps
between the poetry occurring overseas and
in Australia. Chief among these, I feel, is the
way that poetry provides a space to raise
consciousness about significant social and
political issues, including Indigenous rights,
domestic violence, and other systemic
injustices and violence that can be difficult
to richly articulate in other modes.
If we curtail poetry to a national
category, then I’m also inclined to point
out that a number of Australian poets have,
historically, lived abroad while producing
their works. Transnationalism and moving
beyond national or ethnic boundaries is
thus another significant factor in thinking
about contemporary poetry.
How have digital technology and social
media influenced the creation and
distribution of poetry?
We cannot overstate the impact that
online spaces have had on improving the
visibility of poetry beyond the canon taught
by schools and universities. At the same
time, however, this digital revolution has
shifted the conditions by which poetry
operates today, not only in terms of its
media – for example, e-poetics that plays
with the profundities of online experiences
– but also in terms of whose poetry gains
a voice.
It is arguable that digital technologies
have demotised rather than democratised
poetry, with sites such as Poetry.com and
the Web 2.0 networks of social media
almost entirely circumventing the curatorial
role of editors and publishers. This does not
suggest that poetry is easy to accomplish
by any means, but it does mean that we
have access to a lot more that we might
describe as ‘poetic’ in general.
While some commentators will delight in
measuring the moral compass of this shift,
I’m less inclined to impose an irrational
guilt on social mediation online and instead
present this shift as a transformation of
aesthetics.
Today is a unique time for poetry because
the presentation of tortious problems
is suddenly presented to our private
judgement alongside old formalisms and
eclipsed tropes shambling forth.
How did you spend World Poetry Day?
I continued to push for the richness
and value of the humanities in a day full
of university administration. UNESCO
established World Poetry Day to support and
celebrate linguistic diversity through poetic
expression, especially that of endangered
languages and their communities.
Set on the 21st day of March, the date
overlaps with the UN International Day for
the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,
Australian government initiatives around
Harmony Week, and the Autumnal equinox.
For me, this complex of calendar events
highlights that World Poetry Day is not a
normative elevation of the dignity of the
poetic, it is also a call to respect and receive
the changing voices of our world.  ■
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