Stone Grown Cold

Description

Gibson's fragmentary style favours standalone single lines or short sentences to exemplify episodic thinking and the discontinuities of broken narrative. He engages cultures in scraps and shards in this savvy and unique collection. Where does it take place, Stone Grown Cold? Let yourself think it's a town you know well. Some bits are real and help like the sun on your back. Other bits have been gathered from gossip, screens and scumbags. There's a good dose of sex in it and knucklehead glamour. It's such a town. For good and for bad. With dazzle all over it. Dumb-arse to match. More gorgeous than reasonable. With everything you want. And who gives a fuck? Not prepared to play or say nice. Not much shame about the wrong things. Except on the quiet. Most citizens are nine-to-fivers. They're always bumping into folks who are not: sham company promoters; hollow share hawkers; men loitering in yards; mendacious women importuning on telephones; purveyors of poorly provenanced smallgoods; covert-camera seducers and follow-up extortionists; hotel 'barbers'; boarding-school snow-droppers; hospital potion filchers; theatre impresarios and fanciful futures conjurers. Best accept it's a town knows you well. - Ross Gibson

Ross Gibson is Centenary Professor of Creative & Cultural Research at the University of Canberra. In this role he works collaboratively to produce books, films and artworks. Previously, he has been Creative Director for the establishment of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and, while lecturing at the University of Technology in Sydney, he was a Senior Consultant Producer during the development and inaugural years of the Museum of Sydney. Recent works include books The Summer Exercises and 26 Views of the Starburst World; video installation Street X-Rays and the serialised photographic poem, AccidentMusic, published online weekly with the Justice & Police Museum in Sydney (2010-2013). STONE GROWN COLD is his first poetry collection.