Lyre

Abstract

Research Background Lyre responds to ongoing discussions in contemporary poetics, animal studies and the environmental humanities about the representation of non-humans in literature. In the vast majority of Western literature, non-humans are largely ornamental and function as the backdrop to human dramas. When they do speak, non-humans are often given human voices in order to function as archetypal symbols of human concerns. Lyre is part of a growing body of work that seeks to listen more carefully to more-than-human languages, and explore some of the ways that such listening might transform human modes of writing and speaking.

Research Contribution Lyre performs a number of radical innovations. Most obviously, the book presents an entirely new concept of poetic pagination by employing a wide range of forms which often run over numerous pages. Syntactically, the poems effectively blend the languages of the natural sciences with samples of contemporary poetry (from numerous languages) and field observation, and thereby propose examples of a genuinely 'interdisciplinary' language of both arts and sciences.

Research Significance Lyre was published with University of Western Australia Publishing, one of the country's premier poetry publishers. However, to reflect its scope and originality, the book was not published as part of UWAP's regular poetry series, but rather as a stand-alone title. Lyre received glowing endorsement quotes from Nobel Laureate JM Coetzee, leading animal philosopher Vinciane Despret (Belgium) and renowned ecopoet and scholar Jonathan Skinner (US/UK). A number of the poems in the book have won awards and been published in places such as The Best Australian Poems. Lyre was also featured recently on the J2 blog of iconic US poet Jerome Rothenberg: http://jacket2.org/commentary/stuart-cooke?fbclid=IwAR3UKj_zsASnsKpkDfaKE--7LOD3uOX9BcbDRVTU1e87M4df1s_cLzou240