|
Back
cover comments:
"Beth
Spencer's condensed narrative elides the categories of poetry & prose
-- she uses poetics to nudge fiction over the edge. Episodic, surreal,
tender & tough, these poems traverse suburbs studded with the encoded
artefacts of family, popular culture, memory & desire. In the longer
poems she takes a flying tackle at the lyricism of High Poetry & ends
up winning the match."
--PAMELA
BROWN
"An(other)
order of things: the souvenirs of the everyday -- objects, images, fragments
of speech, domestic scenes -- are scrutinised through television screens,
train windows, cameras and display cases. Apparent transparencies become
splintered to create new optics: these things' collected and contained,
far from amortised, suddenly look back at the viewer. This is writing
as surprising and familiar as the repressed when it erupts into life;
as piercing as pleasure or pain."
--ANNA
GIBBS
email:
beth @
bethspencer
dot com
|
Things
in a Glass Box was published in the second of the SCARP/Five
Islands Press New Poets Series, edited by Ron Pretty and John Scott
from the University of Wollongong's Creative Arts Department.
It's got fifteen
poems packed into 32 pages, including "The Mummy's Foot",
a long piece that might be called a story or might be called a prose
poem (I called it a story when I won the Age Short Story Award
with it in 1994, and a poem when I put it in this book); and another
long one called "The Museum of Fire", which is also the title
of an essay I wrote, based around the poems, about history, memory and
representation.
And it's also got
a fabulous cover image by the photographic
artist, Helen Kundicevic, from a series called "The Philosopher's
Stone".
As an experiment in using the internet to distribute poetry books, I've
set up a copy of Things in a Glass Box
that you can print at home, fold and staple, and end up with an
exact facsimile of the original version. --------->
There are also
audio versions of some
of these poems that I produced in collaboration
with Sydney sound-artist, Stuart Ewings, and these were broadcast on
a program on ABC Radio National's Poetica.
These audio versions are also available on my double CD of sound and
radio pieces, Body of Words,
and companion CD-ROM Box of Words, published by Dogmedia.
The CD-Rom also has discussion notes and writing exercises based on
the poems, to use in teaching.
*
Here are some links to a few poems and bits:
Read
"Diorama:
in the Melbourne Museum"
or
 listen
to the audio version
"A
Blue Mountains Coin-in-the-Slot Telescope Poem"
(not in the book, because there wasn't enough space,
first published in Southerly, Winter, 1995)
'Pandora
on the Eve of Destruction' (written for the first Gulf War in 1991,
and reprinted in Specusphere in 2005, where it was noticed and nominated
as one of the year's best Australian sf & fantasy pieces on Bill
Congreve & Michelle Marquardt's annual recommended list.
listen to the audio of 'Love
Poem'
"The Museum of Fire"
(an essay based around some of the poems, that also formed a kind of
sub-text to the Poetica radio program, and
to the book itself.)
'Eve in the Garden'
(from Discursive Angel internet magazine)
"Doing the Rock: June 1984"
- from Gangway magazine (October 1998)
or
listen
to the audio version
(this one was produced
by
Claudia Taranto for the ABC's Listening Room)
and
while you're listening,
why not print yourself a free
copy
of Things in a Glass Box
Home | About Me | Fiction | Poetry
| Essays |
CDs/CD-ROM & teaching
material | Contact
 visitors to this page
since it was revamped on 25th April 2007
free
counter supplied by www.digits.com/
|
Home
About me
Fiction
Poetry
Essays
CDs/CD-Rom/
Teaching materials
Contact
 How
to print a free copy
of Things in a Glass Box
(poetry book first published by Five Islands Press)
'Giving
It Away For Free:
Spineless Books With Bite'
an article about using the internet
to distribute print-at-home or
'print-on demand' poetry books,
and how this might work
(The Age, November 2004)
*
'I'd like
to have permission to be postmodern, but I'm
not sure
who to ask..'
Jacket magazine
(about my experiences with
appropriation & copyright law)
*
|
