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Out Of The Box: Contemporary Australian gay and lesbian poets edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones

by
April 2010, no 320

Out Of The Box: Contemporary Australian gay and lesbian poets edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones

Puncher & Wattmann, $35 pb, 214 pp

Out Of The Box: Contemporary Australian gay and lesbian poets edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones

by
April 2010, no 320

Does the title of this anthology, heralded by its editors as the first collection of Australian gay/lesbian/queer poetry, refer to the myth of Pandora’s pithos? Hesiod’s version of the story, which sees Pandora as the unleasher of all manner of evils on the (‘rational’/patriarchal) world, has been interrogated by feminist scholars who see Pandora in an older incarnation of ‘gift-giver’, bestower of plenitude, crosser of boundaries. Or does ‘Out of the Box’ have a more colloquial sense – ‘exceptional’, ‘surprising’? Whatever the reasoning behind the title, Michael Farrell and Jill Jones have made choices which should provoke debate (among other things) about gay and lesbian identity and community, and about the relationship between poet and reader.

Gregory Kratzmann reviews 'Out Of The Box: Contemporary Australian gay and lesbian poets' edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones

Out Of The Box: Contemporary Australian gay and lesbian poets

edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones

Puncher & Wattmann, $35 pb, 214 pp

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