The Myrrh-Bearers

The Myrrh-Bearers is a book of love poems, describing real events and real people as the poet has experienced them. The worlds evoked in these poems are suffused with faerie tales, myth and philosophy. The genesis of this collection lies in a diverse engagement with different poetries: the influence of the Polish poets Wisława Szymborska and Czesław Miłosz is discernible, along with that of the French poets Henri Michaux, René Char, René Daumal and Alfred Jarry; there is also the sure presence of Gwen Harwood and Judith Wright as well as, more esoterically, William Blake and G. I. Gurdjieff. The pataphysical influence of Jarry, in particular, leads to a poetry which attempts to describe a universe supplementary to the one which we inhabit. The presence of music as a subject stems from the poet’s close engagement with her musical mentors, Larry Sitsky in Australia, Emmanuel Nunes in France and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Germany. This is a rich and unusual collection which will reward readers interested in the way poetry can suggest new ways of looking at the world.

About the Author

Judith Nangala Crispin is a visual artist and poet living near Lake George, New South Wales. She has published a collection of poetry, The Myrrh-Bearers (Puncher & Wattmann, 2015), and a book of images and poems, The Lumen Seed (New York: Daylight Books, 2017). Judith won the Blake Poetry Prize in 2020. Her illustrated verse novel, The Dingo’s Noctuary, is forthcoming.