About the Book:
Or: An Autobiography explores fluidities of self, body and imagination. Its central book-length fantasia ‘The Or Tree’ is a speculative version of the fictional poem, ‘The Oak Tree’, which was written by Virginia Woolf’s character Orlando. ‘The Oak Tree’ takes Orlando over 300 years to write, in which time they live through multiple eras, burn their poetic oeuvre, have various affairs with poets and critics, a queen, and change gender from man to woman. ‘The Or Tree’ is an assemblage poem, resurrected chronologically from fragments of the six chapters of a burnt copy of Orlando: A Biography. It is an homage to androgyny and the non-binary, or rather, an expression of the fluidity we are all capable of.

‘Or’ is an alter ego and character in the poem (pronouns they/them), as well as a conjunction, and a ghost. ‘The Or Tree’ is complemented by an ‘understorey’, a poetic essay that underscores and intertwines with the poem across each chapter in a radical play on the autobiographical and citational.

About the Author:
Toby Fitch (he/they) is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney, former poetry editor of Overland, and the author of eight books of poetry, including Sydney Spleen (2021) and Object Permanence: Calligrammes (2022).  Toby’s poetry has won the Grace Leven Prize, the Charles Rischbieth Jury Prize and the Leonie Kramer Award, and his work as an editor includes (with Ellen van Neerven) Best of Australian Poems 2021. Toby lives on unceded Gadigal land with his partner, their three children and a staffy.

ISBN:978-1-7642397-0-7