Cassie Lewis was one of the archive’s most frequent contributors, appearing across Issues 3, 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 20, 22, 24, 26, 30, 31, and 32, with additional work connected to the original publication’s early reading series. Across that long span, her poems return to weather, cities, landscape, friendship, love, music, migration, and the strange ways memory rearranges ordinary life.
Cassie Lewis in the historical archive
the historical archive includes “Vespers,” “Battered Holden,” “Two Winters,” “The Axe,” “Driftwood,” “My poems,” work from Dancing Lessons, several postcard projects, and later poems such as “Homes grow like sunflowers” and “Lessons for Young Poets.” Her 2002 the historical archive reading note also records her move from Melbourne to the San Francisco Bay Area and her involvement with Poetry Espresso.
Landscape, weather, and image
Lewis repeatedly lets landscape carry thought. Rain, redwoods, winter, clouds, mountains, streets, blue sky, eucalyptus, beaches, houses, and light become ways of measuring distance and memory. the archive’s guide to imagery in poetry provides a wider formal context for poems that think through physical scenes and recurring visual motifs.
Music and the shape of a poem
“Vespers” explicitly considers poems as musically structured, and music keeps returning elsewhere through Beethoven, David Bowie, Ani DiFranco, radio, rhythm, and the cadence of repeated phrases. the archive’s guide to sound devices in poetry follows that concern through repetition, cadence, sonic association, consonance, and the changing tempo of a line.
Postcards, books, and Australian poetry
Lewis helped develop Poetry Espresso after moving from Melbourne to the United States in 2000, and postcard exchange became a substantial part of her early collaborative practice. Her books include High Country, Winter District, Song for the Quartet, and The Blue Decodes. Poetry Foundation describes her as a Melbourne poet living in Rochester, New York. Her work sits within the broad international field gathered in the archive’s archive of contemporary poets.
Further reading
The Poetry Foundation provides current biographical and bibliographical context. Cordite Poetry Review discusses The Blue Decodes and Lewis’s move from Melbourne to the United States, while Jacket preserves an early publication and contributor note.