POETRY SPOTLIGHT: 'This Body' by Annette Marner

Annette Marner, Women With Their Faces on Fire

This week's poetry spotlight shines once again on Annette Marner's Women With Their Faces on Fire, a collection which draws on the beauty of nature to explore the experiences of women.

'In this book you will find a passionate involvement with the land, images of love and friendship, and anger against injustice. These poems chill and delight.' – Miriel Lenore

For this week's poetry spotlight, I've chosen to feature a poem from Annette Marner's Women With Their Faces on Fire. Poppy featured Annette's poem, 'For The Fallen Women' in a previous post, which made me want to read some of Annette's work for myself.
At the launch of her novel, A New Name for the Colour Blue, Annette spoke about her Separation, Annette Marner from Women With Their Faces on Fireinspirations for the story, which follows a woman drawn into an abusive relationship with a man. In fact, the novel draws inspiration from Women With Their Faces on Fire, which in turn was born from Annette's work with women who had experienced domestic violence.

Both novel and poetry collection draw on the beauty and terror of nature to explore the experiences of women, and the result is one that's really stuck with me.

These poems deal with some intense themes, not least amongst them violence and abuse faced by women. The thing that stands out to me most about the poem of the week is that the violence here is directed at the woman by herself, but it's not necessarily manufactured by her.
It's a reminder that violence manifests in different ways, but I think the message is positive, however muted the voice is. We can pluck and prod and poke at our bodies, but what would we do in the absence of external factors? Probably have a lot more room in our heads for reading, I'd say.

This Body

Dr Annette Marner

is an award-winning poet, novelist, fine art nature photographer and ABC radio broadcaster from South Australia's Southern Flinders Ranges. In 2018, she won the Arts South Australia Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript Award at the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature for A New Name for the Colour Blue. Her first book, Women with Their Faces on Fire, won the Unpublished Manuscript Award for Poetry for Friendly Street/Wakefield Press and was on the reading list at Flinders University.
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