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SIDESHOW HISTORY
: Jennifer
Harrison
Book Description:
it's
the centre
I want to show you
the
centre to the side
of the side in the centre—
it's
what I want you to know
of almost-gesture
in the who-are-you of a name—
could be unsettling
but let's go inside
Jennifer Harrison has always been interested in
performers, their choices and vulnerabilities. In her
new collection, Sideshow History, she shows us
the risk of being a public performer where the artist is
continually under pressure of being seen to fail or
succeed. Her admiration for this long tradition, its
humanism and energy, is what she examines in these poems
about circus and street art. In researching and
documenting this culture, through photography and poems,
she comments on its contemporaneity, a vibrancy that
whilst looking back into ideographic history, also looks
forward towards a new way of valuing difference.
Throughout these sequences and the individual
poems which separate them, Harrison writes an
understated poetry of great humanity, fineness and
often wit.
Peter Rose, Australian Book Review
Kerry Leves, Overland
Dorothy Porter, Melbourne Writers' Festival
A major contribution to Australian
poetry which demonstrates Harrison's evolving career
and mastery. Its depth of intellectual and emotional
registers, in addition to its sustained craft, makes
this poetry demanding yet also immensely rewarding and
enjoyable.
Judges
comments, Western Australian Premier's
Book Awards
2025
130pgs
$25.00 Australia
Book Sample
Sideshow
it's the centre
I want to show you
the centre to the side
of the side in the centre—
it's what I want you to know
of almost-gesture
something hiding
in the who-are-you of a name—
the performance
could be unsettling
in being so ill-defined
but let's go inside
for there we might
begin to understand
what is required
of desire
once desire is assigned
a poetic persona—
Ferris Wheel
small furtive silhouettes
behind masks
that harden into shards
of wood ash and blow away—
she'd paid at the turnstile
and once seated could not
change her mind or select
another trajectory or return—
she did not think of herself
as imprisoned or that
happiness might be armour-
plated thinly gilded—
the first time she travelled
to the summit
she held onto the bars tightly
and could see everything
laid out beneath her
like a tidied briefcase
terracotta suburbs washing
across the city in one direction
and the ocean white-fringed
and restless in the other—
the second time she ascended
the wire cage was shaking
and still she saw more than
enough emblematic skyscrapers
piercing the clouds
and tiny verandas like dioramas
strewn with clean dry washing—
going down felt luxurious
she only had to sit in one place
and let gravity take her
to the flat streets and traffic lights
corner shops and mottled houses
below but as she rose a third time
she was suddenly blinded
by a bird strike or flint
thrown down from the sun
and she held her face within
shame's incipient forest
waiting for the world to disappear
but it didn't
it sat there monstrously
familiar and clear—
Star Rider
not porcelain's inert tactility
the smooth tracery of eyebrows
on an ornamental face
or big brushwork femininity's
re-awakened curiosity
an old penny under the tongue—
she might be riding a unicycle
or a show horse
feather-plumed and tasselled
her own paillette sequin costume
a little tawdry like seagulls
scattering crumbs—
the piano might strike
the wrong key when she plays
but some stars have less tinsel
than others
some are broken into marcasite whorls
less distant than imagined
the way they fall through emptiness
like errant commas—
she once thought there were no rules
to follow or break
and didn't care if the tiara was fake
or the performance mere glitter
a spotlight falls where it will
and there is more to a circle
than competent astronomy
described by a steel stylus—
she pushes back three jade bangles
and with retro gesture
peers into a window's aperture—
Stanley Kubrick's Killer's Kiss
playing at the local noir cinema
love's budget reruns
stereotyped crime-driven
happy endings another ticket sold—
it's the centre
I want to show you
the centre to the side
of the side in the centre—
it's what I want you to know
of almost-gesture
something hiding
in the who-are-you of a name—
the performance
could be unsettling
in being so ill-defined
but let's go inside
for there we might
begin to understand
what is required
of desire
once desire is assigned
a poetic persona—
Ferris Wheel
small furtive silhouettes
behind masks
that harden into shards
of wood ash and blow away—
she'd paid at the turnstile
and once seated could not
change her mind or select
another trajectory or return—
she did not think of herself
as imprisoned or that
happiness might be armour-
plated thinly gilded—
the first time she travelled
to the summit
she held onto the bars tightly
and could see everything
laid out beneath her
like a tidied briefcase
terracotta suburbs washing
across the city in one direction
and the ocean white-fringed
and restless in the other—
the second time she ascended
the wire cage was shaking
and still she saw more than
enough emblematic skyscrapers
piercing the clouds
and tiny verandas like dioramas
strewn with clean dry washing—
going down felt luxurious
she only had to sit in one place
and let gravity take her
to the flat streets and traffic lights
corner shops and mottled houses
below but as she rose a third time
she was suddenly blinded
by a bird strike or flint
thrown down from the sun
and she held her face within
shame's incipient forest
waiting for the world to disappear
but it didn't
it sat there monstrously
familiar and clear—
Star Rider
not porcelain's inert tactility
the smooth tracery of eyebrows
on an ornamental face
or big brushwork femininity's
re-awakened curiosity
an old penny under the tongue—
she might be riding a unicycle
or a show horse
feather-plumed and tasselled
her own paillette sequin costume
a little tawdry like seagulls
scattering crumbs—
the piano might strike
the wrong key when she plays
but some stars have less tinsel
than others
some are broken into marcasite whorls
less distant than imagined
the way they fall through emptiness
like errant commas—
she once thought there were no rules
to follow or break
and didn't care if the tiara was fake
or the performance mere glitter
a spotlight falls where it will
and there is more to a circle
than competent astronomy
described by a steel stylus—
she pushes back three jade bangles
and with retro gesture
peers into a window's aperture—
Stanley Kubrick's Killer's Kiss
playing at the local noir cinema
love's budget reruns
stereotyped crime-driven
happy endings another ticket sold—