'The girlshaped thing' refuses manhandling in the rejection of imperial capital and the affirmation of those whose lives are unable to complete themselves because of colonial tyranny. It's a bookwork of wounds which refuses platitudes of repair. As capitalist militarism works to remove agency from the world, Evelyn Araluen rewrites the corrupt circuitry to insist on a poetics of justice. It seeks to staunch the flow of blood from wounds inflicted by global capital. This bookwork is the next move in the erosion of the oppressive state apparatus, a move that will, with support and persistence, take us into the classless, just and equitable world we know should be all of ours. Respect for Country is absolute, as is the personhood of all those who are denied rights by aggressive capital. This is a bookwork that has the scale, intensity, linguistic versatility and critical acuity to become a turning point, a marker in the commitment to repair the damage. Alive with the tension between information and psychology, between the journal and the anti-lyric, The Rot is a pathway we might all share, might all take while questioning the consequences of our every step. This is a bookwork for the 'girls' that reroutes confessional poetry into public discourse. Out of personhood we acquire responsibility, and herein we feel the fragments of hauntings that not only look back, but to what they will be and become. This is a bookwork that shatters any preconceptions about 'poetry and form' and 'poetry and theme': the language morphs to avoid capitalist fetishisation and meaning becomes increasingly intricate as it arcs back to stark realities, absolute truths. An unforgettable journey that not only leaves its own marks of protest but clarifies the poison of archival erasure while questioning the manipulation by the state and capital of the archive itself, exposing the rot of empire. The Rot is a set of points we might move through and find a way to justice.
John Kinsella, in a place made safe for the possums
