Killernova

A collection of poetry and wood cuts that burns blindingly bright.The island of Borneo was once the most heavily wooded in the world, and its people have always carved wood beautifully. In KILLERNOVA, grappling with his heritage, Omar Musa remixes this ancient art form with fiery poetry forged in the stars.With equal parts swagger, humour and vulnerability, Musa charts a journey through the colonial history of South-East Asia, environmental destruction, oceans, bushfires, race in Australia, the isolation and addiction of COVID lockdown, family, lost love and, ultimately, recovery.Relentlessly on beat, visually captivating and deceptively intimate, this is a collection of words and art that burns blindingly bright.

The latest collection from slam poet champion Omar Musa is a raw and muscular combination of poetry and woodcut art that uses the visual and literary capacities of each form to explore questions about heritage and legacy, actions and consequences. Musa has always been an artist willing to add new techniques and forms to his toolkit. In his introduction to Killernova he relays his travels in Borneo, the land of his grandparents, as part of a journey of self-reflection. On this journey he encountered members of Pangrok Sulap, an activist arts collective working with traditional woodcut techniques. He studied with them and discovered a way to combine words and visuals that reignited his passion for poetry. In Musa's woodcuts solid blocks of black, cyan, indigo and red are scored with stark white delineations that play with negative space as they resolve into surreal and poetic images of were-leopards shooting hoops and pelicans bitching about debt with Donald Duck, or more tranquil scenes of starscapes and family bedrooms. Alongside the optimism and hope of these artworks, Musa's poems carry a counterpoint tone of cynicism, exhaustion, confusion and determination as they shift focus between Borneo and Australia, meditating on environmental destruction, the ongoing consequences of colonialism, and the search for a place for the personal within a frightening and demanding world. Killernova will appeal to fans of Musa's existing body of work, as well as readers interested in contemporary Australian poetry or graphic storytelling. Adam Ford is an editor and published poet.

Omar Musa is a Bornean-Australian author, visual artist and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. He has released four poetry books (including Killernova), four hip-hop records, and received a standing ovation at TEDx Sydney at the Sydney Opera House.His debut novel Here Come the Dogs was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and Miles Franklin Award and he was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.His one-man play, Since Ali Died, won Best Cabaret Show at the Sydney Theatre Awards in 2018. He has had several solo exhibitions of his woodcut prints.

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