Do you have anything less domestic?
by Emilie Collyer
Published in 2022 by Vagabond Press
Winner of the inaugural Five Islands Prize (2022) for a first book.
‘What sets the winning book apart is its depth of effects and the frequency of astonishing, breathtaking turns, insights, and denouements ... Do You Have Anything Less Domestic? demonstrates that the best personal writing illuminates a more universal experience.’ 5 Islands Judges’ Report
“Individual, staunch, and always engaging, Emilie Collyer’s Do you have anything less domestic? is the work of years, and its publication will bring a strong new voice into Australian poetry.”
— Lisa Gorton
About
Navigating the world, inheriting the gender of woman, feeling more or less comfortable with that, trying to find the ways in which the word is inhabited and where it slips away; wondering where the domestic bleeds into the public; whose place is where and what are the rules? These questions form the basis of Do you have anything less domestic? The poems within whisper quietly behind closed doors at night; take trips out into daily life with a sharp eye and worried tongue; tease at generalities and assumptions about what a woman’s body of work is, what it does, how it looks, reads and feels. The collection is structured into five sections that each take one of these utterances as their heading (each said to or about the author at one time): Do you have anything less domestic; Don’t write about your family, nobody cares; It's important to keep up weight bearing exercise; You have a nice smile, you should use it more; I hope I won’t put anyone off by saying this is genuinely feminist work. The poems move from the intimate and domestic, through family and social themed works, and out to broader themed pieces that are overtly feminist in how they interrogate language, content and form.
This book was developed via a Varuna Publisher Introduction Program with Giramondo. Cover image by Daisy Noyes. Huge thanks to every person who donated to the fundraising that has made the publication of this and four other new titles possible! Check out (and buy) the new books by Misbah Wolf, Suzanne Verrall, Peter Boyle and Luke Fischer
Reviews
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‘Emilie Collyer weaves humour throughout her collection Do you have anything less domestic? (which, by the way, has one of the most beautiful covers for a book of poetry this year). Other poems are of a much more serious nature: gendered violence, feigning having a boyfriend to exit a social situation and the messages young girls absorb from an early age. [This attentive collection] urge[s] us to consider leaving the world a better place than we found it. If not for us, then for those who come after.’
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‘Domesticity is a key theme and value of Emilie Collyer’s poetry. Likewise, questioning – how do I navigate this body? This world? Gender politics? Public vs private? The cartography of intimate vs domestic, feminist vs patriarchal, blended family vs barren landscape, choice vs coercion. Echoes of all these preoccupations exist in the collection.’
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Portrait of a poet on fire
Collyer’s collection is a slow burn. It starts with a few sparks, the occasional hiss or spit, before roaring into a crescendo as it reaches its climax and announces itself as the incendiary feminist creation it is.