Rawshock

by Toby Fitch

Using the Rorschach inkblots as metaphors, conjuring the wondrous and the monstrous in his poems, Toby Fitch brings a new vision and shape to Australian poetry. Old modes of expression - such as the mythic, the romantic, the symbolic and the surreal - are revived and reshaped in poems that mythologies love, anxiety, the self and city living, dovetailing inner and outer worlds with a healthy antipodean dose of absinthe and concrete poetry.

"Toby Fitch's title sequence from Rawshock opens onto hell - and onto a Eurydice who seems more knowing than she used to, whose eyes tell of gay abandon as well as the old emptying pain. These poems are a fresh, vivid working-through of the myth - a myth that keeps reminding us there's nothing new under the sun, except when poets strike indelible lines from newly minted words charged with the currents of daily usage. The tone is dark, not bitter; the language maps the landscape of an electrified there is music here, but no birds sing in the trees. The artwork is as skilful as the fine handling of the lines, making poetry anew." - Robert Adamson

"Apollinaire of Avalon, Lorca of the Inner West - no such comparison, close as it comes, quite does this collection justice. This is simply one of the freshest and most promising new voices we've heard in Australia in years, undiluted, intense, Orphic, daring, with surprise in almost every line, word-play reminiscent of Mallarme - and (at last!) an exciting, uninhibited use of the page. Surely one of the poetry books of the year." - David Brooks

92 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Toby Fitch is poetry editor of Overland and a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney. He is the author of eight books of poetry, including Where Only the Sky had Hung Before (2019), Sydney Spleen (2021) and Object Permanence: Calligrammes (2022). He lives on unceded Gadigal land.

Reviews

[Stu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ‘Rawshock’ sequence (made up of poems mimicking the shapes of Rorschach inkblots) is really something. An ingenious recasting of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, it’s brilliantly conceived and executed. The shape of the poems alongside the inkblots is beautiful to behold. But crucially, the interface between form and content pushes the poet to perform high-wire acts, and the poetry that emerges is daring and arresting. The rest of the collection is somewhat overshadowed by its centrepiece, but certainly has its moments, with nods to Apollinaire, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Reverdy, et al.

[Kel Sta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Toby Fitch has put the body back in concrete poetry, and the possibility back in libraries. His poetry has form, voice, movement and definite presence. Well worth a look, a listen, a visit, an occupation.

[David Musgrave]

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