51 Alterities

An incisive observer of Australian cultural life returns with a collection that satirically reimagines our era of chaos and chicanery.

"The republic of letters / a veritable la la land," writes Keri Glastonbury in 51 Alterities, a collection in which cacophony rhymes with simplicity, and device notifications rebound across the desert horizon. In her poems, "nepo boys are punching above their weight," haunted by the "spectres of unreal estate"; the senate estimate's axe "falls in aggregates of joy," while budgies in their natural habitat have "no idea they are suburban pretty boys."

Keri Glastonbury's previous collection, Newcastle Sonnets, was written as a riposte to Ted Berrigan's New York-based The Sonnets, and 51 Alterities began too as a loose adaptation of British poet Sam Riviere's influential 2012 debut, 81 Austerities. Riviere's collection was written in response to the impact of conservative UK austerity measures on the arts, and as a reconsideration of the function of poetry in the internet age. Wrestling with Antipodean 'alterity' more than ten years later, as a female queer poet a decade older than Riviere's millennial male, Glastonbury's 51 Alterities responds to the persistent threat of economic austerity, and to poetry's precarious place in a landscape dominated by billionaire tech bros and social media empires.

Praise for Newcastle Sonnets:

"A post-industrial love song... Glastonbury's sonnets, far from stultifying, are energetic and playful as they enact the associative freedoms of everyday speech." — Judges' citation, Prime Minister's Literary Awards

"A shifting and dangerously mesmerising simulacrum of contemporary Australian urban life... Through whip-smart core samples of observation, Glastonbury becomes the qwerty keyboard medium for social media within Newcastle and beyond." — Judges' citation, Judith Wright Calanthe Award

"Her poems are wonderful repositories of Aussie argot—maggoted, grouse, fugly, bush doof, wheelie bins, sadcore, cankles, choofing and a chicken that's been stuffed up the jacksie all get a run—but just as soon as you settle in, she changes gears." — Sarah Holland-Batt, The Australian