Ashbery Mode

Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. When the editor of Tinfish Press wrote on a Facebook comment stream that she was interested in publishing work from the Pacific that responded to Ashbery's poetry, she did not expect Michael Farrell to respond that he already had such a manuscript in hand. ASHBERY MODE is that precise anthology, one that includes dozens of Australia's best contemporary poets writing in the "mode" of Ashbery. Like his New York School colleague and friend, Frank O'Hara, Ashbery proved crucial in relaxing the strictures of Australian poetry, releasing it from its formal and tonal bonds. It's wonderful to see Ashbery transmogrify into a local Australian poet. This book is a companion piece to Eileen R. Tabios's WITNESS IN THE CONVEX MIRROR (Tinfish Press, 2019) and, like her book, shows how poetic influence gets activated across national and oceanic boundaries, as well as how source texts can open up into radically new perspectives.

Michael Farrell is from Bombala, NSW, and lives in Melbourne. His most recent book of poetry is ASHBERY MODE (Tinfish Press, 2019). Other recent books include I Love Poetry (Giramondo), A LYREBIRD, SELECTED POEMS OF MICHAEL FARRELL (BlazeVOX [books], 2017), and Writing Australian Unsettlement: Modes of Poetic Invention 1796-1945 (Palgrave Macmillan). His previous anthology project was Out of The Box: Australian Contemporary Gay and Lesbian Poets (Puncher and Wattmann), with Jill Jones. His chapbook thempark (Book*hug) uses John Ashbery poems as a word count, punctuation, and template. His poem "john ashbery impersonator" is included in ode ode (Salt).