eleanor j jackson
  • Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet,
    performer, arts producer, cyclist, writer, gal
    about town, feminist, freewheeler, and
    friend. One day, she is going to be an
    ideas curator. Which basically
    means, she will tell you
    exactly what she thinks.
    Until then, you’ll have
    to read between
    the lines.

  • BIO
  • Publications
  • Audio
  • Video
  • Performances
  • Press
  • Projects
    • Collaborations
      • Artology Remix
      • Chosen Family
      • DJ Thought Fox vs MC Lady Lazarus
      • Just Before You Died
      • Shave and a Haircut
      • She Stole My Every Rock and Roll
      • We Bury Not Burn
    • Performance Installations
      • A timely act of intimacy
      • Now You See Me
      • Side A/Side B
      • Social Climbing
    • Production
      • Melbourne Poetry Map
      • Peril Magazine
  • Contact

A LEAVING – CHAPBOOK OUT NOW

  • March 1, 2018
  • by Eleanor Jackson
  • · musing · Poetry
“Having deluded our love into existence.”
In this spare and sharply observed collection of poems is the essence of a human story: what transpires when, despite all reason, we love someone who makes it difficult to love them.
Like all stories, this one happens to a particular person at a particular time. In this case, contemporary urban Australia with its “metal mimicking ocean / wash after relentless wash of cars.” Some readers may recognise the specificity of Australia’s smells, songs and cutlery, the ambivalence of its countrymen’s feeling for the place. Others may recognise a more collective truth: all our experiences inevitably become the measure of our selves.
What Jackson brings to this universal experience is a particular feminine intellect that cleans, sharpens and neatly stores decisions and understanding to revel how and what love inscribes on our lives – “remove the necrotic flesh with the scalpel of dejection / leave only open wound – we will heal beautifully.”
The imagery is a shocking and sometimes bleakly humorous mixture of the intimacies of blood and drink with the detachment of words and memories – perhaps most of all the final detachment of writing itself. As Dickinson, another precise poet of female experience, put it: “How much can come / And much can go, And yet abide the world!”
“A Leaving reads like a photograph taken before the body cools, a state of undress few poets expose. “Suitable for mature audiences”, this is poetry of short direct imagery and sharp intakes of breath, often startling intimacy from within its detached frame” – David Stavanger, author of The Special.

Available now via Vagabond Press.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...
  • « Prev
  • Next »
Leave A Comment   ↓

Comments

  1. Graeme Carswell March 1, 2018 · Reply

    Congratulations Eleanor. Hope your work does well. All the best. Graeme

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

Blog at WordPress.com.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
%d bloggers like this: