Louis Armand, Indirect Objects

Indirect Objects is Prague-based Australian author Louis Armand’s eighth collection, an exploration of physical, psychological and linguistic topographies forming a poetic grammar. The indirect objects of the title are emergent states of experience, perception as language, the unarticulated “real” we encounter as strange and remote in even the most familiar forms of saying. The volume is divided into five sections – “Realism,” “Dark Mingus,” “Broadcast Graffiti,” “Zapata Retrospect,” and “Tür zum Nichts” – each concerned with an exploration of landscapes of fact. Armand’s poetry is populated by places, people, things whose existence describes a potential contained in language as singular and vital as they are.

"Armand's extreme gesture of deteritorialisation moves beyond the radical dislocations performed on their respective languages by both Kafka and Tsvetaeva." Vadim Erent

"Armand is the international conduit for much of the dialogue that’s developing today. he is an internationalist, an innovator … he’s genre busting & on an “open” passport." John Kinsella

"The language of ‘internally fissured realities’ is dense, sound-driven, and erudite. The territory being mined is somewhere between language and geography, but there is a stubborn (and tenaciously coherent) essay on the modern here, particularly modern art. The equally tenacious reader will be rewarded by a sober sensibility." Andrei Codrescu


Louis Armand is a Sydney-born writer who has lived in Prague since 1994. He is the author of six novels, including Breakfast at Midnight (2012), described by 3AM magazine’s Richard Marshall as “a perfect modern noir,” and Cairo (2014; both from Equus, London). His most recent collections of poetry are Indirect Objects (Vagabond, 2014) and Synopticon (with John Kinsella; LPB, 2012). His work has been included in the Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry and Best Australian Poems. His screenplay, Clair Obscur, received honourable mention at the 2009 Alpe Adria Trieste International Film Festival. Currently he directs the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory in the Philosophy Faculty of Charles University where he also edits the international arts magazine VLAK.

Cover image: Louis Armand, “Saved” (2010), oil and mixed media on canvas, 130 x 140cm, panel 1 of a diptych. Photo: Miša Klakurková