A Foul Wind
In A Dictionary of the English Language, Dr Johnson defines ‘foul’ as ‘full of gross humours.’ It can also mean discoloured, obscene, and profane. Yet the phrase ‘a foul wind’ is specifically
nautical: it’s a wind that blows against the direction you want to go — that sends you off-
course and into misadventure.
Isn’t that poetry, though, pushing back against your intention and will? In this new collection,
Justin Clemens finds himself lost, wrecked, and washed up on the isle of the damned. He
discovers a world of undrinkable Dummheit, stuffed to the gills with cyberpreneurs and
pseudonatural secretaries, downsizing corporations and corruption taskforces, ‘80s rappers
and ‘90s drugs, planetary plague and terra nullius.
With a nod to Restoration drama and contemporary philosophy, A Foul Wind is a tour-de-force of morality, politics, and love.
Justin Clemens is one of Australia’s best known writers and the author of many books about art, philosophy, and poetry, including Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy, Barron Field in New South Wales: the Poetics of Terra Nullius, Villain, Black River, and The Mundiad, which was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize. He teaches at the University of Melbourne.
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