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ISBN: 978-0-9579411-4-4
Author: MTC Cronin
Title: Our Life is a Box. / Prayers Without a God
Series: soi 3 modern poets
Language: English
Publisher: papertiger media inc
Pub date: 01 August 2007
Extent: 160pp
Height: 218mm
Width: 135mm
Thickness: 14mm
Format: Paperback
Distributor: Dennis Jones & Associates
Price: AUD$23.95 (inc. gst); NZD$26.95 (inc. gst)

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brief description

The latest collection from award-winning and prolific poet MTC (Margie) Cronin is a daring and unorthodox twin-volume that offers two books, or rather, the same two books in rearranged language. Dark clarion for those clinging grimly in the shadows of love; forensic-natured tale of sadness, silence and the poem itself - one book shivers, a giddy autobiography of Cronin's complex and edgy poetic; the other, bursts forth in songs in praise of all that is not beyond us. Playful, sensual, almost dangerously innovative.

about the book

Our Life is a Box. and Prayers Without a God were written very quickly; the first over several weeks, and the latter, over several days. "The two books are the same book in rearranged language," says Cronin. "Our Life is a Box. is autobiographical, but it is an autobiography of the poem - or at least of my poem, my poetic. It could also be described as a poetry novella, but not a novel in the sense that such a thing is normally understood. It is not a 'novel in poetry' but the 'poem's story' - and it is a story that is forensic in nature. Its 'forum' is both family and faux-family - blood, relationship, social systems; what is inherited, adopted, created. In this generational tale, what is begot is the poem. Born of dissension between ego and spirit, ritual and reality, culture and self. And, of course, the poem is not an arrival at a point of harmony, but a struggle through play along the way of this particular life. 'Prayers without a god' is one description, for me, of what poems are. The book, Prayers Without a God, is a praise of what is not beyond us. It is a hymn sung of what is with us, what we are with. This is a recognition that poems help to create our selves as what we might be. That they are 'without' a god is because they are representational of what we have not reached."

"Our Life is a Box. was written more than ten years ago, and Prayers Without a God at least five years ago, if not more. So they are new books only in the sense of being more recently published than some of my other published collections. To elaborate: My mode of working usually falls into one or another of two categories. The first is to have a large number of manuscripts - sometimes several dozen - in progress simultaneously and to work on them over quite a lengthy period in order to produce collections with overarching themes. Examples include my love poems (My Lover's Back) and my book about the writer's place in society (Bestseller), both containing poems written over a thirteen year period; my poems about women and gender relations (the world beyond the fig) and my meditation on the 'soul' (beautiful, unfinished), both of which contain pieces that span almost a decade. My second modus operandi is to write quickly (varying from days to weeks) around a single theme and following a usually quite restrictive form. Books which fit this discrete mould include Talking to Neruda's Questions which responds to Pablo Neruda's Book of Questions, and written over several months; < More or Less Than > 1-100, a 100-part poem wherein the line count arcs from one line in part one up to 50 lines in part 50 and then gradually back down to one line in part 100, an examination of life and death in the first and third persons, written over several weeks; and these two books in question, Our Life is a Box. and Prayers Without a God. With the former method, manuscript ideas spring up, have poems added to them over many years, and then live or die as poems are shuffled around between them, new manuscripts are generated or a book solidifies. This process provides an excellent and considered way to 'self-edit', to be constantly thinking about how my work fits together in holistic senses. I find it an invaluable way to guard against feeling 'precious' about my work. For example, what I feel might be quite a good poem may ultimately 'fit' nowhere, and this can often be an indication that the piece wasn't as great as I thought it was. Conversely, it might mean that the book it belongs to hasn't come into existence yet, and it must wait for its abode to be built. This writing and shuffling method also operates as a constant re-evaluation of what I am trying to achieve with the concept of the 'book,' something that means more to me than putting together a group of good poems. The latter method - the fast piece - often begins with a moment of inspiration that propels a flurry of concentrated activity and I find this process ideal for creating within me 'excitement' about my work and its possibilities to break new ground. I don't believe in the notion of the 'new' for its own sake, but I do subscribe to ongoing 'learning,' and these pieces or collections are often the result of some type of 'experimentation.'"

With more than a dozen books to her name in a little over ten years, Cronin maintains that she is still excited at the prospect of a new book. "It's more enjoyable now because I have a better sense of what a book is, of what I want to make. I've also learned more about book production and how to avoid mistakes, and I have a greater appreciation of how hard it is to get published and not just to get published, but to get published what you want published. A case in point is Prayers Without a God - and probably Our Life is a Box. too - which is a strange and unusual book and perhaps difficult to convince many publishers of. Funnily enough, I have never sent these two books to many publishers over the years because I sensed that they would not find a home. When soi 3 came into being I hoped that they might finally be well-received and, happily, I was right. Also, Prayers Without a God is a personal favourite among my books, so it is wonderful that it is finally going to see the light of readers."

excerpt from the book

from OUR LIFE IS A BOX. 81

74.

We have some quite nice laws in books
Bright things in the sky
Too many words at least three definitions behind the reality
And they say, Don't be afraid
The world might end tomorrow
Well, if it's just the world ending, that's easy
Meanwhile all my best clothes are faded by the sun
And above this fast train with a sleeping driver
There is no other moon

*

from THE CATS OF ROME

and how could we not live here? - after
the leftovers have sat for three days in
the fridge I throw them out; imagine if it
happened to our coastline?; my husband
and I don't speak for days over the brand
of a television - here with our cheap
imports, here where we're warning fans
to watch out for fake souvenirs (for
good quality fake souvenirs), and I go
to a gym for five hundred a year because
I don't know what to do with the fat in my
wallet ... with supermarkets so full they
have to stay open 24 hours a day; with
the security of my door

and the wolves are sleeping but have
left 10,000 footprints on the way to
their dreams: at work I ask Brendan
in the printroom, can you do me 10,000
copies before you leave (he is retrenched)
- at all times we are speaking (white
takes what is not white from black so black
remains) and I want him to know that the
universe stops with every man, this
discourse of stars - it's half a word we
speak to a well-bred person; when it gets
inside it becomes whole - this is a proverb
about proverbs ... and at night for 10,000
nights I dream of dreams

review quote

MTC Cronin has established herself as one of the most continually surprising and inventive voices in contemporary poetry. Her work reminds us that the lyric voice rings far beyond the trammels of self and identity: she is a poetic animal at play in the element of language, venturing its wit, its danger, its ironies, its sensualities. The formal boldness of these poems unwinds from an admirable emotional courage, drawing the reader into the true extremities of ordinary things: love, grief, pleasure, pain, death, birth. As poetry can, it opens up life itself, polished to its full complexity.
Alison Croggon

bio

MTC Cronin was born in 1963 in Merriwa in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, Australia, and grew up in Caloundra, Queensland. She has published numerous books of poetry, including several in translation, and her work has won and been shortlisted for many major literary awards both in her native country and internationally. Among her forthcoming collections are a series of poetry volumes jointly written with the Australian poet, Peter Boyle, and several books of avant-garde cross-genre essays. She currently lives on an organic farm in Maleny, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, with her partner, Richard Mohan, and three young daughters, Maya, Vivienne and Agnès.