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Watermelon
Version 2 2023-08-24, 05:05
Version 1 2023-06-27, 05:46
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posted on 2023-08-24, 05:05 authored by Cassandra AthertonCassandra AthertonWatermelon
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978-1942956686Research statement
Background “My various visits to Japan and love of manga, anime and the kawaii aesthetic have influenced the neo-surreal aspects of my prose poetry. This is epitomised in one of my favourite anime, The Cat Returns (猫の恩返し), where the protagonist saves a cat only to find her reward is to be taken to the Cat Kingdom as the bride of the King of Cats. When she enters the kingdom, she begins to transform into a cat and a clever play on anthropomorphism ensues. I have also often been to the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo and the giant cat bus from My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ) is another example of the neo-surrealistic Japanese sense of wit and whimsy. Contribution I think of my prose poems as exploring neo-surreal moments. As scholar Andrew Joron points out, the surreal needs redefining in postmodern society because we are so immersed in everyday strangeness that it has become unremarkable. The prose poem form is wonderfully well suited to exploring neo-surrealism in fresh ways. For example, its use of the sentence—which we also use for so many quotidian purposes—rather than the line, has the capacity to heighten a prose poem’s rendering of the extraordinary because of the disjuncture between the familiar mode of address and defamiliarizing poetic tropes. These tropes also gain added energy when pressed between the wa Significance This is the first major international anthology of contemporary surrealist and magical realist poetry. It presents poems by 130 poets from 25 countries, who explore the boundaries of the poetic imagination, presenting the world as a vigorous unbound frame. These brilliantly original poems layer contradictory conditions of fantasy and reality into new contours of existence, transforming them into what is possible. These pages offer new perspectives on what it means to be alive, to be fully human in a world of new possibilities.Publisher
Lamar University PressSource
Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry: An International AnthologyUsage metrics
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