PUBLICATIONS
Authored Books
Cover image: Clara Fischer (aged two, 2019)
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A Gamble for my Daughter (Vagabond Press, 2022) is Fischer's third book of poems. Its mythopoetic sequences enact a synthesis of poetic imagination and philosophical speculation.
‘"Why could your music / not turn the Maenads’ hearts?” Luke Fischer asks in an opening sequence which propels the Orpheus myth in fresh and newly-relevant directions. It’s a question which reverberates subtly beneath the remainder of the book: a second section in which abstract meditations acquire blood and bone; a third section in which poems of open-hearted love search for ways to maintain a child’s innocence and wonder. The Irish poet Eavan Boland came to regard poetry as 'a forceful engagement between a life and language.' Luke Fischer’s A Gamble for my Daughter is just such an engagement. It is intellectually exciting, emotionally affecting, dense, yet simultaneously lucid and welcoming. It is naked, vulnerable poetry which seeks the timeless and urgent." – Brook Emery "Very few poets in Australia possess such a width of erudition or so deep an engagement with a tradition of philosophical poetry reaching back through Rilke and Hölderlin to the Renaissance and the Pre-Socratics. And yet these are very human poems filled with the experiences of parenthood and holding closely to present experience, here in the time of climate crisis and ongoing ecological collapse." – Peter Boyle "If there is a word that could encapsulate Luke Fischer’s poetic dwelling it is transparency. From his first collection Luke Fischer’s verses are prismatic eyes that see through the visible and the tangible establishing correspondences of symbolic equivalence the likes of which we see only in Paul Valery, Osip Mandelstam and Rainer Maria Rilke. The pure lyricism of his language liberates the aesthetic potential of his vision from the shackles of cliché and trivialities. The poet revives the visible reality into the pristine hierophany of its originary source: the radical and fragile imaginary of mortality." – Professor Vrasidas Karalis |
A Personal History of Vision (UWAP Poetry, 2017) expands on the concerns of Fischer's previous poetry collection Paths of Flight (2013). Intertwining the personal and the historical, the modern and the primeval, culture and nature, these poems explore vision in its many senses. At their heart is a search for an enlarged awareness of ourselves and the world, in which the visible and the invisible, nature and spirit find one another.
"His second book of poetry shows Luke Fischer is outstanding among a new generation of Australian poets – there is everywhere throughout it intimations of the sublime." – Robert Gray "Like his master, Rainer Maria Rilke, Luke Fischer is finely attuned to phenomena that reside both under and beyond the surface of things. In our contemporary world filled with incessant distraction, Fischer’s dedicated gaze meditates on the unexpected and miraculous in nature and opens doors towards celestial realms. And we are the grateful recipients of this particular gift: Fischer's exploration of the fragile inner places where the heart and soul long to reside, despite the exteriority of modern life." – Ellen Hinsey "Luke Fischer unites what is best in the Romantics’ vision of poetry, an ability to enter fully into the beauty of existence, with a spirit of intellectual rigour as the mind interrogates the act of perception. These close and fruitful readings of nature, of human existence and of art, while recognizing the tragic element of life, offer a rich tapestry of the sensual. In this new collection Fischer makes of poetry the sensitive, skilful translation of 'feeling’s contours'." – Peter Boyle This book has been widely reviewed. Here are hyperlinks to four reviews: Sydney Review of Books, Australian Poetry Review, Australian Book Review, Mascara Literary Review. |
The Poet as Phenomenologist: Rilke and the New Poems (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015) is an interdisciplinary monograph on Rilke and phenomenological philosophy. It argues that Rilke's poetic vision offers an exceptional response to the philosophical problem of dualism.
“Like Hölderlin, Rainer Maria Rilke has long been viewed as a 'philosophical poet'... Fischer's book is situated within this context... With this book Fischer has made a substantial contribution both to Rilke scholarship and to phenomenological research.” – Christoph Jamme, Professor of Philosophy, Leuphana University, Germany “Luke Fischer focuses on Rilke's 'diligence and devotion' to seeing phenomena as suffused with meaning and to embodying this seeing in enabling words. He traces the development of Rilke's poetic practice to his encounters with Cézanne, Rodin, and Jakob von Uexküll's Umwelt theory, and in close readings he elucidates the disclosive powers of some of the major poems in Rilke's Neue Gedichte... This is vital work for anyone concerned with poetry and the fate of the human.” – Richard Eldridge, Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Philosophy, Swarthmore College, USA "A remarkable effort of great erudition and insight, this book will find a place in the field of phenomenology of literary aesthetics as well as Rilke studies." – M. McCulloh, Professor of German Studies, Davidson College, CHOICE "[A] fresh reading of Rilke as a poet who evokes the world we are in and belong to, rather than are alienated from and trying to escape." – Lesley Chamberlain, The Times Literary Supplement "[A] cogent and enlightening volume that brings a new, systematic and thoughtful set of perspectives to the understanding of Rilke’s New Poems – and, in doing so, also provides highly suggestive ways of approaching and reading Rilke’s late masterpieces, the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus." – Paul Hetherington, Professor of Writing, University of Canberra, Cordite Poetry Review "[T]he analysis of Rilke’s practice and texts in Fischer’s book can also be read as an example – of what can be done at the crossroads of literary criticism and philosophy, and also, possibly, of a practice of seeing / writing that the phenomenologist can adopt." – Alex Cosmescu, Academy of Sciences of Moldova, Phenomenological Reviews |
Paths of Flight (Melbourne: Black Pepper, 2013) was commended in the FAW Anne Elder Award for a first book of poems and chosen as one of the best books of 2014 (Robert Gray, Weekend Australian). It includes "Augury?" (and related poems), which won the 2012 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize (judged by Peter Minter). Paths of Flight can be purchased through the publisher: Black Pepper Publishing...
"Luke Fischer’s poems startle me to wake again, to wake not only to the thriving details of the worlds surrounding us but to the power of language to reveal the music simmering and alive in every moment..." - Pattiann Rogers "Fischer has a seemingly effortless ability to blend visual detail and imaginative vision... His lines fall as calmly and elegantly as snow, layer upon layer, and they are just as transformative in their beauty." - Judith Beveridge "Fischer writes with a rare combination of delicacy and strength. At the heart of this poetry is a gaze that renders things present to us in new ways..." - Kevin Hart "Paths of Flight...is another example of the outstanding debuts being made in Australian poetry these days." - Geoff Page, Canberra Times "Fischer is a strong poet, watching the delicate details of the natural world, gracefully gleaning their abstractions." - Lucy Van, Cordite Poetry Review "In the end [in Paths of Flight] it almost seems interchangeable, whether nature illustrates culture or culture illustrates nature..." – Megan Blake, Plumwood Mountain "...I’m not sure I’ve come across this voice in my forays into Australian poetry, the first-person philosopher with references to artists, philosophers and writers of old, poems mostly set in nature, travel or deep in reverie." – Andy Quan, www.andyquan.com "Luke Fischer’s ‘Paths of Flight’ revealed the spirit of a true traveler in tune with the internal as well as the external world." – Judges' Report, FAW Anne Elder Award "'Augury?'...is fundamentally ‘honest and well-crafted’, making no bones about wanting to be easily read and demonstrating an excellent grasp of romantic, modern and post-modern environmental poetry and poetics, all the way from Goethe to Gary Snyder." - Peter Minter, Judge's Report, Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize |
The Blue Forest (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 2015) is a collection of seven imaginative bedtime stories—one story for each night of the week, and each story featuring one of seven colours. The dream-like tales (for children, and for adults interested in the genre) are set in a magical blue forest and tell of mysterious nighttime occurrences involving humans figures, plants and animals.
"At bedtime, a certain type of child sometimes asks 'for a dream;' which is to say, he wants his parents to suggest interesting, exotic images that will help him get started on dreams of his own. This is the child who will most enjoy Luke Fischer’s “The Blue Forest” (Lindisfarne, 45 pages, $15.95), a mesmeric collection of seven inconclusive stories that are meant to spark the imagination of a child who is subsiding into sleep. Each tale is notably rich with the names of colors: a red bird holds a turquoise twig; a purple tower has blue stained-glass windows; a sky is “layered with the colors of rose-quartz, amethyst and sapphire.” Mysterious jewel-hued illustrations by Stephanie Young and Tim Smith reinforce the dreamlike quality of these short tales, which ideally should be read aloud softly, one each evening, just before lights out." – Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal "Told using highly descriptive, robust, and stylized language, each vignette complements the accompanying illustration beautifully and tells a short yet detailed story." - School Library Journal |
Edited Collections
The Seasons: Philosophical, Literary, and Environmental Perspectives, co-edited with David Macauley (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2021).
Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus": Philosophical and Critical Perspectives [Essay Volume], co-edited with Hannah V. Eldridge (Oxford University Press, 2019).
A Patch of Sun: Café Poets Anthology, co-edited with Philip Porter and Kit Kelen (Macau: Flying Islands Books, 2016).
"Goethe and Environmentalism," Special Section of the Goethe Yearbook 22 (2015), co-edited with Dalia Nassar.
Special section on the seasons, Environment, Space, Place 5, no. 1 (Spring 2013), co-edited with David Macauley.
Articles and Book Chapters
"Art as Ecological Collaboration: On Mirko Baselgia" [commissioned essay], in Studio Mirko Baselgia: )in(out) till sundown, ed. Céline Gaillard and Simone Kobler (Scheidegger and Spiess, 2022).
“Horse-Chestnut Tree” [a poetic essay], in The Mind of Plants, ed. John Charles Ryan, Monica
Gagliano, Patricia Vieira (Santa Fe, NM: Synergetic Press, 2021).
Gagliano, Patricia Vieira (Santa Fe, NM: Synergetic Press, 2021).
“A Poetic Phenomenology of the Seasons,” in The Seasons: Philosophical, Literary, and Environmental Perspectives, ed. Luke Fischer and David Macauley (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2021).
"Hölderlin's Mythopoetics: From 'Aesthetic Letters' to the New Mythology", in Hölderlin's Philosophy of Nature, ed. Rochelle Tobias (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).
"Beyond Existentialism: The Orphic Unity of Life and Death," in Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: Philosophical and Critical Perspectives, ed. Hannah V. Eldridge and Luke Fischer (Oxford University Press, 2019).
"Introduction: Goethe and Environmentalism," Special Section of the Goethe Yearbook 22 (2015), co-authored
with Dalia Nassar.
with Dalia Nassar.
“A Poetic Phenomenology of the Temperate Seasons,” Environment, Space, Place 6, no. 1 (2014): 7-32.
“Animalising Art: Rainer Maria Rilke and Franz Marc,” Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology 3 (2013): 45-60.
“Die Animalisierung der Kunst: Rainer Maria Rilke und Franz Marc,” in Mythos-Geist-Kultur, Festschrift für Christoph Jamme (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2013), 335-348.
“Understanding Through Translation: Rilke’s New Poems,” in Perspectives on Literature and Translation: Creation, Circulation, Reception, ed. Brigid Maher and Brian Nelson (New York: Routledge, 2013), 56-72.
“Goethe contra Hegel: The Question of the End of Art,” Goethe Yearbook 18 (2011): 127-157.
“Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner: The Poetic and Esoteric Imagination,” Literature and Aesthetics 21, no.1 (2011): 136-158.
“Perception as Inspiration: Rilke and the New Poems,” Agenda 42, nos. 3-4 (2007): 170-183.
“Derrida and Husserl on Time,” Forum Philosophicum 12:2 (2007): 345-357.
Interviews
Podcast interview and reading from A Personal History of Vision recorded at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, Chicago, on 12 September 2018: https://www.semcoop.com/blog/post/throw-out-the-radio?fbclid=IwAR3n1-PM9G0h-86Fw_-yCfLMXlDHgteDqusIdoqinSIk3amMT2k4ql7yYiU
"Q&A with Luke Fischer: Exploring modes of interdisciplinary research in the environmental humanities," interviewed by Anastasia Mortimer, Sydney Environment Institute (30 August, 2017). URL: http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/blog/qa-luke-fischer-exploring-modes-interdisciplinary-research-age-anthropocene/
"Luke Fischer: when Poetry meets Philosophy," Interview by Michela B. Ferri, Frontiere (16 Nov. 2016). URL: http://www.frontiere.eu/luke-fischer-when-poetry-meets-philosophy/
"Rilke, Cavafy, Hölderlin: Simeon Kronenberg Interviews Luke Fischer," Cordite Poetry Review 55 (2016). URL: http://cordite.org.au/interviews/kronenberg-fischer/
"Conversation / Collaboration," Conversation between Luke Fischer, Anthony Lawrence, and Simeon Kronenberg, Axon: Creative Explorations 10 (2016). URL: http://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-10/conversation-collaboration
"Q&A with Luke Fischer: Exploring modes of interdisciplinary research in the environmental humanities," interviewed by Anastasia Mortimer, Sydney Environment Institute (30 August, 2017). URL: http://sydney.edu.au/environment-institute/blog/qa-luke-fischer-exploring-modes-interdisciplinary-research-age-anthropocene/
"Luke Fischer: when Poetry meets Philosophy," Interview by Michela B. Ferri, Frontiere (16 Nov. 2016). URL: http://www.frontiere.eu/luke-fischer-when-poetry-meets-philosophy/
"Rilke, Cavafy, Hölderlin: Simeon Kronenberg Interviews Luke Fischer," Cordite Poetry Review 55 (2016). URL: http://cordite.org.au/interviews/kronenberg-fischer/
"Conversation / Collaboration," Conversation between Luke Fischer, Anthony Lawrence, and Simeon Kronenberg, Axon: Creative Explorations 10 (2016). URL: http://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-10/conversation-collaboration
Book Reviews and Launch Speeches
"Textures of Language and Thought: Sarah Rice" [on the poetry collection Fingertip of the Tongue by Sarah Rice], Sydney Review of Books (March 2018). URL: https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/finger-tip-of-the-tongue-by-sarah-rice/
"'An intellectual and emotional complex': Luke Fischer launches The Sepia Carousel (Pitt Street Poetry, 2016) by Jakob Ziguras," Rochford Street Review 23 (2017). URL: https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2017/09/15/an-intellectual-and-emotional-complex-luke-fischer-launches-the-sepia-carousel-by-jakob-ziguras/
"Imagined Worlds: Luke Fischer Launches Ghostspeaking (Vagabond Press, 2016) by Peter Boyle," Rochford Street Review 20 (2016). URL: https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2016/10/11/imagined-worlds-luke-fischer-launches-ghostspeaking-by-peter-boyle/
"Thinking Poetry: Brook Emery's have been and are (Gloria SMH, 2016)," Mascara Literary Review 19 (2016). URL: http://mascarareview.com/luke-fischers-launch-of-have-been-and-are-by-brook-emery/
“Thinking like a Plant: A Living Science for Life” by Craig Holdrege, reviewed in Environmental Philosophy 11, no.2 (2014): 359-62.
"'An intellectual and emotional complex': Luke Fischer launches The Sepia Carousel (Pitt Street Poetry, 2016) by Jakob Ziguras," Rochford Street Review 23 (2017). URL: https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2017/09/15/an-intellectual-and-emotional-complex-luke-fischer-launches-the-sepia-carousel-by-jakob-ziguras/
"Imagined Worlds: Luke Fischer Launches Ghostspeaking (Vagabond Press, 2016) by Peter Boyle," Rochford Street Review 20 (2016). URL: https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2016/10/11/imagined-worlds-luke-fischer-launches-ghostspeaking-by-peter-boyle/
"Thinking Poetry: Brook Emery's have been and are (Gloria SMH, 2016)," Mascara Literary Review 19 (2016). URL: http://mascarareview.com/luke-fischers-launch-of-have-been-and-are-by-brook-emery/
“Thinking like a Plant: A Living Science for Life” by Craig Holdrege, reviewed in Environmental Philosophy 11, no.2 (2014): 359-62.
Individual Poems
Individual poems have appeared in a wide range of international and Australian journals and anthologies, including: The Best Australian Poems, Award Winning Australian Writing, Contemporary Australian Poetry, Meanjin, Southerly, Overland, Cordite Poetry Review, Mascara Literary Review, PAN, Axon, Snorkel, Contrappasso, Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology, Antipodes (U.S.A.), ISLE (U.S.A.)... Individual poems can also be found on a number of Australian and international websites.
Poetry Translations
Evening Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Georg Trakl, and Rose Ausländer, Mascara Literary Review 15 (May 2014).
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Buddha,” “Buddha,” “Buddha in Glory,” co-translated with Lutz Näfelt, Cordite Poetry Review 40 (2012).
Rainer Maria Rilke, “Early Apollo [Früher Apollo],” “The Blind Man [Der Blinde],” “The Pavilion [Der Pavillon],” co-translated with Lutz Näfelt, Agenda (Special Rilke Issue) 42, nos. 3-4 (2007): 56-7.
Scholarly Translations
Paola-Ludovika Coriando, “Hölderlin, Heidegger, and Seasonal Time,” in The Seasons: Philosophical, Literary and Environmental Perspectives, ed. Luke Fischer and David Macauley (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2021).
Christoph Jamme, "Love in Paramyth: On Rilke's Figuration of the Orpheus Myth," in Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: Philosophical and Critical Perspectives, ed. Hannah V. Eldridge and Luke Fischer (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Christoph Jamme, “Enlightened Mythology: Thomas Mann and Myth [Aufgeklärte Mythologie: Thomas Mann und der Mythos],” in The Present Word: Culture, Society and the Site of Literature: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Boyle, ed. John Walker (London: Legenda, 2013).
Christoph Jamme, “Enlightened Mythology: Thomas Mann and Myth [Aufgeklärte Mythologie: Thomas Mann und der Mythos],” in The Present Word: Culture, Society and the Site of Literature: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Boyle, ed. John Walker (London: Legenda, 2013).
Christoph Jamme, “‘Being Able to Love and Having to Die’: Gadamer and Rilke,” co-translated with Michael Eldred, in Consequences of Hermeneutics: Fifty Years after Truth and Method, ed. by Jeff Malpas and Santiago Zabala (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2010), 177-189.