Theory of Colours
Theory of Colours (Vagabond Press) is an impressive production, speaking to what Foucault called the necessity of conjuncture, two intensities coming together, a book that is constructed as much as it is written.
Judges' Report
Theory of Colours (Vagabond Press) is an impressive production, speaking to what Foucault called the necessity of conjuncture, two intensities coming together, a book that is constructed as much as it is written. Bella Li brings the visual and the verbal into contact to challenge the boundaries of poetry and visual design.
About the author
Bella Li is the author of Argosy (Vagabond Press, 2017), which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry and the Kenneth Slessor Prize, and was highly commended in the Anne Elder Award and commended in the Wesley Michel Wright Prize; Lost Lake (Vagabond Press, 2018), shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award; and Theory of Colours (Vagabond Press, 2021), shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize and joint winner of the Australian Book Design Association award for Best Designed Independent Book. Her first work Maps, Cargo (Vagabond Press) appeared as part of the Rare Object Series. Her poetry, artwork, short fiction, essays and reviews have been published widely, including in the Australian Book Review, Overland, Going Down Swinging, Peril, Rabbit, Liminal, The Kenyon Review and the Archives of American Art Journal. Recent work can be found in Meanjin (Winter 2021), New Directions in Contemporary Australian Poetry (Palgrave, 2021) and Art Writing in Crisis (Sternberg, 2021). She holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, and is the associate publisher at Cordite Books and the managing editor at Scribe Publications.
