The Agonist

by Shastra Deo

Winner of the 2016 Thomas Shapcott Prize for Poetry and the 2018 ALS Gold Medal. With its wildness and originality, The Agonist is an exhilarating collection. Exploring the languages of anatomy, etymology and incantation, these poems spark conversations about fracture and repair, energy, love and danger.

Genres: Poetry, Australia, School, 21st Century

104 pages, Paperback

Published August 28, 2017

About the author

Shastra Deo was born in Fiji, raised in Melbourne, and lives in Brisbane, Australia. Her first book, The Agonist (UQP 2017), won the 2016 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the 2018 ALS Gold Medal.

Photo © Kate Lund

Reviews

[Kristy]

I've never really had any interest in reading poetry simply for the fact that I just don't get it. As such, I don't feel qualified enough to give this a star-rating or a proper review, because this collection deserves a lot more than I can offer. Much like art, however, you don't always have to understand the artwork to be able to see and admire its beauty. And this collection sure is damn beautiful.

[Robert Lukins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully capturing that intersection of the mind, the will, and the body; a wonder of a thing.

[Tonymess · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Agonist” is a book that questions the physical world, a collection that opens with an illustration by Henry Vandyke Carter from Gray’s Anatomy and then moves to an epigraph by Emily Dickinson, this is a world where the physical meets the metaphysical

The more I think about your body, the more I know
it is no longer your own: your heart is a house
with the doors left open: your brain is the basement

Filled with smoke. The skeleton hidden under the flesh
of floorboards. A stranger roaming the hallways, a
dappled shadow splashed on the wall, flickering in firelight.

Poetry of meat, sinews, bones and tendons. Rooting itself in the physical world, with water, fishing, drowning sitting alongside familial blood connections

For my full review & an interview with the poet go to
The Agonist – Shastra Deo PLUS bonus poet interview | Messenger's Booker (and more)
https://messybooker.wordpress.com/201...

[Jessica Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful. Shastra's striking poetry is a visceral, enchanting journey through the stories of the body and bodily violence. Beautiful and haunting, like a violent lullaby.

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best poetry is at its most beautiful when read aloud, the sounds exploding from the tongue, the rhythm beating a steady accompaniment to the words, the metaphors creating imagery that bolsters our imagination.
Shastra Deo was awarded the 2016 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for her collection The Agonist (UQP 2017), and one of the great delights of this anthology has been listening to Shastra read her poems aloud on several occasions. Her voice is unique and arresting and her tone is engaging. Her poetry seems to emanate from a raw wound as she dissects the human form with her words, cutting into the flesh, flaying open the skin, peering into the organs and investigating the body’s systems. Her work is informed by her explorations of the brokenness, fracture and repair of the body. Her poems investigate what happens after we die, how the self remakes, how our spirit lingers, how our temporal husk and our physicality aligns with our soul. This is a collection about love, and death, about renewal and haunting, about fecundity and desiccation.
Like all anthologies, these poems will have different meanings for different readers. Individuals will bring their own perspectives and come away with their own understanding. But to everyone I would highly recommend reading the poems aloud to allow Shastra’s penetrating voice, her sharp and visceral language, and her intonations both soothing and invigorating to be heard, in order to fully appreciate the talent in this collection that is daring, brave, direct, unguarded and exposed.

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should think I need to spend a little more time within the pages of this collection before forming a review of some sort. I want to say this is compulsively readable, pulling and pushing even the amateur enthusiast like myself to return again and again. The imagery is visceral, often graphic and gruesome, drawn from anatomy and physiology, zoology and entomology, war and magic, with results that are simply extraordinary.

Further thoughts here: https://roughghosts.com/2018/01/24/th...

[Vehka Kurjenmiekka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dark, passionate, scary, fierce, utterly beautiful, devastating. This is a difficult collection to describe, since the poems speak best for themselves.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not understand poetry (most of the time), but I love the sounds of the words, and the images they conjure in my mind. A dear friend - a poet - has told me that it is not important to understand; it is all about how the words make me feel. And so, Bravo! to this work of words, which gives me goosebumps, which - time and time again - makes me think, "I wish I'd written that".

[Sally Piper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This original poetry collection explores mortality, pain, fear, loss, love and those we hurt in the name of it. Playful in parts, incisive in others, but always courageous in its explorations of human emotions.

[Chris Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this like my life depended on it. Maybe it did.

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anatomy 101

[Emory Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes, some poetry is a little bit beyond me and I think that's okay. I think that this collection was just out of my field of understanding at times. Sometimes, because of the words and references that were made, other times because I felt like I wasn't sure what was happening or what the point of it was. I can sometimes struggle with these sorts of things; sometimes emotions are confusing to me. I did enjoy a large portion of it. I enjoyed the images that the author created and I enjoyed some of the darker themes. I think I may need to read the part at the end then the book again and have a dictionary open in order to understand it better next time.

[TJ Wilkshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shastra's collection of poetry is stunning and haunting. Her poems bring back the story telling of poetry. It follows you around your home, unable to shake it off and will leave you pondering for days.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was written so beautifully, and definitely different from what i was expecting but so good!

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went to write the Agnostic instead of Agonist, and I think the scalpel like skeletal prose of this poetry is agnostic, a kind of secular celebration of biology science lives and excretia. Quite extraordinary. I can see why it won prizes.

[Sharon Dodds · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhilarating collection of poems which opens the mind and inspires thoughts and feelings.
I found Shastra's poetry very interesting and thought provoking. This is a book that I will read over and over.

[sightlined · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well that was pretty remarkable. In amongst all the viscera and gore of this collection, emotion becomes just another biological process, but none the less magical for it.

[Megan McGrath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning.

[Adam Byatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poets have a way of making the everyday activities we particpate in appear familiar and unfamiliar, often in one line. And this focus on the individuality of our lives manifests itself in a shared awareness of how we experience, or even cataegorise, those moments of our lives. We live our days perhaps not always aware of the moments we are breathing through until introspection and reflection reveals truths, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes reassuring, always revelatory.
Shastra's collection revels and reveals this shared manifestation using medical terminology to elucidate and illuminate each epiphany. It is precise and direct. A philosophical scalpel to excise thoughts and sinew, ideas and muscle, imaginations and tendons from the carcass that is our own heart.
Love is fracturous, fragile, sacrificial, consuming, a solider's metaphor and a combatant's simile. The stone brought to life in the confines of a ribcage.

[Satendra Deo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing debut collection. Vivid in imagination and rich in complexity, these poems, in the blink of an eyelash, will transport the reader to Beirut, Odessa, Sarajevo and Shiloh. Be sure to feel the hurt in the limb or heart of the soldier even when no such limb or heart remains. Be sure to feel the pain in the knuckles of the boxer even when the bout is done.

Like an onion there are many layers to Shastra's writings. The reader can take away a different perspective depending on the situation they are in. One to be read again and again, as tomorrow one may find a new perspective.

I look for more!

[Pollyana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely read! The imagery in this book feels tactile and raw, ancient, supernatural. I will definitely coming back to this for inspiration, I deeply enjoyed reading this and look forward to filling it with notes

[Venero Armanno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful collection, a complete joy.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating poems. Deo has a unique approach, and the bloody/bodily images abound through these poems. I learnt a lot about different bodily organs!

[Declan Fry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visceral, haunting, otherworldly. A Cronenberg film for all the senses.

[Izzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The precision and invention of these poems is brilliant. I've just reread it today and ooft, I enjoyed it so much in new ways the second time around!

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel I’ve been waiting a lifetime to read Shastra Deo’s poems. It’s not enough to say this collection moved me; it would be more accurate to say it claimed space in me both intemperate and irradiated. These aren’t verses for complacent peacetime, making them perfect for our inhumane anthropocene. Double wielding the glaive and sceptre of anatomy and thaumaturgy, Deo shows us what can be read in, and in between, every brutalized bone we possess.

“you hide the fonts in your fists. your nightly
biothanatos is a creature of quick breath and fissured
hunger, your gut heaving, swollen with bread and wine.
iron drips warm rainfall from the alcove of your ribs
and you sleep in fits, wet-mouthed and seething. howls
and spit sit on the edge of your teeth.”

10/31
#TheSealeyChallenge

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another uni read - one of my favourites so far. Absolutely loved it.

[Annabelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this alongside the dictionary lol. It was good though.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

good 👍

[lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

MATT MURDOCK + BUCKY BARNES MENTIONED!