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praise for the exclusion zone‘The Exclusion Zone inhabits the haunted space in which the nightmares of history and the ruins of the future collide. It is an astonishing achievement.’ James Bradley
‘The Exclusion Zone is a book of signs and omens, burials and resurrections – of unquiet bodies and unquiet matter. Deo’s haunting and utterly distinct vision of ecological and civilisational collapse engages the discourses and materials of history and science, poetry and gaming; enacting with consummate skill the alchemical art of the transmutation, and mutation, of substances. In this poetic gamespace, reader-players navigate alternate paths – passing into and out of the heart of a post-nuclear wasteland, into and out of zones of human love and violence; witnessing the decomposition and recomposition of language, time, memory, being; and encountering, in the altered subjects of these altered realities, revenants of lost worlds and inheritors of the fatal ones to come.’ Bella Li ‘In these poems, Deo orchestrates clean language, a clarity and fullness of vision, and an innovation of form that moves us between worlds, the already imagined and the yet to be. Deo is a maestro and I am completely untethered.’ Sara Saleh |
reviews of the exclusion zone
‘Engaging and experimental... we bear witness to the confusion, tenderness and desperation that permeates Deo’s well-crafted and confronting nuclear wasteland.’ Hannah Davies, Aniko Press
‘The Exclusion Zone reprises Deo's concern with things elemental—blood, flesh, molecular compounds.’ Declan Fry, ABC ‘The Exclusion Zone ignites the imagination through delicate phrasing and diverse literary techniques... This poet plays with form to the most delightful results, encouraging the audience to consider fresh perspectives.’ Annabel Harz, ArtsHub ‘The poems pay disorienting witness within a variety of situations, from the universes of video games to unimaginable futures where human descendants encounter monuments to humanity’s most acute pollutions... elliptical, thaumaturgic, lovely, and disturbing. It is crisp and over-spilling, muscular, visceral, smell-free.’ Joan Fleming, Sydney Review of Books ‘Shastra Deo’s second collection takes destabilisation seriously, not only as an aesthetic value but as part of the texture of experience and subjectivity. Many of the poems are placed in the midst of catastrophe or violence, energised by critical questions. When our survival is threatened, what previously unimaginable acts become necessary? How do we change when plunged into high-stakes scenarios?’ Andy Jackson, The Saturday Paper ‘There are poems of tumultuous energy in The Exclusion Zone, forms never encountered, and despite the collection’s high concept, it is exceedingly accessible, relatable and tender.’ Daley Rangi, Books+Publishing ‘What will we do when the last birdsong is replaced by car alarms and then the nothing-sound of nuclear fallout? Is there any way out of this, and does poetry have anything to do with finding this way? What does it mean to proclaim the geis, the injunction that ‘the poet may not gaze upon the bomb’? Is this what The Exclusion Zone means to do, to break one geis to keep another?’ Lucy Van, Cordite Poetry Review ‘Deo works skilfully with etymology, emotion, form and construction to deliver a triumphant and creatively vibrant second collection.’ Sista Zai Zanda, The Big Issue |
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