Writer In Conversation — Shastra Deo about her book, The Exclusion Zone
Saturday, 23 November, 11:00-12:30 PM
correspondences Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country 39 Sydney Road Bulleke-bek (Brunswick) VIC

Join us for a conversation with Meanjin/Brisbane-based writer, poet and editor Shastra Deo to talk about her book of poetry, The Exclusion Zone.

Shastra will join us via video hook-up from Meanjin. Inspired by Shastra's choose-your-own-adventure poem in the book, 'It Survives', an interactive conversation involving our guests is planned. More information to follow. 

Attendance is free.  Donations of $5 or $10 are gratefully received. These funds help us fund our activities with writers.  You can also select a ticket with a refreshment to support our work.

Press 'Join the guest list to join'.
__________

Note:—
—1) We stock limited copies of the book in-store. Head to our online shop to pre-purchase your copy and collect it on the day.
—2) Please select a ticket with a drink if you would like a refreshment.

__________

You don’t remember this place. This land could be
arid or hungry or wet or rot. That does not matter. Your memory
can’t tell you what no longer exists.

Beginning in the nuclear waste deposits of our future, The Exclusion Zone bears witness in a language degrading faster than the radioactive byproducts of our history and our present. At once prophecy and annihilation, these poems speak with ghosts, questioning how our words – and what they seek to preserve – can contend with the inevitability of their own decay. Nuclear materials drift throughout this collection, metastasising and resisting their own disposal. The Exclusion Zone is a poetry of warning, of séance, of incantation – a poetry of what survives, where the apocalypse-to-be manifests in human tenderness and vulnerability.

—Overview, The Exclusion Zone Publisher UQP, 2023 © Shastra Deo

__________

Bio
Shastra Deo was born in Fiji, raised in Melbourne, and lives in Brisbane. Her first book, The Agonist (UQP 2017), won the 2016 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the 2018 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Her second book, The Exclusion Zone (UQP 2023), was longlisted for the 2024 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. She is still living.

Shastra Deo Photograph: Kate Lund

__________

Acknowledgements & Credits
We respectfully acknowledge the Sovereign Custodians of the land and waters upon which we live and work, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging. We extend this respect to all First Peoples.