Prithvi Varatharajan

Prithvi Varatharajan is a poet, audio producer, and literary/media scholar who lives in Melbourne. His book of poems and prose, Entries, was published by Cordite Books in 2020. He holds a PhD from the University of Queensland about ABC Radio National’s Poetica, and he is a commissioning editor of essays at Cordite Poetry Review.

All essays by Prithvi Varatharajan

Emerging Critics 2020 Review: Prithvi Varatharajanon John Kinsella
  • Displaced: A Rural Life by John Kinsella Transit Lounge
    336pp
    Published March 2020
    ISBN 9781925760477

Wrong is Wrong

There are a lot of memorable episodes and images in Displaced. But memorability isn’t enough, in my mind, for a memoir to stand out. Something that can elevate a memoir beyond an account of lived experience (however skilfully told), and help it flourish as literature, is when it evokes and explores the mechanics of memory: when the story is built on how remembering through writing works. Kinsella is conscious of this possibility of memoir.
Aug. 2020 • • • •
Emerging Critics 2020 Review: Prithvi Varatharajanon Caitlin Maling
  • Fish Song by Caitlin Maling Freemantle Press
    128pp
    Published 2019
    ISBN 9781925591484

The Ash of Song after the Flame

Fish Song is essayistic in its purpose, returning to questions about human existence in the world, adding and taking away from its answers, shaping and reshaping a response.

Jun. 2020 • • •
Essay: Prithvi Varatharajanon soundwalking
A group of people in front of a graffitied wall. One person reads from a book.

In Situ Poetics

In October 2017 I led twenty people around the inner-Melbourne suburb of Brunswick. It was a guided walk, but unlike any most in the group had experienced before. Mine was one of five walks in a public arts project aimed to facilitate aural attentiveness to our environment
Apr. 2020 • • •