“Time in music is one way to organise chaos, and musical polyphony uses multilayering as a form of time travel. This is similar to the layering found in life-retrieved memory. Time for me isn’t linear but the coexistence of multiple layers and I write poetry because I want this polyphony.” Paul Hamann quotes Eleonore Schönmaier in his feature about her writing in the newly released issue of The New Quarterly .
Editor Pamela Mulloy in her introductory essay for the issue writes: In “Live-Retrieved Memory: The Poetry of Eleonore Schönmaier” Paul Hamann examines his former student’s work and delves into her theory on a “live-retrieved” memory, a conjoining that might be found with merging the past from our letters and journals together with the live memories we carry with us through the years.
Photograph by Eleonore Schönmaier