Description

Dictat, the second in a series of chapbooks from Poesis Press by Anna Kerdijk Nicholson, interrogates the autocrat’s dependence on very ordinary people—secretaries, strategists, photographers, valets, doctors—who, by pursuing their otherwise ordinary occupations, enable both their own oppression and the oppression of their fellow citizens. The poems focus on the last three years of Adolf Hitler’s life and show an autocrat in decline, propped in narcissistic self-belief by near-fatal doses of amphetamines and ‘tranquillising medicines’.

The sequence not only prompts the reader to consider the role of ordinary people as enablers of autocratic power, it also invites us to reflect on the role of the poet, and poetry, in the face of the political upheaval currently threatening the networks of liberal democracies which grew out of the defeat of the Nazi regime.

Of Everyday Epic (Puncher & Wattmann, 2015):
[an] important engagement with history, politics and the continuing legacy of colonial violence and ignorance — MELINDA SMITH
the tighter the language gets, the more the poems demonstrate what language is capable of — MAGDALENA BALL

Of Possession (Five Islands Press, 2010):
a book of true poetic engagement — MARTIN DUWELL

Anna Kerdijk Nicholson is an Australian/English poet and author of three books, The Bundanon Cantos, Possession and Everyday Epic; and two other chapbooks What Was Lost and True Wit & Beauty. Her poetry has won the Victorian Premier’s Prize, Wesley Michel Wright Prize, Val Vallis/Judith Wright Calanthe Award and NWF/joanne burns Microlit Award. She farms in rural NSW.

Product details
ISBN: 978-0-6459294-9-2
Published: 2 May 2025
Pages: 27
Cover: paperback
Weight: 124grams
Dimensions: 148mm (w) x 209mm (h) x 5mm thick
Printed & bound in Australia

Click here for samples pages:
Dictat sample pages