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Ali Alizadeh is Poet of the Month

by Australian Book Review
April 2020, no. 420

Ali Alizadeh is Poet of the Month

by Australian Book Review
April 2020, no. 420

Ali Alizadeh’s books include a new collection of poems, Towards the End (Giramondo, 2020), a scholarly monograph on Karl Marx’s philosophy, Marx and Art (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), and the novel The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc (Giramondo, 2017). He lives in Melbourne and is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University.


Which poets have most influenced you?
A great many performance poets in Brisbane and the Gold Coast in the 1990s. I liked the more poetic singers too. One band whose lyrics I really loved was the Irish grunge band Therapy? – vulgar, emotive, memorable. Dorothy Porter was probably the first published Australian poet I actually enjoyed reading. That led me in the direction of the long poem, Charles Olson, H.D., etc.

Are poems chiefly inspired or crafted?
What a question! If I have to pick one, I would say inspired, if only because inspiration seems more necessary. Without it – an initiation, a beginning, no matter how clumsy or hesitant – there would be nothing there to craft.

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