The Zoopoetics of Les Murray: Animal Poetry, Attentiveness and the More-Than-Human World

Today, the Western world is extensively centred around human language and the natural sciences. The transformative powers of poetry, such as they can bring forth the presence of nonhuman animals, have thus been marginalized in several respects. This article investigates how the animal poems of Presence, a poetic sequence in the poetry collection Translations from the Natural World by the Australian poet Les Murray, re-sensitizes the reader to the expressive bodies of nonhuman animals and establishes the notion of a more-than-human world. By introducing Aaron M. Moe’s concept of zoopoetics, a theory and practice that links the nonhuman animal as a maker, subject and individual to the art of writing and reading poetry, Murray’s animal poems can be understood as deeply attentive texts that use human language to explore how nonhuman bodies and minds exist outside of anthropocentric binaries, and shape not only our physical realities, but also our imagination

The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetry by Michael Malay

Review of Michael Malay\u27s The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetr

The literary text at the borders of linguistics and culture: A SF analysis of Les Murray’s ‘Migratory’

none1noThis article is concerned with the relations between literary text and context, and with the enabling role of lexicogrammatical and structural features in establishing connections between the former and the latter. It shows how foregrounding together with aspects of texture and of interpersonal and experiential meanings in "Migratory" by Les Murray function as a bridge to relate Murray's poem to its cultural contexts of creation and interpretation. What on a superficial reading appears to be a poem about bird migration is shown to be about human migration in a way that challenges hegemonic views of this phenomenon. This paper argues that foregrounding in the poem takes the form of grammatical and lexical parallelism and deviation. These parallelisms and deviations structure the poem textually and experientially into identifiable parts, dealing with the theme of migration from two different perspectives: one focused on an external landscape and bird habitat, the other on a perceptive/ affective abstract sphere suggestive of human consciousness. The poet's lexico-grammatical choices link the poem to a political theme contemporary with its context of creation: the reclaiming by native australians of lands taken from their ancestors by British colonizers. The poem is thus seen to propose an alternative representation of the Australian landscape and its original inhabitants to traditional ones of colonial myth.Si tratta di una pubblicazione di una casa editrice universitaria italiana, che include numerosi contributi internazionali scritti da studiosi che lavorano in università francesi, tedesche, spagnole, australiane, inglesi e slovene. L'articolo ha un impianto interdisciplinare che fa uso di una analisi stilistica per affrontare questioni ideologiche pertinenti alla recenti lotta degli aborigeni australiani per il riconoscimento dei loro territori.mixedM. TurciM. Turc

Australia in the vernacular: Poetic explorations

As Australian society continues to evolve, so is the idea of a collective culture changing in ways that provoke a questioning of traditional values, tropes and symbols. This thesis will explore and analyse some of the changes in the ways poetic art might imagine what Australian identity and culture look like: through a creative component comprising a small collection of my own poetry and a dissertation that offers a reading of a small selection of poems by Australian poet Les Murray. The creative component will seek to capture glimpses of the ordinary aspects of contemporary Australian society, and to show how poetry has the potential to transcend exclusionary viewpoints in order to re-imagine Australian diversity. The dissertation will explore how Murray, who both interpreted and translated familiar images of Australian landscapes, nature, culture, and people, pieces together a mosaic written in the Australian vernacular—for him the key to understanding Australian identity. While Murray’s poetry has been criticised for its restrictive views of Australian culture, his harnessing of the vernacular offers the possibility for an expansive poetic rendering of national life in all its difference. Overall, the thesis aims to offer the reader an imaginative series of poetic and critical reflections on elements of Australia’s complexity as a changing nation

The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetry by Michael Malay

Review of Michael Malay\u27s The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetr

Book Review: The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetry

The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetry by Michael Malay seeks to explore the deep connections between “poetic” thinking and the sensitive recognition of animal others. The author investigates and illustrates the nature of poetry’s relationship with animals

Towards Female Empowerment. The New Generation of Irish Women Poets: Vona Groarke, Sinéad Morrissey, Caitríona O’Reilly and Mary O’Donoghue

The monographic study “Towards Female Empowerment − The New Generation of Irish Women Poets: Vona Groarke, Sinéad Morrissey, Caítriona O’Reilly, and Mary O’Donoghue” analyses in depth the poetry written by four most significant Irish authors born in the 1970s. Together with insightful interpretations of the explored poetry, it offers a new reading of philosophy, social and cultural studies, and psychology connected with the subject matter of women’s empowerment. The book constitutes a thought-provoking debate on the up-to-date issues that need to be critically re-examined and re-thought these days. It is an inspiring reading for people interested not only in Irish poetry but in modern literature in general.I have dedicated this monograph to my Mother whose unremitting and unfailing support “empowered” me to work on this book. Many thanks to my fiancé for not losing faith in me and for his patience. Over the years, while conducting my research on contemporary Irish women’s poets, I have encountered many inspiring and helpful people to whom I am sincerely indebted for their advice, wisdom and encouragement. With regard to this book, my special thanks are directed to Michaela Schrage-Früh, her husband David and Frederic for their hospitality and kindness. I would like to thank Przemysław Ostalski for his help with typesetting of the book, and Richard O’Callaghan Ph.D. for proofreading of the earlier versions of the text. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Jerzy Jarniewicz for inspiring me to read poetry

Anymals, Poems, Empathy.:A Zoopoetical Study

Summary A vast body of research addresses the relationships between empathy and novels figuring human protagonists, and the notion that novel reading as a kind of ‘empathy training’ meets little skepticism. As the saying goes, readers can live a thousand lives in the minds of the characters in the novels they read. How different the case when the protagonists are anymals instead of humans. This study focuses on zoopoetry to explore the intricate relation between anymals, poems, and empathy. It addresses the abyss between the anymal and the human, whether an abyss of knowledge or of phenomenal experience, to argue that poets who write about anymals employ ‘zoopoetical tools’ to bridge the gap between the two worlds. They employ an array of traditional poetic tools such as rhythm and metaphor, but they also draw from a previously unnamed zoopoetical lexicon to illustrate how the assumed abyss between the anymal and the human is in fact based on speciesism and Cartesian dualism. In his article “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974), the philosopher Thomas Nagel provocatively argues that we are unable to know what it is to feel bat-like. We might be able to imagine to a certain extent what it is to fly around and catch insects in our mouths, he writes, but then we only know what it is like for us to behave like a bat, whereas we can never know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. In trying to imagine what a bat experiences, we stumble on a line we can never cross, between our own subjective worlds and the phenomenal experience of the bat. Researchers in both literary studies and biology often invoke Nagel’s example and presume a skeptical stance concerning the knowability and envisionability of the phenomenal experience of anymal others. In this vein, Jenny Diski writes that there is “an abyss of knowledge that we simply can’t cross” (73). Three central oppositions emerge from speciecism and Cartesian dualism to complicate explorations of zoopoetical anymals: anthropocentrism versus anymals as themselves; projectivism versus empathy or sympathetic identification; and anymals inside a text versus anymals outside a text. Note that the tension in these oppositions is less felt when human subjects receive poetic attention. Zoopoetical anymals, however, seem to be inevitably anthropomorphised by poets and readers alike. As a result, empathy seems to become an unattainable ideal; with whom would we be empathising? In this study I argue, however, that many of these assumptions about anymal minds are based upon Cartesian dualism. This study, therefore, is driven by two central questions that counter these assumptions. In what ways does zoopoetry confront and unsettle Cartesian dualism? How do instances of perspective shift and empathy evoked through zoopoetry contribute to the empathy debate? These questions are not straightforwardly answered. Instead, the chapters show a hermeneutical to-and-fro movement between the poems, philosophical ideas, and the topic of empathy

'Unhappily in love with God': conceptions of the divine in the poetry of Geoffrey Hill, Les Murray and R.S Thomas

This thesis looks at the poetry of three markedly different contemporary poets, Geoffrey Hill, Les Murray and R. S. Thomas. They are linked by at least tacit belief in Christianity and the Christian world-view, and this belief shapes everything they write, whether explicitly 'religious' or otherwise. My focus throughout the thesis is on Hill, Murray and Thomas's differing conceptions of God, and my explorations of their poetic and religious stances take God as both their starting point and destination. The opening chapter is a general introduction to the possibilities of religious poetry in the modern world, before turning, in chapter two, to Hill, Murray and Thomas themselves and an identification of their religious concerns and sensibilities. The remaining thematic chapters concern themselves with Hill and Murray's explorations of suffering and evil, post-1945; the place of humour and laughter in the religious visions of Murray and Hill; Murray's remarkable sequence of animal poems, 'Presence'; and the figure of Christ in the poetry of Thomas. I conclude with a discussion of T. S. Eliot's misgivings concerning religious poetry, and how Hill, Murray and Thomas avoid writing the limited poetry he identifies. My method throughout is to base my discussion of these three poets on close readings of their individual poems