USP academic is featured poet in Australian literary journal
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 | Head of USP School of Language, Arts and media (SLAM), and featured poet in MLR, Professor Sudesh Mishra (source: Mascara Literary Review) |
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USP academic and renowned Pacific writer, Sudesh Mishra, is the featured poet in the latest issue of the Australian bi-annual literary journal, Mascara Literary Review.
The latest issue of MLR carries an article on Professor Mishra’s work by Dr John O’ Carroll, an expert on Pacific and Australian literatures based at Charles Sturt University. In his essay, ‘Mediating Mishra: an Itinerary of the heart,’ Dr O’Carroll calls Mishra “one of Australia’s – and indeed, the Pacific’s – finest poets.”
Dr O’Carroll argues that the sheer range and diversity of Mishra’s poetry entails “a tour of sorts” in the form of “an itinerary”. He adds:
“Mediation is also at stake in the verse. For Mishra is a mediator of words and worlds, a shuttle driver of ideas and of textures. The locations, the key political milestones, the literary forms he uses, the major religious frameworks: these are the things that we need to check off as we proceed through this particular selection of verse, one generous in its amplitude and in its variety.”
Mishra’s oeuvre, says Dr O’Carroll, calls attention to all kinds of issues, such as a flood in Nadi, a close encounter with a seal on Kangaroo Island, Kingsford-Smith landing the Southern Cross in Albert Park and the destruction of native forests by greedy landowners.
In her editorial, Michelle Cahill notes that Mishra’s “virtuosity with image and wit” is complemented by technical innovation, making him “one of our finest contemporary poets writing from postmodern and postcolonial perspectives.”
Professor Mishra has been the recipient of an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Harri Jones Memorial Prize for Poetry and an Asialink Residency.
His works have appeared in a wide array of publications, including Nuanua: Pacific Writing in English since 1980, The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets, Lines Review: Twelve Modern Young Indian Poets, Over There: Poems from Singapore and Australia, Sixty Indian Poets, The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poetry, The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, Contemporary Asian Australian Poetry, The World Record and Concert of Voices: An Anthology of World Writing in English.
Mishra is at work on his fifth collection, entitled The Secret Lives of Coat Hangers.
Mascara Literary Review, first published in 2007, is assisted by the Australian Government through its arts funding and advisory body, the Australian Council of Arts. It focuses on the works of contemporary Asian, Australian and Indigenous writers.
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