AustLit

'Lucy Van's book of poetry The Open, published by Cordite and recently long-listed for the Stella Prize, is made up of mostly prose poems. The sentences that make up Van's prose are very fun and full of life. Merlinda Bobis in her Introduction puts it well: 'We've just touched what's here, or are about to touch it, when apprehension is quickly unsettled, halted or reconfigured.' This is true from sentence to sentence, the way they are stacked. This is also true for the life of an individual sentence. There is always the possibility of things being reconfigured, unsettled, or pulled to a halt. The sentences are the best thing about The Open which is to say everything is the best thing.' (Introduction)