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MTC Cronin

If I were to make gauche generalisations about the poetics of MTC Cronin, Jordie Albiston, and Michael Farrell, I might respectively write conceptual, technical, and experimental. But these established poets – each in their fifties, highly regarded – display fluency with all these descriptors, especially in their latest books.

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In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, MTC Cronin reads 'Little Track', 'The Grass is Full', and 'The Correct Way' which feature in the 2016 QLD anthology.

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In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, MTC Cronin reads 'Above Us' and 'The World's Yard' which feature in the 2016 QLD anthology.

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Right at the back of the world's yard I am sitting. I have nothing.
I had a stone but lent it to the poet to put in his shoe. No sooner
did he turn into a slim golden feather that flew straight to the
sun that fed the snakes new skins. It could as easily have
resulted in ripe figs resting in baskets or unruly persimmon
trees twirling in fogged mountains. Regardless ...

Above us we hear the windmill yelping, circling like a trapped
dog while the house sits like a black skull on the hill. Above us
the tombs are rising from their rest and travelling along the
roads beneath trees turning sourly. Above us the wind flings
uncountable seed into the dignified light tossed through the
depths by a green moon rolling over and over in the sh ...

Time falls out
of your house

and onto a slab
of lucerne which

the cows eat as
they wander away

from the orchard's
long flowing hour.

Sweet and full
of wild honey

is the flower
is the bird.

Part of your love
is timeless enough

says the little track
left by ants.

The correct way to drink from a broken cup.
To welcome both dark and light into your house.
To imagine tomorrow.
To pick verbena and red clover.
On the path where nothing will grow.

The correct way to tend the frozen.
To take their sweet throats and swim down into their livers.
To disembowel without touching.
To do what is at stake.
To move from c ...

Moon is a paper lamp
burning all night.

The grass
is full of shadows.

Hardly room in here
with the cupboard's coat.

Small broken windows
open dream's row.

The wild birds
all leave my mind at once –

mouth banging shut
in the dark.

'The grass is full
of blue free stars.'

The universe jus ...

MTC Cronin has published twenty books (poetry, prose poems, and essays) including a collection jointly written with the Australian poet, Peter Boyle. Her work has won and been shortlisted for many major literary awards, both internationally and in her native Australia. ... (read more)

With her first book, Zoetrope, in 1995, MTC Cronin announced herself as a very particular force in Australian poetry. It was not just that her début was so much more immediately arresting than most poets' first outings, but also that it had real authority. This authority, coming from force of intellect and a kind of absolutist, almost inscribed imagination ...

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