Description:

Description:


Shortlisted for the 2020 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry 

The poems collected in apparently appear like visions, intensely experienced but barely
real. Where does a poem come from? Over four sections this question is
considered. The first section gathers poems spring-boarding from the clues and
solutions to crossword puzzles; the second recounts unsettling dreams in the
form of prose poems or microfictions; 'dial', the longest section, acknowledges
the bewildering sense of daily time and the dizzying spectacle of social and
worldly matters contained within. Finally, from a more restful or relaxed
vantage, 'the random couch' presents a number of drifting poems, written while
the poet was lounging on the sofa.




Praise
for Joanne Burns's poetry:



'It
is a fascinating achievement that Burns is able to confront the surface din and
wreckage of society and bring us through the other side as readers with a
healthier pulse.' — Jessica L. Wilkinson


'With
subtlety and skill [Burns] reprises her spare yet concentrated appraisal of the
polis, the legends and strands of the indigenous, inter-generational,
confessional, and archaic presences that wash up upon its shores and into her
net of words.' — Cordite Poetry Review