stuart cooke
I am a poet and critic currently working on a PhD thesis about
Australian and Chilean ecopoetics at the ANU.
Ecopoetics is a large and rapidly diversifying field, but much of its focus remains centred on European and North American conceptions of romantic and/or transcendental poetics. What interests me is the theorising of a thoroughly materialist conception of the poem, which would allow us to implicate poetry in wider ecological processes of birth, proliferation and decay. The question for me, then, isn’t so much along the lines of “Why isn’t the poem like the world?” but rather, “Why is the poem in the world?”
My thesis is composed of four primary components. The first concerns the poetry of Judith Wright and the second is about Pablo Neruda. The other two sections explore indigenous Australian and Chilean conceptions of poetry, with particular emphasis on conceptions of landscape and ecology, both of which, of course, are bound to issues of colonisation, dispossession and political activism.
Like Cameron, I completed an Honours degree in Creative Writing and Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. I also completed an undergraduate degree in Mexican political economy. I then took a couple of years off to travel and write and participate, somewhat erratically, in various forms of employment. All of this has alerted me to the vastly different ways that people can talk about and value their environments.
As a result, I’m really interested in the intersections between what we might consider primarily ‘artificial’ or ‘cultural’ constructions (like poems and paintings and cities) and those more ‘natural’ ones (like trees, dirt and rocks). I’m as much at home in a good book as I am hiking through the Blue Mountains or surfing my favourite break.
Ecopoetics is a large and rapidly diversifying field, but much of its focus remains centred on European and North American conceptions of romantic and/or transcendental poetics. What interests me is the theorising of a thoroughly materialist conception of the poem, which would allow us to implicate poetry in wider ecological processes of birth, proliferation and decay. The question for me, then, isn’t so much along the lines of “Why isn’t the poem like the world?” but rather, “Why is the poem in the world?”
My thesis is composed of four primary components. The first concerns the poetry of Judith Wright and the second is about Pablo Neruda. The other two sections explore indigenous Australian and Chilean conceptions of poetry, with particular emphasis on conceptions of landscape and ecology, both of which, of course, are bound to issues of colonisation, dispossession and political activism.
Like Cameron, I completed an Honours degree in Creative Writing and Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. I also completed an undergraduate degree in Mexican political economy. I then took a couple of years off to travel and write and participate, somewhat erratically, in various forms of employment. All of this has alerted me to the vastly different ways that people can talk about and value their environments.
As a result, I’m really interested in the intersections between what we might consider primarily ‘artificial’ or ‘cultural’ constructions (like poems and paintings and cities) and those more ‘natural’ ones (like trees, dirt and rocks). I’m as much at home in a good book as I am hiking through the Blue Mountains or surfing my favourite break.
Recent Selected Publications
Refereed Articles
- Cooke, S. ‘Singing Up Country in the Poetry of Judith Wright and Pablo Neruda’, Australian Literary Studies (forthcoming: August 2008).
- Cooke, S. 'Eventing: wandering through the physiology of Australian narrative’, Antipodes: the North American journal of Australian literature, December 2007.
- Cooke, S. ‘Re-Writing the Australian: towards a new Australian poetic’, proceedings from Unaustralia, University of Canberra, December 2006.
Essays
- Cooke, S. ‘From Replication to Mutation: Roland Barthes and the imagery of two Australian poets’, Tears in the Fence (UK), July 2008.
- Cooke, S. 'Remembering Romanticism, Negating Negativity: on Kate Rigby's Ecopoetics’, Australian Humanities Review, 42, 2007.
Poetry
My poems have been published in most major Australian literary magazines, including Southerly, Meanjin, Cordite, Overland, Famous Reporter, Blue Dog and Going Down Swinging.
My translation of Juan Garrido Salgado’s Once Poemas en Septiembre, 1973 (‘Eleven Poems on September, 1973’) was published by Picaro Press in 2007.
Conference Papers
- ‘On Dwelling’, Poetry and the Trace, Monash University, July 2008.
- ‘Orpheus and the New World: poetry and ecology in Australia and Chile’, Poetic Ecologies, Université Libre de Bruxelles, May 2008.
- ‘Feeling World: singing up land and history in Judith Wright and Pablo Neruda’, The Colonial Present, University of Queensland, July 2007.
- ‘Re-writing the Australian: towards a new Australian poetic’, Unaustralia, University of Canberra, December 2006.
- ‘Getting Closer to Country: wandering through Australian narrative’, Be True to the Earth (the inaugural conference of ASLE-ANZ), Monash University, April 2005.
