Alogopoiesis
Alogia is a condition of reduced or absent speech. Poiesis is making. Alogopoiesis therefore forges a poetics of the unstated, a making of meanings from what’s not there. Poems in this book explore experiences of domestic violence, queer heartbreak, and mental illness, among other topics that are often hushed up or hard to voice. Surreal symbolism interweaves with bare personal accounts, prose poetry with flash fiction and lyric verse. Sequences of erasure, fragmentation and revision mobilise gaps and omissions as sites of significance. The book in entirety forms a macro-poem in which rhythms of repetition and variation continually reconfigure the parts that form the whole. The result is a speaking of silence through form acting as content, and thereby, a raising of issues for which greater attention is deserved.
Amelia Walker is a poet who lives and works on Kaurna Yerta, also known as Adelaide, South Australia. She has published four poetry collections and three books of poetry writing activities for educational and community settings, based on her extensive work as a poet in schools and with arts-health projects. She currently lectures in courses on writing and literary studies at the University of South Australia, and is managing a research project that facilitates partnerships between poets in different countries to promote intercultural learning and connectivity through the arts.
