The Only White Landscape

Description

The Only White Landscape shows the effort to think in time with the imperfection of language as it nudges into consciousness and out of order; as it turns into itself as if on a pin or because of some new patch of petrol-, Pantone-, mid-morning light. The poems are scenes of ambivalence and loss, moving between states of recollection and projection, regret and desire, clarity and obscurity. Like a break-up, or a film, or a dream, or a recipe, they occupy a temporality that appears like a future imagined in a past, and lamented as a present that crushes. 'The Only White Landscape is an assembly point. Past instances of thought and memory have come together as directed when under threat. The swells of real-life changes underpinning the poetry are physical, social, geographic and romantic. But, that's so usual: the attempt to find singularity in the ruptures - not meaning, not really. From loneliness to only-ness. Sometimes I run at night through the fields around my house and then sit on carpet to record the resulting language. 'I feel so lyrical,' I remember thinking at one point, mid-manuscript. I'm always seeking recognition. I want a conversation to surround my personal thoughts. I want to influence 'you' - your actions and opinions. Poetry can and will measure up to somebody's sincerity levels but then he / she still might not love you. All the feels laid bare, the words persisting as evidence of what you might have thought, felt. The Only White Landscape is a submersion in the past, a landscape stripped of comforting colour, a set piece refigured in post like a photograph, my choices of emphasis directing and deflecting your attention. It feels like an outcome. I hope the poems keep you just as long as you want to be kept.' - Derek Motion

Derek Motion lives in Narrandera, in the Western Riverina region of NSW, and writes. He was the winner of the 2009 Judith Wright Overland Poetry Prize. His first collection, Lollyology, was published in 2012. His blog, typingspace, is still in existence. The need to distill life and thought into poetry has been with him a while now and it seems to have settled in permanently.