Books
Poetry
Dumbstruck
This debut collection, published by Five Islands Press, is winner of the 1996 Anne Elder Prize. Through acute observation of, and reflection upon, both the formative and the everyday, it introduces Polain’s thematic territory: love, loss, grief, memory, exile and longing.
Each Clear Night
Short-listed for the 2000 Western Australian Premier’s Poetry Award. Each Clear Night (Five Islands Press) explores expressions of violence in the human, mythological and astro-physical realms.
Therapy Like Fish: New and Selected Poems
A full-length book of new poems by Marcella Polain opens this volume and provides its overall title. Two further sections select generously from her earlier two books, with some revisions. Her lines in those earlier books dance on the page, always seeking a place to leap, and unexpected trajectories. Energy of rhythm and assurance of connection weave a remarkably wide territory of emotional understanding. The setting is Perth and its wheat-belt inland; the poems engage personally with the matters of childhood, adulthood and family, and with the girl immigrant's awareness of 'the salt of distant throats'. Polain's new poems focus her essential elan and fierce intelligence on the solitary psyche, summoning grief and fear in a place of stillness and vulnerability. This strikingly immediate poetry is probably her most searching and complex yet. Therapy Like Fish: New and Selected Poems (John Leonard Press) was shortlisted for the 2009 Judith Wright Poetry Prize in the A.C.T Awards.
the seven-eight count of unstoppable sadness
A life lived with melancholy, its spikes, its other rhythms, its insistence. In the end, when we learn this part of us is part of us, is not our enemy, when we live long enough to eschew fear of judgments – social, medical, personal – eschew the idea of ‘normal’ and the label of ‘well’, what can these undercurrents of sadness teach us.
These lyric poems, written over a decade, don’t attempt answers. They emerge from observation, reflection and re-imagining, from the desire to make peace with the self, beloveds, the past. In doing so, they ask if there are other emergent possibilities – patience, acceptance, gratitude, compassion, courage, hope – when we live with sadness that will not be banished, sadness that for the narrator of these poems is as inescapable as the earth on which she stands or the air she breathes.
Published in 2023 by Puncher and Wattmann.
Novels
The Edge of the World
Short-listed for a Commonwealth Writer’s Prize.
A powerful, monumental story of an Armenian family, this account spans 100 years, five countries, and several generations. A family fragmented by genocide, exile and emigration, but which, through extraordinary acts of courage and compassion, is eventually brought together again—albeit utterly changed.
Published in 2009 by Fremantle Press.
Driving into the Sun
Long-listed for the ALS Gold Medal. Published in 2019 by Fremantle Press.
A poignant coming-of-age story set in 1960s Australia, exploring loss, family secrets, and the search for identity.
For Orla, her father is a great shining light, whose warm and powerful presence fills her world. But in the aftermath of his sudden death, Orla, her mother and her sister are left in a no-man's land, a place where the rights and protections of the nuclear family suddenly and mysteriously no longer apply, and where the path between girl and woman must be navigated alone.
Driving into the Sun is a deeply moving exploration of family dynamics, resilience, and the enduring power of memory. Perfect for readers who enjoy character-driven literary fiction with atmospheric prose and emotionally resonant themes. Discover a story of love, loss, and the search for belonging in a changing Australia.
Other
Selected short fiction:
‘Curtain Man’, AntiThesis, Vol.23
‘A Calf is an Animal’, Westerly, Vol.57.2
‘Beautiful Negatives’, The Kid on the Karaoke Stage, ed Georgia Richter. Fremantle Press
‘Sleep without Cameras’, Westerly, Vol. 55.2
‘Skin’, Westerly, Vol.50
Selected essays and articles:
‘Sound and Abundance Shape the Poetic Vision of Judith Beveridge’, The Conversation
‘How to Lose an Island: Singapore, colonialism and the environment’, Environment, Media and Popular Culture in South-East Asia, eds Jason Paolo Telles, John Charles Ryan, Jeconiah Louis Dreisbach. Springer
‘A Stranger’s House’, The Palgrave Handbook of Impostor Syndrome in Higher Education, eds Michelle Addison, Maddie Breeze, Yvette Taylor. Palgrave McMillan
‘Writing with an Ear to the Ground: the Armenian Genocide’s “Stubborn Murmur” ’, M/C Journal 16(1). https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.591
‘Micheline Aharonian Marcom and the hamam shoes’, Westerly, Vol. 59.2
‘Structuring the Poem’ and ‘Point of View in Poetry’, The Writers’ Reader, ed Brenda Walker. Halstead Press
Research:
The ‘Stubborn Murmur’ Project, sustained research into, and publication on -
the Armenian Genocide
genocide studies
refugee experience
statelessness
immigration
exile
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