2019 fellow: Claire Albrecht

Manuscript: Handshake

Claire's project will examine artist's books, printing techniques and media, searching for works combining poetry and photography.

Her manuscript, Handshake, in which form and content are intertwined, will investigate dualities/polarities – most obviously the relationship between image and text, but also the anxious and the sublime; 'ugly' and 'beautiful' imagery; the personal and the public; the private and the political; what is experienced and what is perceived.

Handshake will explore themes of 'the anxious poet' and anxieties of representation through lyric poetry combined with abstract, disorienting photography.

Claire Albrecht is writing her PhD in Poetry at the University of Newcastle. Her current work investigates the connections between poetry/photography and sex/politics.

Claire's poems have appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Overland Literary Journal, Plumwood Mountain and The Suburban Review. Since August 2018 she has run a monthly poetry event in Newcastle, Cuplet Poetry Night, featuring some of Australia's best poets as well as international guests.