Open Sesame by Michael Farrell

JUDGES' COMMENTS

An astonishing collection, this audacious and generous book creates a space of transformative potential. The poet playfully reimagines and explodes received or calcified notions of subjectivity and authorship. The collaged narratives are carefully made to appear aleatoric (as if they happened by some kind of inspired chance), and as they jump-cut from scene to stance to a chiasma of wordplay, they are permeated by a specific ‘Australianness’.

Farrell’s references draw widely from both popular culture and classicism. Serious in intent, these poems are painless in reception and often very witty. There’s a sense of magic about the poet’s collection, as the title, Open Sesame, suggests. Upon entering the collection, the reader surrenders to a space of bifurcated wonders, of unique rhythms, hysterical syntax and vibrant, dynamic song. There’s a surrealist absurdity to the strange placements of horses, British pop bands, and presidents in launderettes. A contrasting romantic sensitivity brings us gentle conversations with friends and lovers, reinterpretations of sonnets, and moments of love and loneliness in the jumbling snippets and cuttings that comprise an urban life.