Anna Clark
The book that changed me: I’m a historian but Tony Birch’s poetry opened my eyes to confronting truths about the past
They’re questions that resurfaced for me when I first read Tony Birch’s collection of poetry, Broken Teeth, in 2016. I had been working on a history of Australian History, which sought to tell the various ways Australia’s national story had been imagined. But in contemplating Birch’s work, I was forced to reimagine the scope of the project.
To me, his poetry felt as powerful as any of the history books I had been studying, not only with its commentary on 'what happened', but as a statement on historical practice.