This month Stella celebrates Decadence by Thuy On, longlisted for the 2023 Stella Prize.
Decadence is your second published poetry collection. How did the experience of creating this one compare to writing your previous collection?
I honestly had no idea what I was doing with my first poetry collection, Turbulence. Creative writing was not within my usual remit. When that book was released in 2020 I was better known as an arts journalist, editor and critic.
I have been working in and around the books industry now for 25 years but never as an actual published book writer before then, and moreover, ‘poet’ was not yet on my CV. So the writing and publication of Turbulence heralded a new direction for me.
With Decadence, I was more confident as a poet, particularly as Turbulence was well received and reviewed and even managed to be shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Award in 2021.
What was it like to be longlisted for the Stella Prize 2023?
It was such an honour! And validation too, to be just one of two poetry collections that made it to the longlist that year.
I was thrilled that Stella had just recently allowed poetry to be considered for the award.
Thuy On’s Decadence is a thrilling and wry evisceration of poetry gatekeeping on this continent.
Decadence has been praised for ‘assembling a unique erotics of word and punctuation, showcasing a poetry that is pure.’ Was curating the order of the poems a lengthy process?
No, not at all. I’ve been on record saying that with poetry I tend to write quickly, and that also includes the curatorial processes. Early on in the writing phase I had already decided it was to be divided into three sections: ‘Meta’, ‘Physical’ and ‘Spaces’ (which really, is also wordplay when you put the three words together: Metaphysical spaces). My poems hence, were created to be slipped into each of the categories.
‘Meta’ is the more playful section that included poems riffing on the metrics of language including punctuation and grammar, as well as a cheeky insider’s perspective of the Australian literary industry (blurbs, grants, criticism, errata slips, the Dewey Decimal system).
‘Physical’ is about the perennial pleasures and agonies of love and loss. It surveys the bumpy terrain of sex, lust, longing, limerence, betrayal and pain.
‘Spaces’ is about navigating the distances between people. Its territory covers metaphorical and literal spaces.
Your passion for language shines in this collection, evident in your navigation through various poetic forms. Do you ever struggle to express yourself while adhering to certain styles?
Not really. Most of the poems in Decadence are free style. Some are prose poems, one is a concrete one, another is a villanelle, several are Haiku but the majority do not subscribe to any formal poetic laws. I like to experiment a bit and I care far more about imagery than I do about structure.
Your new poetry collection is coming out early 2025. Tell us a bit about Essence.
Essence of course rhymes with Turbulence and Decadence! There are elements from both these books: the play with language and its building blocks, the satirical swipes of the OzLit industry, the examination of the hopes and disappointments of the heart but there is also something more in this third collection and you can find it in the first of three sections. In ‘Art’ I write about other artforms, so there are poems about movies, live performance, paintings, music, and of course, books. Here you’ll find Haiku about classic literature, a poem made up of The Cure song titles, even a poem as interpretative dance. It’s a lot of fun.
About the Author
Thuy On is the Reviews and Literary Editor of ArtsHub and an arts journalist, critic and poet who’s written for a range of publications including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Sydney Review of Books, The Australian, The Age/SMH and Australian Book Review. She was the books editor of The Big issue for 8 years.
Her debut, a collection of poetry called Turbulence, came out in 2020 and was released by University of Western Australia Publishing (UWAP). Her second collection, Decadence, was published in July 2022, also by UWAP. Her third book, Essence, will be published in 2025.
About the Book
“Funny, clever and keenly observed, Decadence is a profound musing on literature and language, that deftly skewers the would-be gatekeepers of verse. With this second collection, Thuy On has cemented herself as a vibrant, unique and captivating new voice in Australian poetry.” – Maxine Beneba Clarke
“In Decadence, Thuy On indulges in her love of language, assembling a unique erotics of word and punctuation, showcasing a poetry that is pure – in being about itself – but also powerfully seductive. As the poet herself puts it, this is ‘art laid bare’, performing how language works as language but also as a window onto those dark, human mysteries of being and feeling. Indeed, if On builds such a brilliantly decadent mansion out of poetry, exploiting striking imagery and playful wit, it is ultimately to provide a kind of refuge, ‘lest the cave of night swallows you.’” – Maria Takolander
“Thuy On’s poems are always wry, epicurean and defiant, and this book underlines her unique place in Australian poetry. Literate yet disarmingly unpretentious, wildly playful yet leavened with complex feeling, Decadence is a surreptitious delight.” – Andy Jackson.
Judges Report
Thuy On’s Decadence is a thrilling and wry evisceration of poetry gatekeeping on this continent. She sometimes resists the non-poet reader, and other times brings them in openly on the joke without resorting to the easy gags about poetry. Even as it endlessly needles the industry in which it’s situated, Decadence stands in as a kind of portfolio demonstration of On’s craft and cleverness as a poet – focussed, sensual, critical, charged, interdisciplinary.
As a book of poems about poems, it inevitably turns in on itself in a delicious way, but despite this Decadence is rarely up itself. When the collection looks outside to apply or play out its theories, On provokes us as readers to reconsider the role of poetry in our lives.
Further Reading
Read an interview with Thuy On in The Westsider
Hear Thuy discuss her poetry on 3CR’s Published or Not
Red an interview with Thuy on in the Australian Arts Review
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