Faves 2022: Poetry

Fuck, this is hard. Yes, I am biased but I genuinely believe there is no form of writing in the world currently shining as bright as poetry. Poets are crafting brilliances, too many to keep up, and certainly too many for me to write about at any length. My next collection is currently in submission to US/UK presses, and so far I have a bunch of “pass” notes all saying something along the lines of, “This is great, but unfortunately we’re oversubscribed on poetry”, in one case by years. It’s a similar story in Australia, an abundance of poets, more books than publishers able to put them out, and I know I’m lucky to have a press at all. Still, I wish more room was made for us, more given to the marketing and promotion of what does get published, more poetry, period.

Anyway, here are some of the collections I loved this year:

Customs by Solmaz Sharif

Anyone who has read Sharif’s seminal debut, LOOK, needs no further reason to pick up her sophomore work, CUSTOMS, though the two are markedly different books. What they share, however, is an incisive—even antagonistic—approach to language and a painful disdain for what it makes of us, be it in the hands of empire, or in our own mouths and minds. Sharif is brilliant, able to do more with a gesture than most poets can with a poem.

Pandemonium by Andrew McMillan

I was late to this third collection by McMillan, following his first two excellent books physical and playtime, which I regret but I found it just as compelling: in his work is what I am drawn to most in poetry, a certain dailiness, a recording of the day or moment that is rooted in the body, where love and desire and regret restlessly rage. His voice is uniquely his own, and this dive into sickness, into the labour of care, the work of love, that is never alone, but always a simultaneity—ongoing despite the chaos at play in our own lives—is tremendously moving and superbly rendered.

Obit by Victoria Chang

Man. This book. If I am a poet of anything, it is of grief, and so, this particular collection is probably the one that hit me hardest. Let me rephrase, because I tire of these tiny linguistic violences poorly used as praise: this is the book that took me the furthest inside the heart, by which I do not mean sentiment, but the enduring and unknowable human spirit, which is the only measure I give a damn about. This is a remarkable book in which Chang takes the strangeness of grief, marries it to a familiar form, the not-news of obits, and crafts a dazzling epic of loss.

Paradise (point of transmission) by Andrew Sutherland

It’s been a while since I loved an Australian debut as much as this fantastic first collection by Andrew Sutherland. (For that matter, Gavin Yao’s debut, also out this year, is solid too). Sutherland’s book explores his life through his HIV diagnosis, a continual point of death and resurrection that is both fixed and timeless: in his sure hands and deft lyric voice, it becomes a homing device, not the end-point of transformation but the beginning. Funny, sharp, and beautiful, this is a must-read.

Super Model Minority by Chris Tse

In his third collection of poetry, Super Model Minority, Chris Tse exhibits the full range of a poet’s power—fully enmeshed in the moment, in the world and the self’s many intricacies—to celebrate and interrogate language, which so constrains and illuminates the human experience. His work is sly, subversive, wildly intelligent, unabashedly sexy and dextrous in its use of voice and form to grieve, rage, and still dare to inhabit a queer futurity that is by its very nature hopeful. I loved it.

Ante Body by Marwa Helal

I always come away from Helal’s work invigorated, and more alive than when I began. Inventive, smart, hers is a swagger that brings to mind Nikki Giovanni, able to light up your spirit and devastate in equal measure. Here, she takes her form The Arabic to the next level, and like the form, demonstrates how she can move simultaneously back and forward, across languages and distances, to take us somewhere new. Brilliant. I’ll be thinking about it for a long time to come.

Your Emergency Contact has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen

Humour is often referenced in relation to Chen’s work but I think what makes his poetry so incredible, so unique, is his ability to move through multiple registers—multiple moods—in the space of a single poem. His voice is elastic, his skill remarkable; he can shift from the mundane to the profound blindingly fast and in this way captures the absurdity of life (which steamrolls from joke to tragedy, politics to butt sex without pause) like few others can. Absurdist, sexy and smart, this is a book that has so much to offer. The word I kept returning to was “excess”, which I love in literature, and which I only now realise is deeply incorrect. What I love in this book and in literature isn’t excess, but fullness—the sense of a life lived, one that isn’t inhibited by the Victorianesque restraint and modern minimalism which has so blighted the written word for decades. This book is full full full and fucking beautiful.

I should end there but I’m going to peek into the future and offer one more:

The Exclusion Zone by Shastra Deo

Technically not out til January but I got an advance copy so it counts as far as I’m concerned: this is such a unique, creative, daring book! I love its playfulness, its use of gaming strategies and ideas, the subversion of “choose your adventure” to “choose your own meaning”. This strategy compliments the speculative futurism at work, asking you to move forward and back as the poems move forward and back in time. To be a person of colour, particularly a woman in a patriarchal system, is to be presented with a series of absurd obstacles and challenges, and to be excluded from its positive meaning-making unless you conform or assimilate (or even then); I see this architecture mirrored back at us in the forms Deo uses, in the exploded and fraying language. Start 2023 the right way by reading this book.

There were so many other excellent poetry books I read this year, and I wish I could write about them all. Examples include but aren’t limited to: Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar, The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt, Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. Alison Croggon), Harvest Lingo by Lionel Fogarty, The Renunciations by Donika Kelly, Totality by Anders Villani, Frank: sonnets by Dianne Seuss, Finna by Nate Marshall, and At the Altar of Touch by Gavin Yao. That’s a list just as deserving as the one above, honestly. If you want to hear more from me about books, hit the subscribe button.

—Omar