Taking my breath

Taking My Breath is a collection of my poems accompanied by an exegesis. The poems grew out of Australian environments and are informed by Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous versions of communicative exchange with the land. They search for an aesthetics that not only acknowledges ecological awareness, but allows for deeper intellectual and emotional meaning. The stylistic and thematic formations of many of the poems were inspired by the work of the Irish poet Michael Longley, whose poetics speaks to my sensibilities. The exegesis explores the thematic concerns that inform my poems. It argues the need for ecocritical theory to develop an aesthetics that reflects the changes in our knowledge, attitudes and ideology concerning our relationship with the earth. Rather than going down the path of ecocriticism's early preoccupations with re-evaluating the romantic conceptualisation of 'nature', the exegesis examines ecopoetics that consider an engagement with the earth that is grounded in the actual experience of being in the world. The connection between environmental qualities and human states is explored with the intention to restore significance to the world beyond what language or literature is capable of producing.