Svetlana Sterlin, If Movement Was a Language

Winner of the 2023 Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award

If Movement Was a Language straddles many divides: between cultures, languages, classes, dimensions, states of matter, and the real versus the imagined—or (mis)remembered. The collection features recurring motifs around duality and duplicity, as reflected in the words’ fluctuating form on the page and the elusive image of light glimmering across water.

Invasive like the chlorine that stains these poems, nostalgia is a heavy scent, woven through every line of the collection. And yet, even in the depths of reflection, If Movement Was a Language keeps its face turned always towards the surface, questioning the future and its possibility of various outcomes.

Anchored in the author’s lived reality, the collection is interested in what might have happened in an alternate dimension—perhaps one where her family aren’t immigrants, or where they speak the same language with equal fluency, or where her father achieves the lifelong dreams for which so much has been sacrificed.

‘... captivating in its evocations of swimming in literal and metaphorical terms, and in its characterisation of the complexities of a family life at once supportive and salutary. Each of the poems is striking as its own self-contained sigh and collectively they develop a powerful narrative arc mapped out in language that is fresh, lyrical, stylish and brave. The collection confronts ideas of displacement, mortality, human intimacy and self-knowledge in challenging and engaging terms.’ 
2023 Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Judges

Born in New Zealand to Russian/Jewish parents, Svetlana Sterlin writes poetry, prose, and screenplays. The recipient of the 2023 Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award, If Movement Was a Language is her first full-length collection. In 2023, her fiction was recognised in the Richell Prize and State Library of Queensland Young Writers Award. She has poetry and fiction in Westerly, Island, takahē, Meanjin, Cordite, the Australian Poetry Anthology, and elsewhere.

Svetlana Sterlin, If Movement Was a Language
October 2024. 148mm x 210mm. 112pp.
ISBN 978-1-925735-71-0

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.