Maria Takolander in conversation…about poetry and passion

Maria Takolander talks in The Conversation about poetry and passion…

…While poetry is regularly denounced for “not making sense”, our cognition and our language do not arise according to purely rational principles.

We are bodies wrought by feeling. Robin Williams’ character simplifies this truth in Dead Poets Society:

We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.

Maria Takolander, Associate Professor in Creative Writing and Literary Studies at Deakin University, is a fiction writer, poet, essayist, scholar, public artist, reviewer, and interviewer.

Maria’s scholarship focuses on two areas—magical realist literature, and theorising creativity—and she has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters in both areas. She is also a regular reviewer for The Saturday Paper, and a regular interviewer at author events and festivals. As a public artist, her words can be found on bronze plaques in Central Geelong and at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.

Maria’s next poetry book, Trigger Warnings, is due out in July 2021.

Trigger Warning is not for the fainthearted, but neither are the elemental realities of domestic violence and environmental catastrophe that these astonishing poems address.