Element

*Shortlisted for the 2020 Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal*

Using chemistry as an indexingtrope, Jordie Albiston tabulates the human predicament of love: its foundationsand fundamentals, its configuration of emotions, its recurring properties andits inherent assumption of many as yet unknown elements to occur.  

These poems range across space and time, allthe while adhering to the formal constraints of atomic theory.  The states and structures of being arescrutinised according to love's capacity for passion and fissure, blessing anddebt, and a compound body of two is progressively mapped onto the page.

'Albiston's poetrycohesively resettles readers well beyond the usual linguistic boundaries, andby these means the poems sharply renew possibilities of enunciation.' -Dan Disney, Westerly