The Odesa – UNESCO City of Literature Office continues to build bridges between UNESCO Cities of Literature and Odessa, fostering dialogue, exchange, and shared literary experience across cultures.
In 2008, Melbourne joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network when it was designated the second City of Literature in the world. Melbourne’s designation as a UNESCO City of Literature is acknowledgment of the breadth, depth and vibrancy of the city’s literary culture. Melbourne supports a diverse range of writers, a prosperous publishing industry, a successful culture of independent bookselling, a wide variety of literary organisations and a healthy culture of reading and engagement in events and festivals.
"Australia continues to stand in solidarity with Ukraine, offering humanitarian aid, military assistance, and strong diplomatic support in the face of ongoing aggression. This collaboration is part of a broader commitment to uphold democratic values, cultural resilience, and freedom of expression under extraordinary pressure," said David Ryding, the founding Director of the Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature Office
Please, meet Andy Jackson.
Andy Jackson is an Australian poet, whose most recent poetry collection is Human Looking, which won the ALS Gold Medal and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry. He is a co-editor of the recently-published anthology Raging Grace: Australian Writers Speak Out on Disability. He is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Melbourne, and he writes and rests on Dja Dja Wurrung country.
We invite you to listen to the poem performed by the author:
Formity
alternating lines with William Hay's “Deformity: An Essay” (1754)
imagine a print of me in the frontispiece
or a proliferating meme in the aether
I am indeed a perfect riddle
the disfigured can't be figured
cannot look with proper confidence in the face of another
you don't quite know what it's like
out of tenderness they taught me to be ashamed
what else might explain this
awkwardness of my outward get-up and behaviour
this dream of entering the body of another
ever conscious what an untoward subject
does to the atmosphere in a room or a poem
I feel a reluctance in opening my mouth
who knows what might come out or in
a deformed person should not assume borrowed feathers
or that language can speak louder than flesh
contempt attends him like his shadow reminding him of his ill figure
as if to figure was not also to think
when I die I care not what becomes of this carcass
while I live let me care what becomes of you
I desire my body may be opened
as these words are opened and never fixed
and I am a good subject of speculation for all in me is nature
an image blurred against the retina
the pleasure of one escaped
Andy Jackson
from Human Looking (2021 Giramondo)
The project was created by the Odesa UNESCO City of Literature and being implemented with funds raised by Reykjavík Bókmenntaborg UNESCO as part of the readings initiated by Milano City of Literature “Not Just Words” (Reading for Odessa) on February 24, 2024.
