Revenants

by Adam Aitken

The title of this collection, Revenants, suggests spirits and ghosts who return to the human world through dream and art, not to haunt it, but to remind the living that the present and the past are intertwined. At the heart of the collection is a series of poems about the poet’s father, a Melbournian who travelled and worked in Asia as a young man, who married the poet’s mother in Bangkok, and whose life and death are commemorated here. The poems have settings in Asia, Australia, Hawai’i, and France, which has become the author’s second home. They reflect on the legacy of colonialism, not as theory, but as inherited experience. In them the poet himself may be thought of as a revenant, sharing his awareness of secret histories and local knowledge, stories of migration, the vestiges of forgotten people and places.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2022

About the author

Adam Aitken is a poet, memoirist, academic and editor (with Kim Cheng Boey and Michelle Cahill) of Contemporary Asian Australian Poets (Puncher & Wattmann 2013). his most recent book is 100 Letters Home from Vagabond Press.

His work appears in the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, Jacket2, Southerly, and in Life Writing.

He is a writing analyst at the University of Technology, Sydney.

“In a recent outing with Aitken, you can find “The Hybrid Vigor Institute is dedicated/ to stimulating unconventional/ thinking and/ unexpected discoveries . . .” and the subsequent warning that “To one like you, who cannot access it, you/ may perceive it only as light.” Beware the refrain of ‘hybridity’, reader, don’t whole this pigeon till it’s cooked.”
—Michael Brennan: Poetry International Web

Born in London in 1960 to an Anglo-Australian father and a Thai mother, Adam spent his childhood in South-east Asia, before migrating to Australia where he graduated from the University of Sydney in 1982. In 1982 he spent six months living with his relatives and learning Thai in Bangkok. He was a co-editor of the poetry magazine P76, named after a failed Leyland car model, and for a time was associate poetry editor for Heat magazine. He has traveled widely, visiting Thailand, Malaysia, and Cambodia; his experiences overseas continue to inform his poetry.

Aitken published his first collection, Letter to Marco Polo, in 1985. He has since published five further poetry collections, and his poems and short fiction have also been published widely in anthologies and literary journals. For some years he has taught narrative writing at the University of Technology, Sydney.

In 2006 he obtained a PhD in creative writing. In 2010 he was the Visiting Distinguished Writer at University of Hawai’i, Manoa. His poetry and prose have been widely anthologized. His words are also immortalized in bronze on the Avenue of Nations sculpture at Centennial Park, Sydney. His most recent books of poetry are Eighth Habitation, which was shortlisted for the Adelaide Festival Award, and Tonto’s Revenge, (Tinfish Press, Hawai’i). In 2012 he was resident at the Australia Council’s Keesing Studio, Paris, and in Southern France, where he spent six months learning French and completing new work.

Reviews

[Annabel Harz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revenants by Adam Aitken creates a strong sense of place with its visceral descriptions, each of its three sections thematically linked to dominant influences of Aitken’s life and familial history.

The first part is inspired by 1950s letters from Singapore, from the author’s father to his mother. Extending to other Asian countries, Aitken contrasts the tangible cultural differences between the lifestyles of expats (in his father’s case, working for the British Empire) with the preoccupations of the locals: ‘I was on my porch enjoying a G&T / when the lungfish made it to the mudflat’.

The second part of this slim volume explores the author’s childhood in Sydney, an Asian outsider growing up within a Caucasian culture. Childhood influences which shape the man that Aitken grew into are evident in his analysis of self and family. He writes of his father, ‘Illness was normal, almost predictable. / One day the illness was anger’. The author’s response at his father’s hospital bed demonstrates his unrealistic wish: ‘I was able to tell him to get better /… it was magical thinking’. Extending to Aitken’s travels in Asia and France as a young adult, carefully-chosen words produce endearing images, such as his ‘Pilgrim Brother’ who has ‘a Kelpie on long-term love’.

The final section features the author’s poems from his time at the Nancy Keesing Studio in Paris. Aitken connects his outer and inner worlds within the foreign cultures he explores. Colliding against the legacy of prominent historical sites, he ‘settled where the cellphone feed starts / at the parade ground of [his] desires’. Particularly effective are the reflections of his own humble life in comparison to the weight of events that changed the course of history. Integration of everyday happenings within monumental world wars reminds the reader that life goes on for the everyday person, no matter how significant the backdrop. The poignant listicle poem, ‘Bootsale, Chateau St Victor’, contrasts items ‘For sale: ... / one framed photo of Pope Pius XII / shaking hands with the Führer / three villagers lounging in fig tree shade, relaxed’, a reminder of the immediacy of day-to-day normalcy subsumed into the gravity of extraordinary situations. This big picture-little life contrast prompts readers to ponder what is truly important, and how the impact of their individual lives fit into a broader landscape.

Aitken’s collection is worthy of its title, the poems breathing life into times past. The beautiful imagery within interesting framing will surely invite the audience to smile ‘in a blazon of embrace’. Revenants is a commendable collection: the snapshot images of daily happenings, observed with detail, are sure to delight readers by invigorating their senses.

[edmondegreen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it a lot.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent addition to the terrific Giramondo poetry imprint. A postcolonial exploration of memory and travel.

[Maddie Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice, chill collection. Aitken is great at writing vignette-style content; def inspired me to write more poetry about random moments, not just ~~~deep emotional stuff/major events.

[Maxine McEwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars.