Memory Book: Portraits of Older Australians in Poetry and Watercolours / Cassandra Atherton & Jessica L. Wilkinson (eds)
Memory Book: Portraits of Older Australians in Poetry and Watercolours shares and celebrates the fascinating life stories of everyday Australians.
Based on one-on-one interviews with forty-five participants, the fifteen poets involved in this project have shaped poems that provide unique and lasting remembrances of the experiences, memories and reflections of members of our older generations.
Each poet was tasked with writing in a mode that seemed appropriate for conveying their subject’s stories. Some poems focus on a significant moment, while others provide a wider life narrative. The poems capture important stories of travel and work, family and milestones, achievements and struggles; they provide humble advice to younger generations, learned through circumstance, curiosity, or necessity.
The poems are paired with watercolour portraits by artist Sierra McManus.
Contributors include: Carolyn Abbs, Ali Alizadeh, Stuart Barnes, Lachlan Brown, Eileen Chong, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Aidan Coleman, Paul Hetherington, Siobhan Hodge, Sarah Holland-Batt, Jeanine Leane, Leni Shilton, Ben Walter, Nick Whittock.
Cassandra Atherton is an award-winning prose poet and international expert on prose poetry. She co-authored Prose Poetry: An Introduction and co-edited the Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry. Her most recent book of prose poetry is Leftovers. She is a commissioning editor for Westerly magazine and associate editor at MadHat Press (USA). She is currently Professor of Writing and Literature at Deakin University.
Jessica L. Wilkinson has published three poetic biographies, most recently Music Made Visible: A Biography of George Balanchine. She is the founding editor of Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry. She co-edited Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry, and is currently Associate Professor of Creative Writing at RMIT University, Melbourne.
“These poems remind us of the rich living history and knowledge our elders are all too willing to share with us, if only we are willing to listen.”
