Nathan Shepherdson
'Poems reawaken in us,’ writes James Longenbach, ‘the pleasure of the unintelligibility of the world.’ They do so via ‘mechanisms of self-resistance’: disjunctive strategies that work, for Longenbach, to ‘resist our intelligence almost successfully’. What ‘almost’ means here is, of course, a matter of taste – and style. Nonetheless, this Romantic mandate – that poems achieve clarity by integrating opacity – invites a question fundamental to poetics: how much resistance is too much, or not enough?
... (read more)States of Poetry 2016 QLD Podcast | 'the black hand of Badia Elmi' by Nathan Shepherdson
Thursday, 23 June 2016In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Nathan Shepherdson reads his poem 'the black hand of Badia Elmi' which features in the 2016 Queensland anthology.
... (read more)'the notebooks of Mr & Mrs Emeritus' by Nathan Shepherdson | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
ironing the crease into her lung with your breath
the six words in end steam over blue charcoal in her eye
your hands arrive in separate envelopes on different days
and they are addressed to each other
even the earth in its eyedropper is not medicine to our mouths
it's the milk dispensed through holes in a flute that keeps us alive
Mr & Mrs Emeritus ...
'the black hand of Badia Elmi' by Nathan Shepherdson | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One
Nathan Shepherdson