Paradise: Point of Transmission

Description

A brilliant debut that examines a 'haunted' queer and HIV-positive identity, across spaces and citizenships both physical and imagined. Paradise (point of transmission) is a poetry collection placed within a sequence of physical and psychic transitional spaces- from seronegative to seropositive; from 'adopted' Singaporean to the poet finding his place again as an adult in the Perth of his childhood; and from being secretive about his HIV-status (in which the art he produced was rooted in the trauma of HIV transmission without naming it), towards living a more public life, in which living openly with HIV is characterised by the queer longing toward both resilience and transformation.

Andrew Sutherland is a Queer poz (PLHIV) writer and performance-maker creating work between Boorloo, Western Australia and Singapore. His work draws upon intercultural and Queer critical theories, and the vital instabilities of identity, pop culture and the autobiographical self. He was awarded Overland's Fair Australia Poetry Prize 2017 and placed third in FAWWA's Tom Collins Prize 2021. He is grateful to reside on Whadjuk Noongar boodja.

'Andrew Sutherland's poems invite and challenge us to make sense of our shared and unshared experiences. Full of Queer feeling and thinking, they are frank, moving, ironic, dazzling and confronting. Playful, yet at the same time serious. Their spirited imagination and intelligence transform whatever they encounter, whether in personal or wider social experience, or drawing on ancient myth and contemporary popular culture - because 'a touch of genre helps the silences stay Camp.' This remarkable first book marks Sutherland's appearance on the poetic horizon with a fire and energy that will linger long after the first reading.' --Tracy Ryan, award-wining poet and writer