Poetry in the Cities of LiteratureAndy Jackson

Please, meet Andy Jackson from Melbourne City of Literature.
Andy Jackson is an Australian poet, whose most recent poetry collection is Human Looking, which won the ALS Gold Medal and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry. He is a co-editor of the recently-published anthology Raging Grace: Australian Writers Speak Out on Disability. He is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Melbourne, and he writes and rests on Dja Dja Wurrung country.
We invite you to listen to the poem performed by the author:


Formity
alternating lines with William Hay's “Deformity: An Essay” (1754)
imagine a print of me in the frontispiece
or a proliferating meme in the aether
I am indeed a perfect riddle
the disfigured can't be figured
cannot look with proper confidence in the face of another
you don't quite know what it's like
out of tenderness they taught me to be ashamed
what else might explain this
awkwardness of my outward get-up and behaviour
this dream of entering the body of another
ever conscious what an untoward subject
does to the atmosphere in a room or a poem
I feel a reluctance in opening my mouth
who knows what might come out or in
a deformed person should not assume borrowed feathers
or that language can speak louder than flesh
contempt attends him like his shadow reminding him of his ill figure
as if to figure was not also to think
when I die I care not what becomes of this carcass
while I live let me care what becomes of you
I desire my body may be opened
as these words are opened and never fixed
and I am a good subject of speculation for all in me is nature
an image blurred against the retina
the pleasure of one escaped

Andy Jackson
from Human Looking (2021 Giramondo)


The project was created by the Odesa UNESCO City of Literature and being implemented with funds raised by .Reykjavík Bókmenntaborg UNESCO as part of the readings initiated by Milano City of Literature Milano City of Literature “Not Just Words” (Reading for Odesa) on February 24, 2024