[Writes Owens of her new masterwork: “In the order of the letters of the alphabet I am making use in these poems of a system of mental relations which by the act of writing becomes the poem, a cosmic meditation.”]
[Writes Owens of her new masterwork: “In the order of the letters of the alphabet I am making use in these poems of a system of mental relations which by the act of writing becomes the poem, a cosmic meditation.”]
PETER MINTER is an Australian poet, poetry editor, and writer on poetry and poetics. His books include the award-winning Empty Texas and blue grass, and his poetry has been widely published and translated internationally, most recently in his book In the Serious Light of Nothing (Chinese University Press Hong Kong, 2013). He was a founding editor of Cordite poetry magazine, coedited the pioneering anthologies Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets and the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, and has been the poetry editor for leading Australian journals Meanjin and Overland. He shares Aboriginal, Scottish, and English ancestry, and teaches Indigenous Studies, Australian Literature, and Creative Writing at the University of Sydney.
NOTE (by Gerry Loose): The Primer is loosely drawn from the Auraicept na n-Eces, a seventh century CE Old Irish tract known as the Scholars’ Primer or Handbook of the Learned.
It deals with Irish grammar and vernacular, claimed within that book to be descended from speech before the Tower of Babel and more comprehensive than Hebrew, Latin or Greek. The earliest written version we have is from the twelfth century CE, with many additions to the early text.
[The following is a blog post I wrote for the University of California Press to celebrate the expanded fiftieth anniversary edition of Technicians of the Sacred, with an emphasis on its renewed relevance against the upsurge today of still potent nationalisms and racisms, directed most often against the diversity of mind and spirit of which the earlier Technicians was so clearly a part. At least I hope so. (J.R.)]
[The following is a blog post I wrote for the University of California Press to celebrate the expanded fiftieth anniversary edition of Technicians of the Sacred, with an emphasis on its renewed relevance against the upsurge today of still potent nationalisms & racisms, directed most often against the diversity of mind & spirit of which the earlier Technicians was so clearly a part. (J.R.)]
Poems and poetics