Cassandra Atherton is an Australian prose-poet, critic, and scholar. She is an expert on prose poetry, contemporary public intellectuals in academia, and poets as public intellectuals, especially hibakusha poets.[1] She is married to historian Glenn Moore.
Atherton completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honours in English and History), Master of Arts, Graduate Diploma of Education, and PhD at The University of Melbourne. She was supervised by Australian poet, Chris Wallace-Crabbe.
She was Harvard Visiting Scholar in English in 2015–16, sponsored by Stephen Greenblatt, a visiting fellow at the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University, Tokyo, in 2014, and an affiliate of the Japan Studies Centre at Monash University from 2015.[1] She was an editorial advisor for Australian Book Review in 2012–15 and is currently Poetry Editor of Westerly Magazine.[2]
Her prose-poetry has been widely anthologised in publications such as The Best Australian Poems (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017), the Hunter Anthology of Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry (2016), the International Prose Poetry Project's anthologies Seams (2015), Pulse (2016) and Tract (2017) and Strange Cargo: Five Australian Poets published by Smith/Doorstop in the UK.[3] Her prose poetry has been published in international journals, including New Orleans Review,[4]Stoneboat Literary Journal, Wisconsin, Stride Magazine, United Kingdom, and Scrivener Creative Review, Montreal.[5] Readings of her poetry are collected on Penn Sound.[6]
She has been awarded many grants and prizes, including a VicArts Grant (2016),[9] an Australia Council Grant (2017),[10] and Australian-Korean Foundation Grant (2016)[11] [with Jessica L. Wilkinson and Dan Disney] and the Felix Meyer Fellowship.[12] She received the University of California, Davis Mary Schroeder Award for her interview with Howard Zinn,[12] the non-fiction Sanlane prize (United States) for In So Many Words and a Blanc Literary Prize (United Kingdom) for The Man Jar.[13]
She is currently an Associate Professor[14] in Writing and Literature at Deakin University where she received the Vice-Chancellor's Award for University Teacher of the Year. She is currently Head of Honours and Masters of Arts in Writing and Literature there.[15]
In 2017, Cassandra and Paul Hetherington signed an advance contract with Princeton University Press to write a book on prose poetry.[16]
William Carlos Williams was a genius. And he has my lover’s initials. Or rather my lover has his initials. I often eat the plums that were in the fridge. But I don’t expect to be forgiven. Not everything depends upon that. Or the wheelbarrow of promises that still lies at the bottom of his heart.
Atherton's prose poetry explores the reanimation of canonical texts against a backdrop of popular culture references.[18] She appeals to humour noir and the politicisation of the poet's private spaces.[19]Geoff Page writes: "Though many of the poems are anecdotal they also advance by sound associations and other aleatory devices. They tend to be seriously playful with a bent towards the satirical, even the self-mocking."[20]
Atherton is praised for her prose poetry, and is likened to masters of the form. Michael Farrell writes: "Cassandra Atherton’s nervy style is distinct from an earlier generation of prose poets (Joanne Burns, Gary Catalano, Ania Walwicz); it feels both post-punk and post-John Forbes."[21] While others, such as Chloe Wilson, have praised her for exploring the fundamental question of any poet: "They are works in which the speaker, moving back and forth between text and experience, continually asks an unanswerable question: 'How do I write the space between my heart and my pen?'"[22] While Atherton's prose poetry is informed by previous poets and investigates the anxiety of the artist, Ivy Ireland has observed dark humour in her collection of prose poetry, Exhumed: "Dazzling, vibrant and terribly witty, ... Exhumed does not give itself over entirely to the horribly serious, gruesome images invoked by its title."[23] Australian writer Kerryn Goldsworthy notes in a critique of Atherton's Trace (2015) that "The dense, intense prose is often funny, and incorporates all kinds of cultural allusions."[24]
"It seems that for Atherton experience can excavate uncanny resonances; for this writer-as-reader, the canon perhaps acts as a repository of thematic models, patterns, and ideals as if a searchable archive reconstituted in this book in a mode Majorie Perloff terms elsewhere (and in other contexts) as récriture. If these texts are indeed expressions of desire, as [Lisa] Gorton asserts, then here is a poet ventriloquizing a pantheon of archetypes in order to extend fragmentarily and formally into narrative, her catharses presented as participatory and multi-vocal prose-like inventions".
Dan Disney, Antipodes, vol. 30, issue. 1, June 2016, pp. 236-7.
Atherton most often collaborates with artist and writer Phil Day and scholar and poet, Paul Hetherington. She is currently engaged in collaborating on Sketch Notes 4 and 5 with Day and a series of artist's books with both Hetherington and Day.
She was awarded a VicArts Grant (2016)[25] to collaborate on writing a prose poetry graphic novel with Day and scholar/poet Alyson Miller, titled Pika-don.
Prose Poetry: An Introduction, with Paul Hetherington, Princeton University Press, NJ (2020).
The Unfinished Atomic Bomb: Shadows and Reflections (New Studies in Modern Japan), David Lowe, Cassandra Atherton and Alyson Miller, eds. Lexington Books, Maryland, (2018)[26]
Travelling Without Gods: A Chris Wallace-Crabbe Companion, Cassandra Atherton (ed.), Melbourne University Press, Melbourne (2014) ISBN9780522864519.
Remnant: An Anthology of Microlit, Spineless Wonders, Sydney (2024).
Play: An Anthology of Microlit, Spineless Wonders, Sydney (2023).
Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom (with Peter Johnson), MadHat Press, USA (2023).
Alcatraz (with Paul Hetherington), Gazebo Books, Sydney (2022).[28]
The Language in My Tongue: An Anthology of Australian and New Zealand Poetry (with Paul Hetherington), MadHat Press, USA (2022).[29]
Travel: An Anthology of Microlit, Spineless Wonders, Sydney (2022).[30]
Pulped Fiction: An Anthology of Microlit, Spineless Wonders, Sydney (2021).
Memory Book: Portraits of Older Australians in Poetry and Watercolours (with Jessica Wilkinson), Hunter Publishers, Brisbane (2021).[31]
The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne (2020).
Scars: An Anthology of Microlit, Spineless Wonders, Sydney (2020).
Shuffle: An Anthology of Microlit, Spineless Wonders, Strawberry Hills (2019).
Time: An Anthology of Microfiction and Prose Poems, Strawberry Hills, NSW: Spineless Wonders (2018).
Landmarks: An Anthology of Microfiction and Prose Poems, Strawberry Hills, NSW: Spineless Wonders (2017).[32]
Cordite Poetry Review (with Paul Hetherington) (2016).[33]
Rabbit: A Journal of Nonfiction Poetry,(with Paul Hetherington) (2016).[34]
