Inspired by the Ern Malley affair, Sound and Bundy takes a new approach to the verse novel format. Presenting the works of four fictional poets in anthology form, it invites readers to draw together disparate accounts and to create their own conclusions as to what “really†happened.
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In an alternate version of 2006, the posthumously-published works of little known poet Jason Silver caused a minor sensation on the Adelaide literary scene. His surreal, image-laden writings offered a raw, confronting portrait of his struggle with bipolar disorder – the illness which, many said, also drove his creativity. Sensation turned to scandal when a hapless biographer accidentally unearthed the truth: there was no Jason Silver. He was the fictional creation of three living poets – Pete Lind, Shannon Woodford and Angie Rawkins, also known as the Red Lion Poets. The Jason Silver poems were thereafter disregarded as meaningless twaddle, as were all of the Red Lions’ other writings… Inspired by the Ern Malley affair, Sound and Bundy takes a new approach to the verse novel format. Presenting the works of four fictional poets in anthology form, it invites readers to draw together disparate accounts and to create their own conclusions as to what “really” happened. |
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IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
“Amelia Walker has imaginatively approached the theme of the stories behind fake poets with Sound and Bundy, a collection of poems by three fictional poets and their collective, doubly fictional Ern Malley reincarnation named Jason Silver. Peter Lind, Shannon Woodford, and Angie Rawkins are the three protagonists in this very convincing work of fiction by Walker. A story emerges about these three poets who wrote together under the guise of Jason Silver, and the ways in which their lives and poetries intertwined. The result is something between an alarmingly realistic (but fake) anthology and a verse novel. It effectively sucks the reader into its reality – suburban Adelaide in 1998 until 2006 when both one of the poets, Lind, and the Jason Silver moniker commit suicide.
It is a special, unusual, and highly satisfying read.
Walker creates the three characters by giving each of them distinctive poetics, adding only short introductions to each poet at the beginning of each section. It is up to the reader to find correlations between the poems to work out the nature of their relationships and the incidences leading up to Lind’s/Siver’s ultimate suicidal end. This is a unique kind of story-telling through verse. Walker allows the reader to enter the worlds of her characters without any discernible narration.
The character Peter Lind’s poems are captivating. They aren’t perfectly crafted. In fact, they’re a bit of a mess. The rambling stream of consciousness rant in Melbury Street, parts of which might otherwise have been cut in editing, illuminate the emotional and psychological complexities of memory and the significance of place.
This tension is sustained between the spoken and the real and the emotional truth throughout all of the Rawkins’s poems.
The contrast between the three poets is as undeniable as the connection between them. Lind is clearly the most careless of the three, both stylistically and in terms of his confessionalism; what is striking about his poems is exactly this: a self-destructive abandon, a sense of hanging from a cliff’s edge. Rawkins doesn’t hide behind her unconventional orthography. Instead she uses it to tame the beast that makes her so likeably wild. And Woodford is the mum of the group, the one who’s trying to keep it together between all the mental illness, the heartache and the supermarket trips.
The most marked contrast actually stems from the crux of the whole anthology, which is an examination of the Ern Malley-esque ‘Jason Silver’, the joint persona of the three poets. Whereas the three poets individually are stylistically distinct, the Jason Silver poems are devoid of a strong voice. They are experimental, to be sure, but experimental without a sense of purpose. And this is to Amelia Walker’s credit. She has captured the hollowness of Jason Silver, and the way he benefits from the democracy between his three creators beautifully.
What makes this anthology cohere is the enigmatic story of Jason Silver, the coming together of the three poets and the ways in which they identify as part of a whole, and also as separate from one another. Walker has managed to capture three very distinct poetic voices in her exploration of this implied narrative. The reader can lose herself in the lives of these fictional poets and easily forget that they are Walker’s creations. More importantly, Sound and Bundy offers a new way into using verse to convey story.”
– Tara Mokhtari, Cordite Poetry Review
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
“It’s that rare thing, an entertaining, enjoyable book of poems. To create four fictional poets, each with a separate voice, is an enviable achievement. If writing is a performance, and all performance is a form of showing off, then the showing off here is impressive: the poems are verbally inventive, playful, some formally demanding (one of the poets has a predilection for Villanelles, Sestinas and other forms of self torture) and the four voices emerge successfully. Each has his or her own syntax, diction and form.
The book playfully asks questions of itself and poetry and poetic reception: would our four fictional poets rate publication if they were real? Would we remember the Ern Malley Poems if they had simply been published under the name of Bill Smiggens in an obscure literary journal with a less memorable name? Anything fixed or certain starts to slide in the general playfulness. I think I’ve met the poet, but then people thought they’d met Helen Dimidenko.
Whether the book’s blurb is part of the game is another interesting question. If it is, then I suspect calling this a verse novel is deliberately misleading. Whether there’s enough information to make out “what really happened” as the blurb suggests the reader could do; enough information to actually map out a plot line for a verse novel (whatever that useless phrase means), is going to be up to the individual reader: so my recommendation would be buy the book and take the ride.”
– Liam Guilar