Manners of an Astronaut

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Manners was Gig Ryan’s second collection, in 1984, and confirmed the impression she had made with her first book. It has been unavailable for some time although parts have reappeared in her New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, and Sydney’s Giramondo). As Martin Johnston said in a blurb for the first edition: it marks… something new in Australian poetry: a deeply coherent ‘discontinuous narrative’ in verse of hallucinatory vividness and continual wry wit, lacerating without self-pity, demanding without pretentiousness or condescension. No one will find it comfortable reading. Ryan’s craftsmanship is impeccable, her vision bullshit-proof.

Gig Ryan… develops and extends the strengths of her first collection The Division of Anger. Like that book, Manners of an Astronaut is full of verbal energy… She doesn’t give up the concerns her first book was a direct combative response to. Instead of using the language of feeling, she explores its discontinuities. This makes her work more poignant and sophisticated. -John Forbes, Scripsi magazine