TRIGGER WARNING

Trigger Warning is not for the fainthearted, but neither are the elemental realities of domestic violence and environmental catastrophe that these astonishing poems address. Comprised of three sections, the first summons a difficult personal history by conversing with poets–from Sylvia Plath to Anne Carson–whose dramatised confessions trigger Takolander’s own. The second part remains focused on the domestic, while redeeming that scene of trauma through a reinventing wit. The final section of this extraordinary book turns its attention outside, playing with poetry itself in order to confront the Anthropocene and the final frontier of death. This is poetry that balances ruthlessness and lyrical beauty; poetry alive to its time and audience; poetry not to be missed.

‘The poems in Trigger Warning take no prisoners: fiercely intelligent, mordant and uncompromising, they stare down difficult subjects—domestic violence, the body’s frailty, the precarious future—with an unerring commitment to telling the truth, no matter the fallout. Whether sparring with confessional poets in spiky epistles, reconfiguring the seemingly banal surface of the domestic world, or divining the apocalyptic excesses of the late Anthropocene, Takolander fearlessly contemplates “the battleground of reason’s end,” forging sense in a sea of senselessness. Enlivened with wit and leavened with irony, Takolander’s poems in Trigger Warning are electrifying; their intellectual force is indisputable.’—Sarah Holland-Batt

‘Astonishing, analytic, ardent and confessional, Maria Takolander’s forensic tropes are a daring and highly skilled performance. With metonymy, irony and rhetoric, Trigger Warning insists on feminist difference as it wields unsentimental light defamiliarizing the everyday. These poems enclose crisis and purposely trouble culture and identity, asking questions that salvage language from the detritus—and ultimately, show us a way to heal.’—Michelle Cahill

‘A trigger releases a spring that sets off a mechanism . . . and so I began to read these scientist-poems of cardiac distress, sly curtains, igniting cacti, wooden fathers, love and disaster. Each time I returned to the book the mechanism was different and it fired anew. Maria Takolander’s poems are serious, eccentric, crotchety and comic. Their dazzling reach and querulous intelligence is astonishing. I was altered, and remain awed.’—Carrie Tiffany

‘In a folktale the child goes alone into the forest. It is real, and dreamlike. Deliberately, with dreamlike calm, Takolander goes into the night’s ‘sunless terrors’: death-dread, old grief, fallout. Terror, these poems say, is “the dark energy of the cosmos”. What can words do with that? What can they do against it? These poems are clear, practical, steady—and compelled to go into that mind-forest reason finds no way through.’—Lisa Gorton

‘Trigger Warning does everything I want a poetry collection to do: it rips up the sodden carpet of our lives and exposes what’s been swept under there; it runs naked down the corridor of who we are, past the ‘Toilet' & the ‘Valium-white Baby Monitor’ and finds us down behind the television ‘In the semi-dark’ our faces as ‘uncomprehending as moons’. These poems explode in me like quiet bombs, their aftershocks cascading till I am floating, limbless and lost, in the beautiful trauma of it all.’—Ali Whitelock

THE END OF THE WORLD

Maria Takolander’s poetry presents the primitive aspects of life in dramatic and uncompromising ways. She strips the world of easy sentiment, highlighting the visceral qualities of experience, its hauntings and its premonitions of disaster. The intensity of the poems, and their focus on projections of violence, madness, degeneracy and despair, are tempered by a Gothic sense of beauty, and at times, a deadpan wit. The End of the World is divided into three parts – poems about childbirth and scenes of domestic menace; those set in places in the poet’s imaginative landscape which are troubled by the past (Finland, South America and Australia); and poems which portray the cruelties suffered and inflicted by the human animal.

‘Poetry is always ruthless but few poets are as wiling as Takolander to explore that ruthlessness.’—Michael Farrell, Sydney Morning Herald.

‘Takolander’s poems are ruinous, diabolical, all the more so for their polish and precision. Here, as in Baudelaire, beauty is inextricably linked with evil: it’s “the dark italics”, as Wallace Stevens phrased it, that compels the poetic imagination.’—Bronwyn Lea, Westerly.

Available for purchase here.

Honours

Winner of the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award:

‘Maria Takolander’s fourth poetry collection shows the writer at the very peak of her form . . . The book is multi-layered, bolstered with incisive intellect and wit and underscored by an impressive range of tone, style and themes.’

Short-listed for the 2022 Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal:

‘Takolander’s poetic skill is unfaltering. Overall, the collection . . . takes nothing for granted.’

Named a best book of 2021 in Australian Book Review.

Named in Readings’ ‘100 great reads from Australian women in 2021’.

Named in The Australian as one of the most anticipated book releases of 2021:

‘Maria Takolander, Australian short-story writer and poet of uncommon intelligence and style, brings us a new poetry collection with Trigger Warning.’

Named by Aniko Press in ‘Poetry Collections We Can’t Wait to Read in 2021’:

‘Takolander draws us sharply into her world with poetry purposefully and powerfully written for our current times.’

Reviews

‘Ruthless and beautiful all at once. . . . Unusual and fiercely intelligent, Trigger Warning will simultaneously unsettle you and set you alight.’—Cheryl Akle for The Australian.

‘Among these are poems that will resonate for decades. Takolander has a skill for rare and deep language-making in moments of gravitas; she brings into sharp focus what can and can’t be managed.’—John Kinsella for The Australian.

‘Exquisite in terms of language, but dark in implication . . . None of them land exactly where you expect them to.’—Geordie Williamson for The Australian.

‘A recent article suggested we had reached the pandemic condition of languishing. Things are what they are, and we are almost past caring. The most salutary antidote I can suggest is Trigger Warning, Maria Takolander’s scalp-stretching collection.’—Peter Kenneally for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, WA Today, The Brisbane Times.

‘Vintage Takolander.’—Geoff Page for The Canberra Times.

‘Deserves to be placed on any reading list of contemporary Australian poetry.’—Martin Langford, Meanjin.

‘Brilliant.’—Declan Fry for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age.

‘A trauma-song unfolding in three parts, moving from intimate to public space. It is difficult to chose one poem to elevate from among such a carefully crafted whole.’—Melinda Smith for Australian Poetry Journal.

‘A sharp and arresting collection, fierce in its emotions and determination to make language do the hard work of speaking that which hovers at the edge of articulation.’—Rose Lucas for Australian Book Review.

‘Some of the most moving confessional and elegiac poems you’ll read anywhere.’—Gregory Day for Australian Book Review.

‘At times a deeply personal selection of poems, it left me in awe of a poet’s ability to trust and to share . . . a strong and compelling collection.’—Claire Millar for Readings.

‘Balances ruthlessness, literary playfulness and lyrical beauty.’—Readings.

‘Excellent.’—Carrie Tiffany for the New Zealand Herald.

‘To delve deeply into what and who we are and where we might be going. Maria Takolander does that both beautifully and at times painfully in her latest publication, Trigger Warning, the publication of which this month places her among the elite of Australian poetry.’—Warwick Hadfield for ABC Radio National.

‘Refuses to be categorised, playing around both boldly and intelligently with what books can do.’—Kate Evans, ABC Radio National, for UQP Critics Corner.

‘Interesting and intriguing . . . reflective, disturbing and cathartic . . . not easily forgotten.’—Janet Mawdesley for Blue Wolf Reviews.

‘In these poems, the domestically familiar is defamiliarised as family violence takes shape . . . speaks to something larger taking shape in the zeitgeist.’—Scott Patrick Mitchell for Out in Perth.

Honours

Named a best book of 2014 by Australian Book Review.

Reviews

‘Maria Takolander's first book, Ghostly Subjects (2009), with its stylish and often brief poems, was impressive enough, but her second, The End of the World, marks a sudden leap forward in intensity and scope.’—The Canberra Times, Sydney Morning Herald.

‘Divided into three sections (childbirth and domesticity, the history of various landscapes real and imaginary and the cruelties humans inflict upon one another) this collection of poetry is tough and crystalline . . . The poems are as sharp and disquieting as the raven on the cover with its beady stare.’—The Age, Sydney Morning Herald.

'Takolander is interested in situations we would like to think of as extreme . . . She knits historical moments with the everyday pathologies of human behaviour, making the calamities of war, colonisation, violence, poverty and totalitarianism specific and palpable.'—The Australian.

'Takolander's apocalyptic, menacing poems shine.'—Australian Book Review.

'Tightly controlled . . . a poetry that is both attractive and hard-wearing'.—Los Angeles Review of Books.

‘The poems have an apocalyptic feel, taking us forward to a world where the "game is over"; the excesses and villainy of our past have wrecked the future, even as it explores the past with archeological fervor. While the scope of the book is grand, taking in a kind of checkered history of the human race and its foibles, a transcendent beauty continues to shine through . . . Takolander's vision is taut, dark and powerful.’—Good Reads.

‘The End of the World makes no pretense at sweetness or ease. While there is tenderness in the poems of childbirth and domesticity that open the collection, the collection has an underlying ferocity which takes the reader below the superficial into the heart of meaning, as revealed by the intensity of each moment it encounters.’—Compulsive Reader.

‘Part 3, with its blending of lyrical, narrative and prose poems, is a complex, ambitious work, and the one where Takolander’s gifts for haunted vision are given free rein. Poems such as “Show Business”, “Witch” and “Violence” are wonderful examples of how taking risks with imagination and storytelling tradition can make fine poetry.’—The Saturday Paper.

'Its poems explore the dark and unforgiving nature of the world. This is the ground of Takolander’s imagination, and here it is unalloyed and unqualified . . . Takolander has . . . set out to explore it with the candour and the steadiness it demands.'—Cordite.

'Displaying restraint and intrigue, daring and bewilderment, Takolander’s The End of the World is not a volume to be missed.'—The NSW Writers' Centre.

'Takolander’s poems are excruciatingly daring . . . Poetry can often seem inaccessible but I was instantly seduced . . . Every word perfectly precise, perfectly descriptive, perfect.'—ANZ Litlovers Litblog.

'Here is poetry whose language is muscled, precise yet allusive. It startles, and its promise drives through the whole work.'—Mascara Literary Review.

'The arresting choice of language, the precision that has guided those choices . . . the clarity she brings to bear on complex subject matter, without compromising the complexity or gravity of her ideas . . . the collection as a whole and in its parts strikes me as both subtle and immaculate.'—foam:e.

'Takolander's great talent as a poet is to plumb the unknown, like sending a bucket into a darkened well to see what might turn up . . . The End of the World is a fine collection, yielding its riches incrementally through re-reading, a quality I associate with the best poetry.'—Rabbit.

GHOSTLY SUBJECTS

In Ghostly Subjects, Maria Takolander applies her unflinching gaze to topics ranging from the Madrid train bombings to sex dolls, from domestic violence to poetry readings, and from love games to cosmetics. The world portrayed in this striking collection is intensely uncanny and rendered with a distinctive precision of language and vision.

‘Takolander is a new kind of shaper of poems: a postmodern lyricist, she searches for the essence of what makes the poem and finds, in the end, that the poem matters. She won’t be categorized, because she is constantly exploring the nature of categories. A brilliant first book by a poet who will show us where to look next.’—John Kinsella.

‘Challenging and . . . disturbing . . . always polished, always surprising.’—Martin Duwell.

‘This is zesty writing, individual and unintimidated by the sharp nature of much of the material.’—Peter Rose.

‘At times either disarming yet penetrating, or mysterious yet blunt, in Maria Takolander’s Ghostly Subjects poems move from the You Yangs to Finland, contrasting or embedding the human with nature in rich imagery and stark thoughtful reflection. The last powerful section Culture uses art as palimpsest . . . In these jagged vivid portraits, each artist blindly pursues her/his own elusive ghostly subjects, and Takolander, haunted in turn, reinterprets them in a unique new voice.’—Gig Ryan.

Honours

Short listed for a 2010 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award (Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award).

Reviews

‘Poetry is always ruthless but few poets are as willing as Takolander to explore that ruthlessness . . . The poems could be written by a ghost . . . or unfairy godmother.’—The Sydney Morning Herald (2010).

'The edges of the meanings are clean and the level of insight at its most convincing . . . there is, moreover, an extended density to the material which is compelling . . . A poet needs an edge to her words, and Takolander has developed one. It will be fascinating to see what she goes on to do with it.’—Island.

‘An exciting new poet . . . it is always a treat to read poems of consistently high quality written by a young Australian poet which sound so unlike the poems of other young Australian poets.’—Australian Poetry Review.

‘Takolander’s style, because of the tremendous weight each word and line carries, deserves close attention . . . Nothing in the book feels haphazard. She masterfully crafts strong sounds that pound the image into the psyche . . . Maria Takolander’s Ghostly Subjects reverberates within me. Every poem is filled with danger, and every poem is delightfully haunting.’—Antipodes.

‘After reading Ghostly Subjects, it is impossible to look at the world in quite the same way . . . she ushers in a new era for a cerebral grittiness in Australian poetry.’—Blue Dog.

‘Like Kafka and Plath, Takolander seeks to “defamiliarise the familiar” . . . Her poetry alternates between being highly metaphoric and disturbingly literal.’—The Canberra Times.

‘Fascinating yet grotesque . . . a kind of haunting.’—Australian Book Review.

‘Violence is a recurring theme, as well as something of a structural strategy . . . it is an encouraging fact that Maria Takolander’s daring and subversive work is not being marginalised.’—Cordite.

NARCISSISM

‘In Maria Takolander’s first collection we find all the qualities we look for in a new poet: accomplishment, verve, technical flair, memorable phrases, unexpected intellections—above all, originality and boldness, a gamey contribution to the long unfolding polyphonic song that is poetry. This is zesty writing, individual and unintimidated by the sharp nature of much of the material. “Beauty doing its job”, to quote the poet.’—Peter Rose.

‘These poems, as fine as bone china, have an acuity of image, tone and phrase that can cut to the bone, laying bare how the perception of “the unfathomable suddenly everywhere” becomes a mode of being. In Maria Takolander, poetry has found a fresh articulation and a new voice.’—Paul Kane.

Reviews

'The most notable aspect of Maria Takolander's work is its intensity . . . its precise articulation of violence.'—Island.

'Challenging and . . . disturbing . . . A book of great accomplishment.'—Australian Book Review.