Political readings in contemporary Australian poetry

Brown, Chris

Title: Political readings in contemporary Australian poetry
Creator: Brown, Chris
Relation: University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
Resource Type: thesis
Date: 2022
Description: Higher Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Description: My PhD comprises a poetry manuscript, hotel universo (Puncher & Wattmann, 2020) and an accompanying exegesis, ‘Political Readings in Contemporary Australian poetry’, which places hotel universo in a broader literary context, with a focus on different ways the social and political register in contemporary Australian poetics. In Chapter One of the exegesis, “Pam Brown and ’68”, I examine the work of contemporary poet, Pam Brown. An historical and contextual approach reveals Brown’s critique of concepts of representation, self, myth, recuperation, and hegemony. Brown’s poetry exposes striking intersections of the domestic and political; as much as her work announces the pleasure of daily poetic practice, this no less suggests the rejection of conventional economies of production, and, correspondingly, a political “delinquency” of non-production (Deletions). (In introducing Pam Brown, it seems timely to make clear that, given the various “Browns” that appear in this thesis (Pam Brown, Lachlan Brown, Chris Brown), “Brown” without an initial before it will always refer to Pam Brown.) While my examination of Brown’s poetry addresses the specific question of political contexts and their relation to contemporary poetic and political thinking, my second chapter, “Michael Farrell: Politics of Innovation”, focuses on Farrell’s use of form and its social and political significances. In Farrell’s poetry I identify a clear and sustained critique of closed social forms, as well as implicit exhortation to the social value of difference. Working with the idea that a broken unity or disunity might equate, in positive terms, with difference and heterogeneity, I argue that Farrell’s poetry protects the singular elements that comprise the poem from the assimilative effect of synthesis. An insistence on the singular, the elemental, and the difference they together represent, are the foundation, I suggest, of Farrell’s poetic of community (Unsettlement 104). In theorising the politics of both Brown and Farrell I rely as much on social and political texts as those from the field of literary criticism. In doing so I hope to show a tangible correspondence between contemporary poetry and those of social and political theory, and the ethical concerns the two can be seen to share. The final chapter of the exegesis positions hotel universo alongside readings of Brown and Farrell. In reading my poetry I look to the political through concepts of location, considering the political implications of suburban and regional identity, where specificities of place are problematised by individualist and consumer-led cultural homogeneities, and by programs of global trade and communication. I then offer a methodological appraisal of my poetry’s interest in objectivity, with a focus on the politics of the contemporary object, considering relations between self and object in a culture inclined to individualism. I conclude with a focus on intercultural and travel contexts. Beginning with an ethics of writing place, I consider the way that context shapes an understanding of linguistic primacy. With further reference to my poetry, I offer a short summative statement on the main ideas I have explored across the several chapters of the exegesis.
Subject: contemporary Australian poetry; poetry; hotel universo; linguistic primacy
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1512571
Identifier: uon:56633
Language: eng
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