A fluke? [N]ever! : reading Chris Edwards

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of collage, mimicry and hieroglyphics by the innovative Australian poet Chris Edwards in his latest book of poetry, People of Earth (Vagabond Press, 2011). With scissors in hand, Edwards goes hunting for Jacques Derrida’s “non-phonetic functions” and “operative silences of alphabetic writing”, those poetical score-marks that are neither “factual accident nor waste” (Derrida, ‘The Pit and the Pyramid’), but rather, endlessly renewable resources. The collagist is a recycler and composter, and also a compositor – a filmic sculptor who tricks visual fragments into new entities. Edwards is a deft and seamless crafter, often producing grammatically flawless collages whose motion from scene to scene is subtle and kaleidoscopic. An appendix to People of Earth compiles hundreds of texts that are sources for Edwards’ poems. They are a gentle invitation to detective work, but mostly, a museum of tools tended by a fastidious drafter. This paper will explore the radical materialism of Chris Edwards while invoking along the way the ghosts of Christopher Brennan, Charlie Chaplin, Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Olson