It's difficult to watch the daily news coming out of Australia and not feel a profound sense of helplessness — for the lives lost or disrupted, the sheer scale of the destruction, and the lack of any foreseeable end to the wildfires. In trying times like these, we find poetry to be a useful means of standing in solidarity with those suffering far away, therefore today we're highlighting Australia-centric content from both PennSound and Jacket2.
There's no better place to start than our Australian Poets anthology page, which is home to a comprehensive anthology of contemporary Australian voices, organized by the indispensable Pam Brown and first unveiled in 2013. In addition to links to preexisting author pages for Kate Lilley and John Tranter, it includes (then-)new recordings from a total of twenty-five poets: Adam Aitken, Ali Alizadeh, Judith Bishop, Ken Bolton, Bonny Cassidy, Stuart Cooke, Laurie Duggan, Kate Fagan, Michael Farrell, Liam Ferney, Duncan Hose, Jill Jones, Kit Kelen, John Kinsella, Peter Minter, Tracy Ryan, Jaya Savige, Pete Spence, Amanda Stewart, Ann Vickery, Corey Wakeling, Alan Wearne, Fiona Wright, Tim Wright, and Mark Young. This astounding collection of recordings is amazing in and of itself, but even more so when you realize that it's a supplement to an even more momentous Jacket2 feature: "Fifty-One Contemporary Poets from Australia", also organized by Brown, which was released in five installments over the course of 2012. Here's how she she opens her preface to the collection:
When it comes to poetry anthologies, I agree with David Antin's long-ago quip — "Anthologies are to poets as zoos are to animals" — and I think that journals and magazines are probably better indicators of what's current in any country's poetry than grand, often agenda-driven anthologies. Here I am presenting the work of fifty-one contemporary poets from Australia. My aim was to make it broadly representative by including innovation and experimentation alongside quasi-romanticism, elegy, and the almost-pastoral. No one in this group writes like another. The common link is simply that each poet is an Australian whether by birth, residence or citizenship.
She continues: "This collection could probably be read as an anthology, and so I grant a comment on omission. There are many other poets writing and publishing in Australia, probably around four hundred, who aren't included here. A problem for any editor assembling a collection of writing from Australia is the inclusion of multiracial poetries. At the outset, I should say that there are no Australian indigenous nor Torres Strait Islander poets in this selection of poems." That omission, however, is answered somewhat by Robbie Wood's astounding 2012 Jacket2 feature "On Australian Aboriginal Poetry: 'The Last Evening Glow Above the Horizon.'" Unlike typical Jacket2 features, which publish all of their content in one shot, Wood has filed new addenda to his anthology in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and I presume we might have further installments to look forward to in the future as well.
Taken together, these features represent some of my favorite PennSound and Jacket2 content over my long tenure with both sites, and while I wish there were more auspicious reasons for Australia to be on the minds of people all over the world. For those who are capable of donating to help victims of the wildfires, The New York Times offers a rundown of various charities on the ground offering assistance, and if you're feeling crafty, there are other important ways you can help as well.
We send our sincere best wishes to the people of Australia and hope for a swift end to these fires so that the long and arduous process of recovery can begin in earnest. Moreover, we hope that sanity may prevail in regards to the looming climate crisis, such that disasters of this scope are no longer treated as normal occurrences.
