Graeme Miles' Infernal Topographies has been shortlisted for the Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry in the 2022 Tasmanian Literary Awards.
The infernal topographies of the title are more psychological than geographical, though physical travel and the infusing of the past into the present are also at issue. Driven in part by the anxieties of time and mortality that have always been at the root of lyric, these poems are also shaped by the pressure of the likely collapse of the current social order, and by impending and current extinctions. Weaving the domestic, the oneiric and the outside worlds, these are poems that try to find a place from which to speak and think when so much seems to be ending.
Judges’ comments on the shortlist:
From encounters with place, to encounters with others, human and non-human, the works by the poets on this shortlist showcase myriad ways to respond to the world. Attentive to the elastic pull between thought and feeling, these poets bring formal control and deft movement.
In Earth Dwellers Kristen Lang puts us as readers into relationship with many other inhabitants of our planet in poems that are timely and topical, while in Infernal Topographies, Graeme Miles highlights the way a contemporary life can be lived in conversation with much older stories. Esther Ottaway’s Intimate, low-voiced, delicate things speaks to the tenderness of love and loss in all its physicality, while Lyn Reeve’s painterly haiku distil all that a moment can contain.
Visit Arts Tasmania to find out more about the prize.
Order your copy of Infernal Topographies here.
UWA Publishing warmly congratulates Graeme and the fellow shortlisted writers on their achievement.