In this week's 'Sunday stanzas', we're sharing 'A perfectly ordinary dachshund observes the problem of being' by Declan Fry. This poem first appeared in 'Griffith Review 82: Animal Magic'.
Is there a poet whose work you'd love to see us feature? Comment below and let us know!
#GriffithReview #SundayStanzas #Poetry #GriffithUniversity
Memo Magazine, Issue 4, Chris Kraus & Declan Fry in conversation.
“I speak to Chris Kraus on the eve of the publication of The Four Spent the Day Together, her first novel in over a decade. The author of five works of fiction, several collections of art criticism, an acclaimed biography of Kathy Acker, and founder of Semiotext(e)’s “Native Agents” series, Kraus is best known for her 1997 debut I Love Dick. It took time to find its audience, but once it did, you couldn’t escape its iconic pink and green Peter Dyer cover (the book was everywhere on social media circa 2016, nestled near collections of succulents, tastefully flaunted on the tram and tube). Depicting the plight of the woman in the art world who has something to say, its protagonist, Chris, senses her last chance to pull out the stops, kick out the jams, and make some noise. It reads like the work of someone who has just discovered language: a language for her anger, a language for her desire. She can’t get enough of it. Over the novel’s few hundred pages, a dizzying, tremendously funny story of passion, self-assertion, and craving plays out. When we speak, it is summer. She is, she says, finally taking a break.” — Declan Fry
Portrait of Chris Kraus, Los Angeles, 2024. Photo: Hanna Soon.
@chriskraus7@_declanfry@scribnerbooks
Wrote about Andrea Illés (@_purple_stars_expleting_ ) film 𝕯𝖗𝖊𝖊𝖒2 and 𝓷𝓸 𝓻𝓸𝓬𝓴 𝓷𝓸 𝓯𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻 for @memo_review
𝕯𝖗𝖊𝖊𝖒2 is on until Saturday. final part of 𝓷𝓸 𝓻𝓸𝓬𝓴 𝓷𝓸 𝓯𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻 plays through October 24 at @westspace
ty David Wlazlo for incredible editing, Amelia Winata for commissioning & Paris Lettau!
In his magnum opus peep show, contemporary affect scholar David Mitchell remarks, I’ve said too much, haven’t I? damn. damn these lips of mine, and I guess witold must have sympathised cos everyone’s lips are cursed in this one, also feel witold has seen challengers (I’m still busy rinsing the Reznor/Atticus Ross soundtrack), this makes me jealous
You wouldn’t steal a car, but you can now steal/read/pirate/torrent/burn/this CD/cassette. Lonely? Need 911? 911 Lonely: it’s free. I mean, you still have to read it, but we are giving you the piece! The paywall is down, the means of production are finally yours to possess from the convenience of your living room (no fixed address) ((public toilet/parking lot)). It’s your house! The existing conditions, Jim! Recognise your common, shared, collective copyleft by a nasty street queen! And if you call 1800sometime, that’s 1800sometime, you can win a free copy of your very own copy of a film directed by: Gregg Araki/Céline Sciamma/Andrzej Żuławski/Lucile Hadžihalilović. Find a public space and reimagine it; share that imagining with another you can be sure will pass it along or keep it alive. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. Dance like you are in a car listening to Yothu Yindi sing Treaty or Tyler, the Creator singing A BOY IS A GUN* or about to found a Laboratory that will—no, no injunctions; that might—intervene in everyday life, in life as it is now lived and will be lived, with intervention, improvisation, interrogation, jamming, retrieval, reformation, rethinking. Do this before it becomes familiar and readymade.
Then do something else.
you know what is a bit great? gelato. also this year’s @thestellaprize long and shortlist. kudos to all. wrote about Alexis Wright Praiseworthy and Hayley Singer’s Abandon Every Hope: Essays for the Dead in @abc_arts
“Slow motion views of copulation are complemented by similarly paced and staged descriptions of dismemberment in war: both acts seem to disintegrate the individual, who never really can be whole again.”
That’s Peter Pierce, writing about Thomas Keneally’s Confederates in a 1980 issue of @meanjinquarterly_
‘Futurism and Other Projections’: that’s the name of the survey, a look at Australian fiction including Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair, Colin Johnson and others. A delicious survey it is, too — brought a smile to my face.
But poor David Ireland! All the conniptions over A Woman of the Future. Pierce writes, “Like her country, Alethea is had by whatever and whoever is passing. Ireland’s essential point is distressingly obvious, though this does not explain why Alethea’s generosity should extend to putting her somnolent father’s penis in her mouth or sexually exciting a dog.
“The terms of Ireland’s myth are never intelligibly worked out. Why does she turn into a leopard before she flees to the interior? What are we to make of the mumbling paradox of her very last words: ‘the secret is in the emptiness’? [...] The pretentious myth-making centred around an Australian female in A Woman of the Future ends where it surely did not mean to be — serving up sentimental nationalism in transparent disguise. So much for the Miles Franklin Award.”
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![“Slow motion views of copulation are complemented by similarly paced and staged descriptions of dismemberment in war: both acts seem to disintegrate the individual, who never really can be whole again.”That’s Peter Pierce, writing about Thomas Keneally’s Confederates in a 1980 issue of @meanjinquarterly_‘Futurism and Other Projections’: that’s the name of the survey, a look at Australian fiction including Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair, Colin Johnson and others. A delicious survey it is, too — brought a smile to my face.But poor David Ireland! All the conniptions over A Woman of the Future. Pierce writes, “Like her country, Alethea is had by whatever and whoever is passing. Ireland’s essential point is distressingly obvious, though this does not explain why Alethea’s generosity should extend to putting her somnolent father’s penis in her mouth or sexually exciting a dog.“The terms of Ireland’s myth are never intelligibly worked out. Why does she turn into a leopard before she flees to the interior? What are we to make of the mumbling paradox of her very last words: ‘the secret is in the emptiness’? [...] The pretentious myth-making centred around an Australian female in A Woman of the Future ends where it surely did not mean to be — serving up sentimental nationalism in transparent disguise. So much for the Miles Franklin Award.”](https://sp1.picnob.com/p/pt_6865662139294337467022_0_e7e4851ec129ee8d8d5be139d22eeec4.jpg?o=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&h=407803c5f3ef706f3182c0ae7c6959ca)
