poetry & ideas

THE MERRI CREEK : Poems & Pieces, #26, New Year Issue, 2012

2012-01-19T16:55:00.012+11:00

DAVE ELLISON

LADY UNIVERSE

(For a dear lady)

In a burst of longing

Dawn grows through darkness

The heart love gives

Breathes time into us

This is the everyday

Hard work and heartache

We gain our sight

All by one sky

In a moment of light

Observe the way

Paths cross our town

Clouds parade into view

We approach night

Face the same midnight

With our candles and carols

For the child in everything

In the court of the moon

With magic of starshine

The street wind sings

May we gather a feeling

Live the new life

As great trees in our midst

And noble towers

Bow to holy night

[12 Jan. 2012]

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KRIS HEMENSLEY/KEN TRIMBLE

"the pilgrim piece"

*

(October 7/2011)

Dear Kris,
I hope you enjoyed 'Shores' [Shores of American Memory, Littlefox Press, '11). I read that poem on your site about the Albion. [David Pepperell's The Albion Jukebox Murder 1972 ] Yeah I can totally relate to that. There are so many or so few depending on how you look at Facebook where I can call a person friend. In you I feel totally at home & although distant, meaning we move in different circles & distance is hard, I regard you as a friend..................cheers Ken

oOo

Dear Ken,
Yes, of course! Very much so! Book, friendship, the lot! I'd been reading it from the beginning then today began from the end! You're very much the 'silent witness', kind of imperturbable. You dont get in the way of the poem/the perception. Laudable.
By the way, I have s/one coming in next week for a copy of the new collection, and hope that another acquaintance will also be interested!
Loretta just told me she was at the Rainbow wake you write about [Nights at the Rainbow, p1]. Small world!
We'll talk again soon!
Best wishes, Kris

oOo

(October 8/2011)

Dear Kris,
Thanks for words. I was a regular at the Rainbow for some years. I used to see the Paul Williamson Hammond Combo on a Monday night. And the Grand Whazoo, and on a Sunday afternoon. Chic was a very personable fellow who had the ability to treat everyone as a friend. By accident I hadn't heard that he died. A mate who ran the Rob Roy told me that Chic had this amazing funeral so I just imagined it. While pubs can be destructive they can also be great community gatherings like a family. In the poem 'Shores Of American Memory' the section on O'Reilly's is a case in point. I met a guy who told me to go to that pub on a Monday night because they have an Irish jam session in North Beach. He sent an email to the owner Myles that I would be coming down and that I was a poet. Anyway Myles happens to love Australians. That night I met Myles and for the whole night I didn't buy a beer. He even sang And The Band Played Waltzing Matlida for me. People came up to me and said, you're that Australian. There I met a fellow who sang with Rambling Jack Elliot, & the great grandson of Gurdjieff the philosopher. It was if I was being honoured. I guess places like the Rainbow & O'Reilly's make you feel special for no specific reason, it makes you feel as if yes there is a family and life is good..........cheers Ken

oOo

(October 8/2011)

Dear Ken,
Your evocative, inspiring reply re- the Rainbow has me thinking that we could attempt the"conversation" by email? How about it?!!! (This was to be a conversation abt this & that, especially the pilgrimage aspect of both poetry and yr journey to the US, Merton , Jeffers etc)
I salute your energy & openness, I mean that you can be there in such a way as the O'Reilly's scene opened up to you! And those connections are astonishing...
Better get back to the Shop!
All best, Kris

oOo

(8/10/11)

Dear Kris,
Sure thing, that would be great. Do you mean explore more avenues of the pilgrim experience or in relation to my America trip? Because pilgrim travelling can open up a whole new world to everyone, artists, poets, anyone who is open to the journey. Personally, Joe Campbell's books on myth had a great influence. One has to cast off or shed your old skin and believe in the path. Even if a thousand people say you're crazy you have stick at it and believe in yourself. And there are times when you go 3 steps back & 1 step forward but the point is you have to get up. I am no angel and I sort of liked what St. Augustine said, 'Lord make me perfect but not just now', or something like that haha! It was like going to the monastery and meeting the gardener Joseph Bottone who turned out to be a mate of Creeley. He had a hermitage on the grounds overlooking the Pacific Ocean. One time he invited me over for a joint and a couple of shots of rum. Certainly we played up but it was great! And the whole thing becomes infectious, the pilgrimage. Suddenly not only poetry but also the monastic along the Big Sur coast became a powerful adventure for me. Because you know that Robinson Jeffers' home is in Carmel, and a few kilometres from the monastery is the Henry Miller Library and you're riding over the Bixby Bridge where Kerouac stumbled and hooped & hollered in the foggy night. That below the bridge somewhere is Ferlinghetti's cabin. You become sort of tuned into the poetry of the land. You know that Ansel Adams & Ed Weston two of America's great photographers had homes there as well so it becomes a symphony. Even New Orleans I got to know the stories of Johnny Whites Bar. A fellow by the name of Paddy told me that when hurricane Katrina rolled through, the only bar open in the whole town was this one. So I checked it out, it runs off Bourbon Street almost opposite The New Orleans Preservation Jazz Hall. A tiny bar where twenty would be a crowd and I'm having a drink while watching Germany kick our arse in the World Cup! You get immersed in the moment & because I studied photography when I was young I became a good watcher. And the whole idea of watching takes you into another world. A lot of people travel but never see or they only see postcards & that isn't travelling.............cheers Ken

oOo

(8/10/11)

Dear Kris,
More reflections on Thomas Merton this time. You know he went to Columbia University just a few years before Kerouac and others. In fact he published a novel (not sure of name) at same publishing house as Kerouac's first novel Town & City, Harcourt and Brace. His mentor & friend was Mark Van Doren who also taught Kerouac. Merton was a few years earlier than the 'Beats' but he was interested in the jazz scene, drank and smoked and had his way with women. Yet Merton was called to be a monastic and lived that way for twenty odd years. I am attracted to him because he struggled nearly every day he was in the order. Yet he stayed true. When he wrote his autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, from his Trappist Monastery in Kentucky, people in America went crazy about it. It came out just after the war and I guess people were dealing with that sense of loss that war brings & so they found a prophet in Merton who spoke their language. The irony is he went in the monastery to deny his writing talent but the church had other ideas. They wanted him to utilise his talents so he could be of use in getting converts etc. Another irony and I didn't know it at the time, Merton wanted to leave the order of the Trappists and become a Camaldolse. That is the order I am in. It is more hermit whereas the Trappists are more community. You know, when he went in the church was far more restrictive than it is today after Vatican 2. The time he went in the church was convinced that it was their way or the highway as the saying goes. Meaning they had no time for other faiths and his order were very strict. There was no talking except only with meetings with the Abbot about spiritual direction with either him or a Director. Life was lived by sign language. And life was hard work. Most monasteries are run like farms. You get up early work in the fields, pray, read, eat, sleep then repeat. In fact it is a hard life. Some work in the kitchen, others may be allocated to cleaning guest house accommodation and in Merton's case he was told to write. There was tremendous tension with Merton I think because on the one hand he wanted to deny his writing talent & on the other he loved the celebrity. Even not being allowed out of his monastery he still had this aura that people craved. People like Huxley corresponded along with Joan Baez and many others. When Merton was finally allowed to attend a conference in Thailand in the 1960's he went to India & Sri Lanka. At a place called Polonnaruwa there is a giant stone Buddha reclining on his side. In his book, Asian Journals, he tells of this One Moment or unitive experience. The writing is sublime. From there after all those years in the monastery and his epiphany in Sri Lanka he is having a shower, and after he's finished he begins to shave, and is electrocuted. I reckon wow what a perfect death. So Merton in a strange way was the fore-runner of Kerouac and Jack devoured Merton but sadly couldn't grasp him...............regards Ken

oOo

(October 9/2011)

Dear Kris,
[re KH birthday greetings to KT] Facebook have it a bit early. I have it on the 12th, the same day as Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas. Actually my father has the same day as well and mother is on the 12th June & my brother the 13th December, the 12th month.
Began reading Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. It is a fine book.
My friend and spiritual head of the Australian part of the Camaldolese has just returned from his own pilgrimage. He went to Italy where they have a General Chapter once every few years. He is an interesting fellow. He went to India in the Eighties and stayed with Bede Griffiths & was initiated into sanyassa. Now I went through a similar process but as a bramachari student. Am I right to say you stayed at the monastery in Kentucky where Merton lived then went onto Sri Lanka and later Thailand? If so wow. Did you see Polonnaruwa? Michael (priest friend above) is taking me out for a curry meal for my birthday. Lastly thinking about putting book in for awards. Who knows if I don't give it a go? The only thing is I get mixed up with their enrollment dates. Like the John Bray award you have to put your form in about 6 months before award is given. The only thing I worry about is that people think I am writing it as an American poetry by proxy. From my point of view it isn't, instead I wanted it to be a pilgrim piece if you will. Anyway that's the way I wrote it and that's that. Thanks for birthday greetings....................kind regards Ken

oOo

(Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 6:36 PM)

Dear Kris,
Any further news on that interview on pilgrimage?..................kind regards Ken

oOo

(Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 12:37 AM)

Dear Ken,
just back an hour or so after cleaning up the shop following [Owen Richardson's] launch for Gig Ryan [New & Selected Poems, published by Giramondo] ... very big affair, exhausting, and heaps of fun!
Re- the pilgrimage i/vw, --yes, will look at it again on Thursday (my day off)...
If I can get away on Saturday for your reading at Federation Square I will!Good luck!
talk soon, k

oOo

(15/10/11)

Dear Ken,
I managed to get away from the Shop around three p.m., and DID catch half of the reading at Fed Square... Was disappointed that I'd probably missed your set; heard several of Robert Lloyd's poems & couple of songs, then all of Michael Heald and then, a small miracle, you were returned to the stage for one poem! Was very interested in yr reading voice; it reminded me of Robt Lloyd's singing voice! Probably the most resonant poem I heard this a/noon! Well done! Can only guess at how you felt (reluctant?) but you sounded swell! I had to hurry off straightaway afterwards and anyway i cld see you guys closing in on one another so better (I thought) to drop you quick line than to cut in. Time for me to recouperate now. Will see what I can get together for you around yr splendid Pilgrimage responses, and will send before too long.
cheers, Kris

oOo

(15 Oct/11)

Dear Kris,
Didn't see you sadly, I was in another zone haha! Glad you liked my voice hope poem was good too. Not sure where the voice comes from but it helps with the delivery or spell of poem. Robert & I thinking of doing something together more duets in future. I really like him, he's a real nice guy. I really appreciate you coming, and when pilgrim thing is right for you I'll be here. Just got home, now 9pm, had to walk half up a mountain pitch black. Now settling in at home with a good red.....Youre the best..............Ken

oOo

Kris Hemensley
End-piece, 1

Mine have mostly been head & book journeys, Ken, though I did follow in Merton's footsteps to the King's Palace in Bangkok in 2005. Loved the Ramayana murals there but afterwards, when I checked Merton's own response in my brother Bernard's copy of Asian Journals (--I was in Bangkok en route the UK-- ) realized that Merton had only qualified appreciation (Disney kitsch etc). But yes, was well aware of Merton's Bangkok story, and so to that extent it was a kind of pilgrimage in itself. But Gethsemane in Kentucky only in my reading, for example via Merton's book. The Sign of Jonas (I have the 1953 1st British edition, Hollis & Carter, London), and appreciated immediately the tough rigour of that practice. (Penultimate paragraph in the Prologue is a beauty & somewhat a propos of even our correspondence : "A monk can always legitimately and significantly compare himself to a prophet, because the monks are the heirs of the prophets. The prophet is a man whose whole life is a living witness of the providential action of God in the world. Every prophet is a sign and a witness of Christ. Every monk, in whom Christ lives, and in whom all the prophecies are therefore fulfilled, is a witness and a sign of the Kingdom of God. Even our mistakes are eloquent, more than we know.")
Regarding Sri Lanka : I went ashore in Colombo as a 19 year old, working on the Fairstar (the Sitmar line's flagship), latter part of 1965. I only did a taxi round-trip with workmates but absorbed massive sensation & inspiration from my one & only Ceylon experience. For example, classic deja-vu on a river bank when, leaving my colleagues to the display of working elephants, I wandered off by myself, towards the cries & laughter of kids diving into the water, and suddenly realized I knew the place, that is I recognized it from a dream which I'd had in Southampton before the voyage... the colours, the heat, the angle of embankment to water, the screams of the children, the splash of water et cetera. I was shocked & amazed, walked away from it probably because called by colleagues to resume our taxi tour. But could have stood there forever, in wonderment, trying to understand what it meant!

[16th January, '012]

*

End-piece, 2

A Note on Shores of American Memory

It's as though sentiment (one's disposition towards the world) might parallel insight : the personal simultaneously a universal. But Ken Trimble isnt Khalil Gibran! Dont intend unkindness or ingratitude for what was a consolation & stimulation at age twenty, but the person walking around in these poems is no spiritual cipher. By way of contrast, David Ellison & I often refer to one or another example or exemplar of the school of Desperate Mysticism. No doubt at all that this poet's a seeker, one who doesnt shy from either big Metaphor or Reference, and the imprint of the world is all over him. It's audible like the Charlie Parker & Sonny Rollins, the Hank Williams & Bob Dylan who pop up in the poetry --visible like the place names, the brand names of daily consumables, let alone the influential books & authors (Kazantzakis, Jeffers, Rimbaud, Bukowski, Hamsun, Kerouac, Whitman, Ginsberg, Micheline, Kaufmann, Shelton Lee et al) which glue his soul-scape together. Not half bad for a "beggar poet nothing more, nothing less" (p. 44, 'Sixty-Seven Cents'), --which in the Post-Literature era, as I call it (and I'm not sure I dont 'simply' mean Post-Modernism) is a pretty good manifesto. "I cannot dazzle with verse, rhyme or rhythm" the poem goes, --G M Hopkins ? (but who can after The Windhover ?)!
"Just stories of what I've seen / And what I've done. / I walk the streets of the world a homeless drifter / Australian my heritage the planet my home / Listening to stories, writing them down"...
(16th January, '012)

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ALICIA BEE

Jack Kerouac’s Holiday House

Jack Kerouac built a holiday house for Beat poetry,

Mountain climbing Matterhorn in Mill Valley California,

He took Gary Snyder from the road and made a summary,

Jack Kerouac normally lived with his (sick old) mother in Florida.

The traveller never had a daughter till taking the blood test,

“You can’t fall off a mountain” in the height of beat mania,

He wrote some good freeflow haiku - history composed the rest.

He never read every book in the Buddhism (text) library,

His confusing stream of consciousness was typing from the chest,

Rehabilitation became spirituality,

Jack Kerouac would hit the road again when he drank alcohol.

(2010)

----------------------------------------------

CECILIA WHITE

breath

i don't recall the arrival
or having left. the point
of departure is the same
as the plosive of the asterisk
on a map, monosyllabic arrow
saying 'you are here'. contexted,
antiquarian, rigidly published.
spinal-tapped into parts of speech.
i am grammatically unscathed,
unbound on page or board
detectable only in the drawing
of breath, erasure of exclamation.

in the swoop of transitive verbage
a haunting space
lifts from the flatlands. never mind that
dislocation is in the reading.
i pick at threads of frontier
with my left-handed thinking. in the torn
apparel of second language
i remove full stops from islands
of air, listing under the salt
of problematics, participles
and suitcases. i am otherly compassed,
declining rite of passage and needle.

every place was once
somewhere else. meaning unsilts
ragged settlement, indexes
the gravel of logic.
stone and ink chapter memory
under weight of light, creasing
the eye, slubbing the tongue,
less engraved, i dissolve
sediment of interpretation,
inhaling contours,
landing at the point of it all.

(2011)

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PAUL HARPER

assertive with grace & charm

counter intuitive as it may seem
grow a beard before train travel
& be accosted less by evangelists
particularly if your destination
is a small commune of musicians
across cow paddocks
from a bed & breakfast haunted
by freshly retired footballers

if you have a fly buys card please scan now
if you have a fly buys card please scan now
if you have a fly buys card please scan now

acquire a butterfly
some barbed wire or a tall ship
but when the toaster decides
an intricate mishmash
of marvel characters
fire & brimstone
& your topless girlfriend as a centaur
may assist two marathon runners
with their mission to negotiate peace
among rival factions
the black suits & the grey suits
in a breeding ground for ibis
not noticing can be highly functional

if you have a fly buys card please scan now

----------------------------------------------------------

ALBERT ROTSTEIN

vermeer

* * *
* * * *
everything porcelain
except the milk jug
which
spills endlessly

light * (oO enters
from the left
photons (o* exacted
by craft into
radiant iguazuae fall
*o)*O*(o
* oO * *
Oo(o)Oo ***
* * * o *
sunbeams
*o)O(o*******
gleam)"around the house
carried
on hogshair
plasma ):''''(((whooo***
sublimed
wave ((((from *
particle to
painters article
annealed and calcined
onto the days
matter
unuttered to forever

a box of quanta
through
the imprimatur of hand
through a fashioned utensil
the brush not the pencil
and thence and thus
the documenta

this alchemy will not defraud
fall from
the board
nor be marauded
by a god of love

*

-----------------------------------------------------------

JAMES HAMILTON

TOAST TO LEONORA CARRINGTON

From the newspaper, I didn't know I was on the way
to a wake. When the white horse appeared
I rode so long that I forgot
the gold star'd cloak I didn't wear

on the way here. Regret of what
she could have told our new lives
made old. Sphinxes? sure.
No state yet certain, the reddened head

glows in seeming fire. Tent in an orb
of alleyway dreaming. Seems I lost
my white horse amongst her images
maybe dreams are only an imagined "snake clock"

Here then is our cloak of stars
the cloak we take to night, to love.
A grin beneath clouded hair
levels a demon, empties a stare

of the always familiar coral skied
or basalt eyed. The kind of minotaur
that floats above knowing children,
hooded. Greenpool shade of light

which drifts above our horseless wake,
floating sound of glowing eyes, one dead star
in our mouths. Now we ride back on our blanket
of colours, life now at "the house opposite"

in the shudder-hum of art. We return to the country
we never knew, but now with her silent hall of maps
in our eyes. Nothing starts to burn. Seated at our table,
the real news fresh on the page, concealed ocean high and low

We raise our glasses to the cartographer
of "Down Below"

[Melbourne, 28th May 2011]
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FINOLA MOORHEAD

REGARDING LEONORA CARRINGTON

[NOTE : I'd remembered Finola's mention of her "painter cousin" but was astounded when I came across her name in Paul Ray's The Surrealist Movement in England (Cornel University Press, 1971), & later in Breton's Painting & Surrealism. Her book, Down Below, was praised by Pierre Mabille & Maurice Blanchot; & in 1946, Claude Serbanne described her as the "greatest English surrealist poet, and, without any argument, one of the four or five greatest poets of surrealist tendency on the international scene." Her paintings were included in all the Surrealist exhibitions since 1937, & occupied a prominent place at the 1960 Surrealist exhibition in New York. --August, 1981; Kris Hemensley]

Nth Fitzroy,
Summer/1980

Dear Kristo --,

I'm terrified of my cousin Leonora Carrington & I'm not terrified of many people but when she is drunk & I am too, our ability to get on is positively genetic. And you have gotten the very correct word for her P R I V A T E. Her play Penelope (I think) written when she was 17 was produced 1st in something like 1966. The Hearing Trumpet written for her friends in 1954, or something, was first published in English in 1975, and so the story goes, her writing is her own and whoever wrested the mss from her to publish them must have approached her personally, got her drunk, got her respect then said Please....do it for me, go on etc. etc. I spent six weeks in Mexico with her husband, Chiqui Weicz, for whom The Stone Door was written in 1947 or something. During the war, she was put in an Asylum in Spain because she wanted to save her previous lover, Max Ernst, from the Nazis & there is an account of her time there, which is a brilliant merging of the alchemical & the surreal (truths) in the subjective (misunderstood necessarily) in booklet form, called Down Below. On the other hand her painting is public, famous in Mexico City, N Y & Paris (little bit London) & those people here who really know the Surrealists (and there are apparently FEW) of course know her work well. Periodically she'll have an exhibition in one of those Madison Ave commercial galleries which sell out --she's constantly fighting with her agent as she feels she has to KEEP her 3 men, who are those narrow-fingered aesthete demi-jewish Europeans --two sons and husband; the older son, my age, Gaby is in theatre, Pablo in medicine. She is notoriously a non-letter writer, has friends like Larry, Trotsky's son, and Luis (Bunuel) & is herself one of the big expatriot names in Mexico City where there are lots... too shy and multilingual... Chiqui was telling me of when Antonin Artaud came to stay & find out the secrets of the Shamans, pre-pre-Castaneda, & wrote that crazy book The Peyote Dance. I stayed in her house in Cuernavaca which is under the same volcano as Malcolm Lowry's. To ask me about Leonora Carrington is to ask me to explain the mysteries of my own DNA. It's queer that locked in my gaol of English Language & bonny Aussie enthusiasm I should meet or have the possibility of meeting such names so closely ... for to be the prima de Leonora Carringtom is almost to be her when she is absent, 'cos family is all-hallowed when your language is Latinate. But my ignorance beneath the enthusiasm & the awe is it, for I could only approach on the personal ... not the professional, or careerish, so I don't know really what to say. I've gathered that I should respect the private, as I know how much mail arrives to be ignored or laughed off in the Calle Chihuahua. None of them write letters, but your best bet is Gaby --Gabriel Weicz-Carringtom, Calle Chihuahua 194, Mexico City, Zona 7, for information, opinion about living surrealism, or an approach to his mother, or possibly a copy of Down Below.

A day later : yes Gaby would be more approachable & possibly a more rewarding correspondent as Leonora is at the moment incommunicado in N Y city & some Tibetan Buddhist retreat, rehashing her whole life & for her these things are passed, whereas for Gaby to put it into perspective would be good (they are muy mucho close). Perhaps you could think up some inspired questions & suggest publishing what he has to say & show him the Merri [The Merri Creek,Or Nero was Earth Ship magazine's 3rd series, & in turn presented H/EAR, eight issues, 1981-85] --whatever, it's not as though he's not a writer himself. And they're all deeply in the Anarchist tradition, so the Merri should stand on its own merits. My meetings with Leonora are/were too personal & as yet out of historical perspective to make any sort of a piece at the moment ... still haven't decided whether to use the ticket I have for Nov. 7th to return.
Wish for myself the secret of the freedom of the surrealists, for my writing I mean, but don't have it, can understand more what the Bauhaus was about, even that quite newly & to do with my own experiment [the work in progress which would become Remember the Tarantella, 1987, -ed.]...

(.....)
with love,
Finola

oOo

NOTE (1) :
After the issue was published, Finola sent an urgent note, "I have not read everything yet in H/EAR ye'll understand that. One thing I read & if you've not sent all away, fix it : I am LA PRIMA DE LEONORA, not her PRANA ((that's embarrassing for PRANA is the magical Life Force that invades orange juice & fresh air & so on and PRIMA is only 1st cousin feminine))" The correction is made in the above.

NOTE (2):
When James Hamilton told me he'd recently written a poem for/about Leonora Carrington, having read the newspaper obituary, I responded with my story of Finola's family connection and my publishing her reminiscence 20 years ago in H/EAR. We thought it would be great to publish the texts together! I sought Finola's permission to reprint her letter here. I have reinserted a couple of passages omitted from the 1981 publication. As Finola & I have agreed, publish & be damned!

----------------------------------------------------------------

CONTRIBUTORS:

DAVE ELLISON,KEN TRIMBLE, PAUL HARPER & JAMES HAMILTON have appeared in previous issues [see name index]. They're all active in Melbourne, outside of the mainstream, wholly tuned in to the music...
ALICIA BEE is a freelance journalist & blogger; has published 2 collections of poems, Bathers On The Beach, & The Book Of The Dead And Wounded, both from Good Look Books (Brunswick, Vic.). Her webpage is, http://misspiggyjournalist.wordpress.com/
CECILIA WHITE, artist, photographer, poet; first met when she performed Vicki Viidikas jazz poem at the MOK Anniversary event at Collected Works couple of years ago. Studied in Germany ('80s) & presently in New South Wales. Winner of inaugural national Cricket Poem Prize. Current project is Breathing Space.
ALBERT ROTSTEIN stalwart of boho Melbourne city & country art & poetry scenes over the decades. His poems most recently appear in Pete Spence's irregular pressings, more publicly & regularly in Pi O's Unusual Work magazine.
FINOLA MOORHEAD , poet, novelist, playwright. Books include Quilt ('85); A Handwritten Modern Classic (Post-Neo, '87); Remember the Tarantella ('87, reissued by Spinifex in '011); Still Murder ('91); My Voice ('06). Fiction editor with A A Phillips on Meanjin Quarterly in the '70s, illustrious member of the Rushall Crescent Avant-Garde in the '70s/80s.

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, # 25;October, 2011

2011-10-03T00:46:00.030+11:00

KRIS HEMENSLEY

Launch speech for Pete Spence's PERRIER FEVER (Grand Parade, '11)

Here is a poem of mine, written by Pete Spence; it is also a poem in the Ashbery / O'Hara / Schuyler mode written by a generation of English poets & their American cousins... It is a Pete Spence poem & an Australian poem, and I think it is a beautiful poem : "there is a mountain of solitude on the hill / occasionally it comes to us in a moment of eagerness / we find little peace under the avalanche / and would like to push it all upward / away from the pressing urgency of noise / the grit we bathe in // and then one day perhaps / through pumice suds / frosted obsidian windows ajar / the panel of sky / the chalky turmoil / we call "the light of day" / we see / THIS WAY UP / stenciled / near the summit of the hill!" [p68, PF]

*

Pete Spence is an old friend & colleague; a member of our Collected Works Bookshop collective in the mid to late '80s, (which included such luminaries as Robert Kenny, Jurate Sasnaitis, Des Cowley, Ted Hopkins, Rob Finlayson, amongst many others); a fellow little mag editor (who'll ever forget Post Neo?), gallery buff, international traveller.
He was first mentioned to me by the late Geoff Eggleston as a poet friend he'd like me to meet --circa '82, '83... Ah Geoff : author of this memorable couplet, "No man is an island / and no woman is a clipper-ship" -- I still dont quite know what it means! Likewise, Pete's line always in my head : "relaxing on a Li-Lo reading Li Po" --the entire verse is, "a parenthesis ladles the tune / relaxing on a Li-Lo reading Li Po / under some amended weather / tumbling sunshine"...

*

James Schuyler said you'd never get New York poetry until you realized the gallons of paint flowing through it --painting & painters. Following that thought, Pete's book abounds in names (Pam, Ken, John, Corny et al), references to painting, to poetry & to poets, & to music, composers --as though a record is always playing --a symphony, perhaps, he shares with Alan Wearne, his friend & publisher.
Spence is a poet of fraternity --which includes conviviality & melancholy... No wonder his recent poem in progress is called The Kynetonbury Tales, and a delight it's been to read via e-mail.
And, therefore, what a coup that Alan Wearne has pinned this pilgrim down long enough to make a cohesive book out of a vast & errant production --this book out of many possible compilations.
And Alan is to be heartily congratulated on his Grand Parade Poets publishing project, & this particular volume.
It's such a good looker... Designed & set by Christopher Edwards, -- who shares with Pete similar 'adventures in poetry', --the chance & play --the relishing of words as though a different species of artist --painter, sculptor, composer.
And Alan himself along this track, whose Otis Redding poem way back in Public Relations (published by Gargoyle Poets in 1973), advances his share of Pete's kind of fun : "Redding, Redding, remorse will smash any epilogue chance, / any sweat-liturgy you sang and I might have attempted / once I walked in the rain until one once / to shout O, 'tis (forever!) Redding" ...

*

So, a poet of fraternity --which tag can deal with correspondence & address (the given social world a poet inhabits) and the matter of influence. And if I can use the French 'chez', thus "with" (which Paul Buck gave me decades ago) : "with" in preference to "after" with its misleading implication of "imitation" --, then we can say Pete Spence's poems stay with the effects of his long lasting affections... He revisits them, he calls upon them --they are become motifs --they are his muses, they are his amusements --elegy, ode, sonnet, City, Landscape, Weather, the Sun, the Sky...

*

I opened his book at random the other day, on page 105, --the poem entitled Shop : "i thought the shop / was called SLIDE / until i walked into the door!"
I'm still visualizing a kind of Jacques Tati cartoon, or Charlie Chaplin, or Rowan Atkinson. The jokeyness transmutes or elevates from ha-ha to Surrealist smile in the poem Drawing : "i muscled in / all the angles / crosshatched in / the shadows / only to realise / i'd drawn / a horse without / neck or head / and its tail / was a cloud / in the sky" --

*

Perhaps this collection, Perrier Fever (and I reiterate, one possible selection of many --notwithstanding the attrition, the loss & destruction of poems along the way, allusion to which I recall from conversation 25 or 30 years ago), perhaps it is his humourous selected poems (different kinds of humour)... But even so it's informed by the totality of his poetry. Remember, Pete is no Spring-chicken. A different personality would have seen him vying for volumes & anthologies many times over.

*

Pete Spence's poetry has all the exclamations of the New Yorkers, all the happenstance & hutzpah --which is another way of saying all the spontaneity & presence --which is another way of saying that more often than not the Pete Spence poem is both written in an ideal space, called the poem, and enacts the ideal poem, a doing that's simultaneously done --which is another way of saying that whatever happens in the poem is the poem, informed or inspired by the insight that anything might enter the poem --because it can and because it is the poem... What does your poem mean, Mr Stevens? asks the earnest correspondent. Stevens replies : Mean? Mean? The poem means nothing more than the (--and we can interpolate, nothing less) than the heavens full of colours & the constellations of sound! Which is another way of saying that Spence, like Wallace Stevens, can be poet as painter, poet as musician, poet as inventor & conjurer of effects --of sensations which course the mind, tickle the tongue...

*

But who is Pete Spence?
As scholarship, let alone the insatiable curiosity of the reader like Pete himself, as it expands its purview, so outsiders are claimed for the vast continuum; so peripherals are identified, brought in from the cold, --not that the cold isnt a legitimate or even desirable place to be.
Alan's told us a little about Pete. Pete's written a little about himself here in his book. I'd like to add one story to the biography.
It's the story of a possible history, had a manuscript for an anthology around 1971, actually transpired. In 1973 I was given custody of the mss. of Dark Ages Journal. In 1984, in my H/EAR magazine, dedicated to a '40s/'60s/'80s chronicle of the 'New', I described that anthology's perspective. It was a Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, New Zealand compendium. Its editors had included Charles Buckmaster, probably Garrie Hutchinson & either Richard Tipping or Rob Tillett.
Students of the '68-'71 or so period will recognize many of the names --Michael Dransfield, Charles Buckmaster, Terry Gillmore, John Jenkins, Vicki Viidikas, Garrie Hutchinson, Frances Yule, Ian Robertson; New Zealanders like Alan Brunton, Murray Edmond, Gary Langford. But the unusual Melbourne names are Walter Billeter, Robert Kenny, David Miller, Robert Harris & Pete Spence.
I licked my lips relishing the different history this coincidence promoted back then. The La Mama [Poets Workshop] '60s style become conventional even as it was being hailed in the anthology edited by Tom Shapcott, Australian Poetry Now, suddenly had the possibility of rejuvination! I like it very much that Spence is part of that potential history. As he is now in the present day.
Without further ado, in launching Perrier Fever, may I introduce to you : Pete Spence...

oOo

[delivered at the "Poetry and the Contemporary Symposium", at the Bella Union, 54 Victoria Street, Carlton; part of the Grand Parade launch; Thursday, 7th July, 2011]

--------------------------------------------------------------------

DAVID N. PEPPERELL

Two Poems + Haiku

*

THE ALBION JUKEBOX MURDER 1972

I could hear their voices from where I sat
drinking by myself on a cold night
"THAT FUCKING MUSIC'S DRIVING ME NUTS!"
"forget it, it's your shot"
"I CANT PLAY WITH THAT FUCKING NOISE!"
"it doesnt bother me"
"WHO GIVES A FUCK WHAT BOTHERS YOU?"
"just leave it, OK?"
"GET FUCKED, I'M TURNING IT OFF!"
"dont do it"
"JUST WATCH ME, DICKHEAD!"

he walked over to the jukebox
and reached behind it
the sound disappeared
he turned around, the smile
dying on his lips as the
knife went into his heart
he fell to the floor his
pool cue falling beside him

they carried him out
covered by a sheet
his killer stumbled behind him
handcuffed to a couple of cops
who took him away in the wagon

I put my beer down on the bar
and walked out into the
prussian blue night
that sure killed the albion for me
I never drank there again
I dont think anybody else did it either.

[1991]

oOo

CARLTON BUSTOP INCIDENT

in lygon street carlton dreamscape
i'm stuck in past loneliness of memories
over there coffee on saturday mornings at tamanis
john deep in the australian with a flat white
now gone to a fast lane end in a thai bamboo compound
mary gone too bottle of pills & no goodbye
lennie still around making the world safe for crime
what hope for him in a new world order?
tony could be anywhere maybe making moomba floats
and still pursuing the red revolution
dave now has new wife, new allegiances, new house with lawn
same face though, same laugh, same glass
where is the bus to take me away from all this?
ghosts gather in my thoughts
the dead fight with the living for space and time
hold me to your heart sweet yesterday
tomorrow just lost another traveller

[1991]

oOo

MORNING COFFEE HAIKU

franklin cafe

8.30 a.m.

hot flat white

spoonful of sugar

splash!

*

boy in blue

muddy fake reboks

freckled face

falls off chair

crash!

*

man with tongs

iced apple cake

brown paper bag

ringer on register

cash!

*

franklin cafe

9.05 a.m.

hand on briefcase

its late must

dash.

[1991]

---------------------------------------------------------------

GRANT CALDWELL

4 NEW YORK HAIKU

*

sleeping in new york

to the sound of falling rain -

air-conditioning

*

manhattan subway

every race in the world

going home

*

why new york is the

centre of the universe -

nine-eleven

*

the subway busker

plays boogie-woogie piano -

the trains run all night

[2011]

---------------------------------------------------------

JAKE CORE

4 POEMS

*

COLLOQUIAL BELLBIRDS

Leora Bell broke her wrist
last week when the rain was here.
She was drunk again with Blake Fielder
and fell off a swing.
At first she didn't even realize
it was broken.
She just said, 'my wrist feels kinda
funny,'
and laughed like a strange bird.

oOo

ULURU

With a warm beer
beneath the setting sun
I overhear a man say
to his wife :

'There's a palace of ice
south of Tasmania
that no one has ever seen.

I can take you there,
I have a map.

It's bigger than Uluru.'

oOo

SUITORS

In the twilight of a love song
amorous Europeans descend staircases,

legless, and blowing
invisible kisses to impossible suitors

down the hall, where memories
can be found

turning endlessly in on themselves
like whirlpools on holiday.

oOo

TELEPHONE SHADOWS, LEAN AGAINST THE FRUIT BOWL

I see you by the water.

Your name is not Bravado,
Jane, or Solitude.

There is nothing in the distance
except a space reserved
for ghost ships.

Your face is turned away
from a great number
of things.

Your hair is nearly down
to your hips.

There is no telling how far back
a story goes.

I see you by the water.

Your name is not Momentum,
Eliza, or Sleep.

--------------------------------------------------------

ANGELA GARDNER

TWO PROSE PIECES

*

A SHADOW LEAVING It won’t be the right thing for you: there is
the circular plot, and one or other leaving – some bloody battle. But I
wish you safe road, I wish that to you. Trundle the gods from their
museums, stand with them at crossroads and they’ll be freed from
obligations to warn of death, though not of how close others will come
to us. Them in a Limbo of not arriving, a nowhere advanced by
technology and our tiredness. And all the while the money sparks,
still sparks, changes hands. It makes us close-touched, adorned,
volatile, with our stepped hands, our stepped words. What is it to be
intact? Ignore it, don’t fret it back, we have the gods! Shadows hold
us with unremembered promises that we are tranced by: while
yesterday’s tomorrows pile up all tarnished and unaccountable. The
gods try comfort, warn of emptiness without them. I want to turn on my
borrowed heel, though then I’ll never know what I did, or what is sold
on the streets until each exhausted dawn. The unsheathed flesh of
flowers pours from glassy throats. I’m moved, truly. Slowed to silence
in the physical downpour of the morning rain, the fabric of the sky.
It frees me. The gods gave little comfort. They were crudely fashioned.
I may travel. There are many directions, a border country where words
change in meaning. Should we blame the gods. Or angels? We were
defiant, and wanton, worked to free ourselves from our desire for their
monstrous shadows, their mechanical animals. We had believed the
shadow-play but insisted they leave the shelter we found for them.
Stood by at the crossroads. No question, I’m pared back without them.
I am like something else...

oOo

TRANCE Primitive fairground amusements judder around us under
human force and disco. Unskilled in the ways of petrol: flame
throws out its spurts. He rolls his eyes and wipes his mouth on an old
cloth, while the women sing, or fail to, telling us nothing as it happens.
Our ring of faces is merely curious. Arse in a barrel straining to get away
from whip lashes that are aimed from the cruelty of youth. Who can we
blame for this? We are rumour and shadow, as he spits unburnt petrol
into the not yet midnight. We breathe like him through shallow shoals
of traffic and a pall of cardboard cinders that fall from fireworks.
Masked, old rope tail, tee-shirt stained with petrol dribbles as music
with uneven lyrics, many parts despair some joy, plays over us like
pollution. And all the while the puppet master jokes with the orchestra.

---------------------------------------------------------

FRANCESCA JURATE SASNAITIS

Amed! Ah!

I have been covered in black sand,
the fine ground progeny of laval rock and glittering mica,
the work of millennial waves and winds
beating beating at these wasted cliffs,
dust dry on this island once haled a tropical paradise.

I have swum with schools of darting fishes
the speed and green of lightning bolts,
fish the colour of sun playing in wavelets over rocks
and fish the black of the shadows underneath.
I have seen fish striped the yellow of young leaves.

I have tasted of paradise, and reek of it—
pungent garlic and slivers of onion fried,
the leaf of the blingbing tree, turmeric, chilli,
red red rice, green papaya and galangal—
the poetry of flavour.

I have developed a taste for Arak.
Kue dadar pisang! pancake wrapped
and spidered in coconut, the red banana . . .
my mouth aches in anticipation!
A frangipani graces every dish.

[Bali, 2011]

---------------------------------------------------------

CATHERINE O'BRIEN

-------------------------shooting at the sky

...the way I ride my bike along a lane that takes me by
one of the many temples in Vientiane...plaster casts on
the wall depict a young boy with his bow and arrow...
shooting at the sky...angels hover above him...as they
ascend wings detach and float on the white...feathers
fall...embedded into the wall memory shadows where once
there were more boys with arrows...shooting at angels...
floating wings...falling feathers...the symmetry undisturbed
by the erosion of time...daily I ride again into this story and
see it unfold...every day the lane and the wall divide my day into
remembered and forgotten...pierced by shooting arrows!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTRIBUTORS :

David N Pepperell was co-proprietor of legendary Melbourne record shop, Archie & Jughead back in the day. In the mid '90s he ran Dr. Pepper's Jazz Junction in the Port Philip Arcade ("from trad to bop - from free to acid - all the jazz that's fit to stock!"). Song-writer & music journalist. Books include Raphael Alias (1976), East Gate, West Gate (1991), Letters to a Friend [correspondence with Anais Nin] ('92), both from Nosukumo press.

Grant Caldwell edited the now defunct Blue Dog magazine (from the Australian Poetry Centre, Melbourne). Of his 7 collections to date his most recent are Dreaming of Robert de Niro (2003) & Glass Clouds (2010), both from Five Islands Press. His novel Malabata ('91) is something of a classic.

Jake Core is an itinerant poet & musician. The poems here are published in his little book, The Goose Puddle (Brierfield Flood Press, 2010).

Angela Gardner, poet & artist. Edits poetry e-zine, foam:e. see, http://www.foame.org Her collection, Parts of Speech (UQP, 2007), was the winner of the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. Views of the Hudson was published by Shearsman, UK, in 2009.

Francesca Jurate Sasnaitis, an original member of Collected Works bookshop, ran the distinguished independent store, Greville Street Bookstore for 20 years. Nosukumo published her prose-pieces, Sketches, in 1989. In the last year she's published 2 exquisite chapbooks, Gravelly Views & Thirteen Seasons (in one day) with her own imprint, Ratas.

Cathy O'Brien lives & works in Vientiane, where her little i:cat gallery stages art & photography exhibitions, poetry readings, & film showings. Her most recent publications are the card book Word Sculptures, and a poem card collaboration with Kris & Bernard Hemensley (published by Stingy Artist, UK, 2011).

Pete Spence's Perrier Fever is published by Alan Wearne's Grand Parade, & is available at all good bookstores including Collected Works Bookshop.

--that's all folks!--
October 4th, 2011

THE BIG READ : August 19th,'11

2011-08-05T08:22:00.003+10:00

Dear Friends, A year ago Collected Works Bookshop was faced with an uncertain future as we digested implication of the large rent rise (unforeseen as we sought new 4 year lease). The support we received from our poetry community (writers & readers) was fantastic! The Christmas Benefit (December, '10), organized by Friends of Collected Works, was a huge & positive interjection (dollars & cents, morale, energy). Our programme of book launchings + readings have sustained this momentum. But a new problem, or a new context for the problem, has emerged. Turning around the public perception of the collapse of bricks & mortar book trade in the wake of the Borders/A & R crash is the new challenge. It is fortuitous, therefore, that the McBryde/Harrison/Smeaton "BIG READ" is just around the corner. Please see here first announcement of the programme:

You are Cordially Invited to

A Poets’ Benefit Event for Collected Works Bookshop

featuring

jordieALBISTON, connieBARBER, tonyBIRCH, lynBOUGHTON,
eddyBURGER, m.a.CARTER, jenniferCOMPTON, alisonCROGGON, danDISNEY, megDUNN, michaelFARRELL, susanFEALY, wendyFLEMING, leeFUHLER, claireGASKIN,
luisGONZALEZ SERRANO, timHAMILTON, libbyHART, lynHATHERLY, susanHAWTHORNE, kristinHENRY, andyJACKSON, KOMNINOS, michelleLEBER, geoffLEMON,
LISH, rayLIVERSIDGE, earlLIVINGS, kerryLOUGHREY, myronLYSENKO, bronwynMANGER, emilyMANGER, felixNOBIS, anthonyO’SULLIVAN, k.f.PEARSON, PI O, judithRODRIGUEZ, josephineROWE, robynROWLAND, gigRYAN, kerrySCUFFINS, tomSHAPCOTT, steveSMART, jennySTRAUSS, fionaSTUART, peterTIERNAN, lyndonWALKER, chrisWALLACE-CRABBE, ceciliaWHITE, petraWHITE, laurenWILLIAMS

plus

jenniferHARRISON (reading dorothyPORTER)
kenSMEATON (reading malMORGAN)
ianMcBRYDE (reading barbaraGILES)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 19th, 6:30 for 7 pm
__________________________________

at Collected Works Bookshop,

1st Floor, The Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston St., Melbourne
(corner Swanston St. and Flinders Lane)

Free Admission for all, the only prerequisite asked is to please buy a book or three to keep Collected Works thriving and alive!

Complimentary Wine & Nibbles Provided Inquiries : Collected Works 9654 8873

-------------------------------------------------------------

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, # 24, July 2011

2011-07-03T16:32:00.020+10:00

GREGORY DAY

The Uncool Eloquence Of Mark Tredinnick
(Address given at the Melbourne Launch of Fire Diary
at Collected Works Bookshop on May 27, 2011.)

I always think that a good book is not one which you necessarily enjoy but one that you remember. Likewise, the test of a poem for me is often something similar – not necessarily a matter of subject or style, nor metrical pyrotechnics or even the cleverness of its intellectual riffing, and definitely not its erudition or intertextuality, which too often are worn like the watch on a busy man’s wrist, or the mobile phone that goes off in a movie. The question for me, the measure of these things, is somehow about about the ear and the tongue - has the poet a capacity to make a line, or even an image or a joke, that I want to say again, that resounds in the ear and is pleasurable well afterwards, even becoming necessary to repeat. By heart, as the saying goes. By heart.

This very requirement points to the unusual, and probably unfashionable quality in Fire Diary, the eloquence of Mark Tredinnick. Fire Diary is full of memorable image, joke and line. As Pound would say, perhaps a bit disingenuously for him, it has ‘a quality of affection that carves the trace in the mind’. No mean feat. This is the first thing that struck me about the book, and soon I found myself thinking of it in geological terms as some kind of magnetic anomaly in the poetry world. Or in ecological terms, as charismatic fauna. It was the nature of its cadence. Its ability to be poetry with all the rigour that that implies, and to communicate vocally from the page. It was its preparedness to take on the mantle, the reality of its voice.

The narrowness of my view, and I do admit it’s narrow, is such that whenever I read an Australian writer, poet, novelist or otherwise, there is a way in which I am looking for the role he or she might play, not so much in the national conversation, but in a kind of parallel national constellation of artists. I think I listen out for a pitch with something unusually real about it, something inexplicable too that I can’t trace through the grids of reason and therefore something symbolic of the mysteries of existence. Something both of, and beyond, the muck and verbiage, the bowel movements of the consumerist media. I need to situate the voice too in relation to what for me remains an unfederated landscape – this still moving continent.

It’s because this country we’re on is such an old distillery, such a strong and, in terms of biodiversity, such a copious drop, that I’m always fascinated to observe the ways in which we’re still getting to know it, even those whose families have lived here for thousands of years. To me Mark’s particular talent, and a very distinct one I see it as in the Australian context, is his ability to write from a fair dinkum knowledge of that landscape, a micro to macro understanding of it, and then to transform that experience of the world into a properly epigrammatic line, such as – ‘who we are is who we’re not. Whatever it is we’re part of’ - or, ‘The night smells like any one of a dozen childhood camps/in which the present has pitched her tent’ or ‘mortality is the price we pay for form’, or ‘the world is a mystery occluded by reality’ or, the soul will always choose a holy mess above a tidy fraud’, or even, referring no doubt in this case to the ignorance of those who can’t distinguish symbolism from historical fact in the Book of Genesis, – ‘seven days is all eternity for a people with no memory’. In this ability to harness aphorism and resonators Mark blends a great gift for listening with lyrical ears to the outdoor tunings of existence. He does it with a defiant neo-romantic belief, it’s a kind of heroic dare I’d say, a belief, or at least, in his words, a ‘trying to believe’, in a world intact, in the beauty of the processes of the universe, the brokenness of wholeness, as opposed to dogmas of wholesomeness, the world both violent, rapid and glacial, and sweet.

Now coming from a man literate in geology, in astronomy, in ornithology and meteorology – which he would call the study of ‘blue machinery’ - but also in the death of species and the self generating masochism of post industrial capitalism - ‘there aren’t many wild places left: death is one’ -, this belief in the sanctity of nature, which is everywhere implied in these poems, this almost boyish heartfeltness integrated with the grown-up accomplishment of his poetic craft, is quite special. With these talents converging Mark becomes a singer, motivated by, and loyal to, the impulse of beauty in the world, because, once again in the words of his book: ‘no-one reads poetry to learn how to vote. Verse can’t change/the future’s mind. You write it like rain; you enter it like nightfall’.

And here’s another one – ‘Let your mind be like the fox you caught earlier eating pizza from a box/on the porch in the dark: go hungry, but not too hungry. Know a gift/ when you see one. Take it but leave the box. Turn but don’t run’. Again, a quality I’d like to re-emphasise about Fire Diary, beyond its pretty uncool delivery of wisdom into the ironic heart of contemporary poetry, - is how well Mark knows the world of which he speaks. He lives in the NSW southern highlands, closer to the sunrise than where I live on Victoria’s southwest coast, and there’s obviously more European trees, but nevertheless there is sometimes a unifying sense amongst those of us who live outside the urban areas of Australia that the very nomenclature of the landscapes we inhabit make some of our work seem a little intransigent or even obscure to editors living in the big cities. Sometimes when urban editors see bluestone laneways we see the basalt the lanes were cut from. There are many things in the daily life of the natural world which don’t make the news or the cultural tourism brochures, nor David Attenborough or even YouTube – and which, when described and reembodied in words and then sent away to town, can seem just like a sword stroke in the water.

But here in Mark’s book is not only an overcoming of that difficult translation, but also an exactness about the phenomenological experience of the emotionally struck human figure in the massive midst of stars, birds, storms, dawns, trees both European and Indigenous and rivers both fucked up and restored. That’s another dubious view I personally suffer from – I squint at nature poems sometimes, seeking out, with an initial lack of trust I must admit, the proof that the poet is not just some subjective romantic, that the poet truly knows the hill of which he or she speaks, not just as fodder and not just as an artefact, as a living hill that I might know too, experientially, not only by the digestion of Common and Latin names, not by a grasp even of geomorphology or the igneous past, but as a personal witness in time, a witness to the particular music of wind amongst its trees, the emotional feel of a possum landing, as Mark writes – ‘like ordinance on the roof’, the leadlighting of cicada wings, the mad scale of plovers, - all these things are in Fire Diary - Mark captures the sound of plovers so surprisingly with the question that I’ll always ask now when the plover calls - ‘why will a river not stay in the ground?’

Fire Diary is in this sense the real deal, the craft-quality of it is a given in Mark’s case and of course there’s not too many first books of poetry of which you could say that - this book has, both superficially and profoundly too, been a long time coming.

What Fire Diary has above all, what I admire about it so much, and why I’m so glad to help launch it here in the south, is its personal vulnerability - Mark himself I think calls it a ‘confessional ecology’. For me it’s a capacity, simultaneous with his geomorphological understanding, astute metrics and attention to imagistic detail, to love and cry on the page, to be embarrassed on the page, to be clearsighted on the page about danger and risk, but to include wist and sentiment and the plangent among its palette, to invoke Gaia in full lament of our destructive idiocy, and to hell with the consequences. For me this makes Fire Diary not only the work of a wordsmith I admire but of a mature person, someone who’s lived and decided to live on. It is a mature book, not only in this personal sense but I think its intellectually grown-up as well because it is such an emotionally intelligent collection. I sense a lack of fear behind the writing of these poems that perhaps, amongst other things, a musical ear and private suffering can give you - it gives Mark access to his art, and a sense in it of him living his own dedicated life, perhaps not his first life, perhaps even his second or third, - ‘Your new life’s just your old life with a book in its hand’ - but a life therefore he has made himself, a poetry he has both chosen and laid himself open to, with the inspiration of the earth, I must say, like olivine-rich basalt at its core.

In these poems there are the strains of making a living – ‘writing 50 dollar poems at a 1000 dollar desk’ - a hint of Francis Webb’s idea of the poet as Franciscan jongleur or fool, as he struggles to write in his home shed which once housed the fundamental productivity of cows; the primary relief and joy he finds in his wife and children, in sex and fatherhood; and also the preternatural him, in the midst of writing the poems. Of course there is literary lineage, there are in these poems what George Steiner would call ‘real presences’, or what Jed Rasula in his recent groundbreaking study of ecological imperatives in American poetry, would call ‘compost’ – there’s Robert Frost and Robert Gray, Walt Whitman and Rumi and Charles Wright, there’s an enormous North American influence actually, a deciduousness you could say - he’s at his most vernacular in his wit but quite trans-Pacific in his cadence - and there’s always an Asiatic spareness, which at least implies the minimal – he’s too loquacious to be a minimalist proper, but there are the open empty spaces on the page winking at the reader…….

And there’s also GS, the writer and academic George Seddon, who Mark has spoken to me about in our conversations, a huge figure I know in his coming-into-a-voice, a mentor of landprints, and who is mentioned here in the fifteenth Eclogue – ‘The places don’t sing,/ GS said to me once; in particular they don’t sing you-/ George, a father to me, who died in his garden last week/a man with a river in him when we met, until we fished it out, and I’m still in it/They don’t sing, GS; they just are, That’s how they sing, and that’s what they teach’

That is a lesson which is perhaps never fully learnt but which speaks of a rich bequest, a basically Copernican lesson so crucial in the current plight of nature that we trash. And a lesson recast here by the poet, in homage and well aware of its lyric lineage – Wallace Stevens’ Idea of Order At Key West, Robert Duncan’s Often I Am Permitted To Return To A Meadow, to name just two.

So Fire Diary is a moment I think, at the risk of coming on too grand, a distinct moment in the timeline of our poetry here, where the astringent drywitted truth of this worn-back place comes together with the succulent riparian eloquence of a man prepared not just to quip or allude or re-arrange or meditate, but to openly sing and cry. There’s a lot of people who have been waiting for this book to appear for years. I know Mark has. But good things take time. As a man in Borneo said to me once – the good life moves at the pace of the river.

Lastly, I want to say that the title piece, Fire Diary, a talismanic poem I think which may well grace poetry anthologies for years to come, demonstrates best the value at the heart of this collection – in short, Fire Diary, the poem and the book, shows us exactly how much we have to fear, and why we should not fear it. Quite an achievement really, the achievement of a poet. It’s cause for celebration tonight. Well done Mark. Thanks, and congratulations.

---------------------------------------------------------

KRIS HEMENSLEY & LIBBY HART

"THIS FLOATING WORLD" : A CONVERSATION*

KH : Congratulations on your new book! As my own publishing reduces so my admiration for other writers who continue to publish & perform increases. It even excites my curiosity for reentering the fray myself!
In your written inscription in my comp of This Floating World (Five Islands Press, '11) , you thank me for "agreeing to take the journey" with you... 'Journey''s a good word... a journey, like this conversation... We can never assume we've begun at the same place though we may hope, eventually, to find ourselves on the same page! And being writers as well as readers we're even more eccentric in our disposition than the impartial reader. Our partiality is formed by our own journeys (--suddenly remember here Pound's great word "hewn", from Whitman's wood?)...

LH : I think every book is a journey the author/poet takes. It starts at that most embryonic stage where a few words begin to form and continues on until these and many other words are polished, printed and then bound, until it is officially called “a book”. Interwoven in all of this are the many footsteps, forward marches, U-turns, compass readings and standing-still moments taken to produce the work. Then a “reading” journey begins when it becomes independent and exposed in the world. But This Floating World is also a journey in itself because the songline of the same name, which makes up most of the book, is an aural map of the island of Ireland...

KH : And Poetry forces one to agree to yet another embarkation --more than a nibble & a taste since this book isnt a miscellany but a sequence... I'd love to hear you read How Like --it's a poem outside of the central sequence, --and maybe those first poems are the proem?-- And it's simultaneously physical & mental --palpable (of the real world) & poetical --it contains the beautiful, it alludes to properties of language --it usefully leads one's reading in different directions...

LH : I find it interesting that you selected How Like for me to read from the individual poems at the beginning of the book. This poem actually has nothing to do with Ireland, but it does contain similar themes the songline encapsulates. The poem was written for Bob Dylan and it is included in The Captain's Tower: Poems for Bob Dylan at 70 (published by Seren Books, Wales). The premise of the anthology is basically 70 poems by 70 poets to celebrate Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday last month.

How like

And I am wondering about your face,

how it alters when a mood takes hold.

Such a changeling

like a sparrow, like a burning flutter,

higher and higher up into the tree.

Like a breath by cold night,

the crispest revelation breaking ice.

What is left is the warmest sensation at the pit of stomach.

How like a stretched metaphor you are,

how like broken branches from an apple tree.

Like its fallen fruit half-eaten by animals.

How like a mystery,

entangled by the twang of a country that can’t own you.

How like an endless path of thought.

How like a mesmeriser

with the power of foresight.

How like his instruments buzzing blackly across my mind.

How like the concept of the wheel,

of the science of silence.

How like etcetera in the tall, green grasses.

How like a slipperiness of truth slithering by and by.

How like the moon in all of its tiredness,

of the river who waits for the clearest direction to your door.

*

During the editing process, Lyn Hatherly (of Five Islands Press) chose a very small handful of poems to be included at the beginning of the book. I was interested to see that she had selected this poem because it goes very well with the themes of the songline as it reiterates the idea that ‘we are all made of stars’, that we are connected to all things and to each other. My main aim for this poem was to say that although we are flesh and blood we are also the trees, the moon, the river, the birds and so on.

KH : I love "like a sparrow, like a burning flutter", and "like a stretched metaphor", and "like etcetera in the tall green grasses", and "like a slipperiness of truth slithering by and by"...
Can I share with you my stance at the beginning of my own serious writing, in the 1960s, when I would have been appalled by such a poem! I'd decided I was against metaphor, eschewing its obvious vehicle 'like'. I was for the concrete & against the poetical. In the '70s I wrote a prose-piece for the poet Alexandra Seddon, called The Danger of Like. I feared the trap of endless analogy, of the poetic cliche. I much preferred the idea of an equation or relation...
Of course I must remind myself that the literal subject of the poem is, as you say in the opening couplet, "And I am wondering about your face, / how it alters when a mood takes hold..."
And this combination of the literal, natural subject & cadence, and the metaphorical/analogical is probably your 'crucial contradiction' (as I call it), --essential to the edge or frisson of your poems...
As I say, I gradually yielded! Twenty or so years ago the lid came off & I became a poet --as you've always been!

*
I read your first book, Fresh News From the Arctic, when it was published by David Reiter's Interactive Publications in 2006, and then forgot about it until late last year when we were reintroduced at that most dramatic time in the life of this bookshop... And I couldnt help misreading the title as French News From the Arctic because of the way we could use 'French' as the particular sensibility it is --symbolistic, aware of language as its material, as its terrain, unlike our time's empirical, naturalistic style --unlike so much English-language poetry, despite the centrality of such wondrously 'French' (metaphorical, adjectival, analogical) writing --Shakespeare to Hopkins --Shakespeare, who is at the heart of English poetry, or let's say British poetry, so we could include the 19th Century's great gift of Gerald Manley Hopkins...
I think there are clues in Fresh News to the journey, the different kind of journey of This Floating World --or does a line like "I was leaving the known" speak to both books?
So, do you have a 'French' attitude rather than 'English/Australian'?

LH : I don’t see my work as being influenced by French poetry, although I am an admirer of it. If anything I have a European focus to my work. I guess that’s an unfashionable thing to say, but Europe is where my head is most of the time. I have to be open about that. And because of this I am drawn to European writers and to an overall sensibility that could be defined as European.
In terms of mainland Europe I would say that Russia has been a profound influence on me. And obviously I am drawn to Irish poetry and also to Scottish poetry. I think the key for me is I love colder weather. If you give me plenty of sunshine on a calm and pleasant day it’s not going to do a thing for me. What I love most is drama in the landscape – raging winds, a roaring sea and buckets of rain. I love the commotion of it and its mystery. I am most happy with all of this whirling around me and perhaps that is why I am so drawn to places like Russia and the Arctic, as well as Ireland. And obviously the Russian and Celtic psyches are things I can relate to very much, so these elements help me to connect to these landscapes and their people.

KH : Tell me about the Irish journey now, the language & the subject... In my head are other Australian-Irish poets, Robyn Rowland, obviously, Colleen Burke, Buckley, of course. (This is the third time I've formally addressed the subject : the Irish- Australian symposium at Queens College/University of Melbourne late 90s; and the examiner's report I wrote on Maria Hyland for Marion Campbell; and now today.) And would you read Wind-bent grasses...

LH : Regarding Wind-bent grasses, Figure at window, Dog : the songline (This Floating World) was born from an extensive road trip I undertook when I first visited Ireland in 2005. Wind-bent grasses and Figure at window, as well as Dog were things I witnessed and interpreted on my first day. And I must say that the majority of the journey the songline takes is part of the road trip’s route undertaken at that time. We began our journey in Belfast and moved west and down through much of the Republic.

The wind-bent grasses at Ballintoy are long and uncut by human or sheep. On the day I visited Ballintoy there was also a wild and whistle-soaked wind that made their plight in the world so much more dramatic and forsaken. Additionally the Portrush voice conveys what I saw from my hotel window that evening. I think this part of the songline is not complete unless I can also read Dog for you this afternoon.

*

Wind-bent grasses – Ballintoy

I’ve been sweating and weeping

against the bridge of days like a mute,

singing only to dogs.

If nothing else, they come to me

with their wet noses

snorting around,

digging up my very soul.

Let me speak

for it has been so long

since I’ve let my voice shine.

Give no mind to that mad wind

too full of itself. Listen only to me.

Catch my intentions in your hands,

grab them from that whistle-soaked air.

Don’t move away

let my words be heard,

it’s been too long in the waiting.

*

Figure at window – Portrush

The red tail lights of cars

move away from the town.

They leave in twos like devils’ eyes

down and down the cliff.

Looking north,

all this allegorical darkness.

It’s full and full-blown,

hiding those Portrush clouds.

What is it that the old man said?

That the north is where the devil lurks

catching the unwary in their tracks.

The small door in the church

was kept open for him.

It swung with a groan so fresh

like a child just home from school.

And now the legs of small dogs skedaddle

black and white in their pairs

with only the street light to guide them.

Small animated bodies

windblown by the Atlantic

with their man hunched over,

a cigarette in hand.

They’re going against the wind now, deep into it,

with those devils’ eyes so close behind.

*

Dog

I look up

at the nostrils of him,

wide with in-breathing.

His Irish legs keep walking him and walking me.

An Irishman needs his shoulders to walk.

Hunched over, it’s a process of swinging the arms,

swingin’ until the only thing that’s real is going forward.

Hard and soft, and hard again,

pressed flatly into wind like it’s a tug at something real.

It’s the black night we’re fighting, that we press through.

*

KH : Aware of the Irishness now --the oral oomph of the Irish (& the Scottish & the Welsh), which English poets of those British Isles find amazing & imposing whilst holding it slightly away --their continuing suspicion of everything from Yeats to Dylan Thomas... Specifically Irish in you... Remember Heaney on the Gaelic : I dont write in Gaelic, he says, but if it wasnt for the Gaelic my English would be different...

*
The songline, as you call it, which I've always associated with terra firma, is water-bound, all the way through --right from your quotation of Leanne O'Sullivan, "The ocean itself is flesh / and the delicate psalm of the heart is / beating somewhere in the core"... Your songline reminds me of both mysticism's songs to the beloved, and of actual flesh & blood's relations...
It's ghostly & physical simultaneously... And the Irish landscapes echo the speaker as her, his, their voices echo it... "The Floating World : earthly plane of death & rebirth"...
I've thought of this poem as water-bound but it's just as much wind-blown isnt it?

LH : I thought long and hard about publically describing This Floating World as a songline because of the associations the term holds within Australia, however after much deliberation I decided to proceed for two reasons. This work travels through the landscape identifying place through the voices that speak; therefore readers are able to interpret and trace locations accordingly. The other and more personal reason is that I respond much more to the Irish landscape than I do to Australia. In fact I take great spiritual solace from it and if we must get into specifics I consider Ireland as “Country”. It is a very special place for me.
Australia was experiencing severe drought the first few times I travelled to Ireland. Ireland in contrast is so full of water. There is a great deal of seepage through its bogs, loughs, waterfalls, holy wells and so on. And it is a relatively small island with shoreline wrapped in waves. Rain and mist are also never too far away. Given this I created a songline that follows the direction of the wind or rain. If a reader were ever to follow the narrative with a map they’d probably ask, ‘What on earth is she doing?’ because in some areas the voices go back and forth due to these elemental forces. The wind is a faithful presence in Ireland, especially in the west, and I wanted to address both this and the mutability of the island.

*
The other woman

The weather is like a ghost tonight

embracing all things,

yet our breath covers distance.

And breath is touch.

It comes like storm, full with lightning

full with high cloud cramming the sky.

And this breath comes like wave,

rolling over and into this room

like a king tide sinking the night.

This breath is like moonlight,

falling across my cheek, and then onto lips

in all its elucidation.

And this breath speaks,

this breath that finds me in the darkness.

This breath that falls and is fallen.

*

Man in Pub and Woman Responds : yes, there are different tones of voice in the work to suit each occasion or place. Man in pub is based in Strabane, a border town where not a lot happens. The only thing really to do in a place like this is to go to the pub for a drink and this invariably means there might be a bit of flirting going on as well.

*

Man in pub – Strabane

These are love’s borders.

And here is a hand.

It becomes a thought

too full of going forward.

*

Woman responds

Desire is on his mind

when these fingers talk.

Love is on my mind

when I reach out to hold their words.

I become a murmur

not meant for translation

as his fingers curl

into the very heart of things.
*

As with many voices in the work the Tourist in Limerick is actually my own voice speaking. I have visited Limerick a couple of times since but my first visit was especially fraught because we had pre-booked hotel rooms in the wrong side of town. I have since learnt that this particular pub has a notorious reputation – and you have to remember also that Limerick’s nickname is Stab City. In all my years of travelling it was the first time I ever seriously considered leaving to find other accommodation, but I persevered. Even so there was a point where I went up to my room and looked down at what was happening on the street. After that it was all I could do to lie down on the bed and write out my frustrations.

*

Tourist – Limerick

The cry of a gull from God-knows-where

And the church bells

And the cars forever passing

And the girl screaming at the stopped car

And the horns tooting

And the girl saying: That’s crap, that is

And the little man in the passenger seat laughing his head off

And the lights of Paddy Power, all bright and shiny

And the smell of coal-smoke

And the cheap hotel room

where 1,000 other people have rested their sorry souls

And the broken tiles in the shower

And the chenille bedspreads

And the lace curtains that embrace the smell of cigarette smoke

And the red-emblazoned newsagent across the way

And the slick of the road as cars drive by like one endless engine

And the L-plate drivers who park their cars like dodgems

And the presence of a lack of presence

(and all that is left is desperation)

Here, a young girl scurries with a 12-pack of toilet rolls

against the roof of a pram

There, an old man sways in a gale all of his own making

*

Going back to our words on Ireland and Irish “seepage”, it is interesting to note that Australia and Ireland share a serpent mythology. The serpent of the Dreaming is masculine, however the serpent in Ireland is representative of the mother goddess. It is said that she went underground with the introduction of Catholicism and the late poet Michael Hartnett explained once that only a select few can feel her vibrations. I think this is very interesting on many levels and obviously it helps to reiterate my creative notion that Ireland is unanchored, that it sways in its sleep and so on. I must also say that in ancient times Ireland was referred to as the far island of the ocean. Something, I think, that is still fitting in many ways. Given this I will finish up with a poem that illustrates this:

Woman drawing the curtains of her bedroom– Carrick-on-Shannon

My thoughts are with you tonight,

they belong where your feet walk.

They go down to the river

its bend, the curve of serpent

slunk beneath.

Body of water,

a wetness, sucking. A splash, a drop.

Her belly swollen and swallowing,

sinking down with a swish of tail.

Blubbing and lugging

this weighted island-world,

a push of girth

netting our own wet bodies

of muscle and tide,

the heart-thump of land

unanchored below feet.

This island of the ocean,

how it sways us to sleep

with its breath of undertow,

its guardians of storm above our heads.

Their hint of speech falls on sodden ground,

near-words reach me.

*

The acknowledgements at the back of This Floating World are extensive, but I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank Lyn Hatherly for putting up with me. I think we worked really well together and it was a pleasure to work so closely. Thank you also to Katia Ariel and Kevin Brophy, and to Susan Fealy who had input during the early stages of the editing process.

I’d also like to thank Samantha Everton whose wonderful photograph, Solitude, graces the cover of This Floating World. When I came upon this photograph I actually lost my breath and hoped upon hope that Samantha would agree for us to reproduce it for the book. Thankfully she did and I will be forever grateful to her for that because it is a bright ruby jewel of a thing that has become a wonderful talisman for the next journey this little book will take.

Thank you Kris for launching This Floating World today and for Lyn Hatherly for introducing us. Thank you also to Sean Kenan and Graeme Newell for their wonderful music and to everyone for being here today. Thank you.

oOo

[*The Conversation is a recreation from notes, memory & afterthoughts of the event at Collected Works Bookshop, June 18th, 2011.]

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CONTRIBUTORS :
GREGORY DAY lives in Aireys Inlet, country Victoria. Several novels including The Patron Saint of Eels, & The Grand Hotel. His website is, http://www.merrijigwordandsound.com
[MARK TREDINNICK, author of The Blue Plateau : A Landscape Memoir (UQP, '09), Fire Diary (Puncher & Wattmann, '10), The Little Red Writing Book ('06) amongst others. See, www.marktredinnick.com.au
LIBBY HART edits an international online mag, 5 Poetry Journal, wch can be viewed via her blog, theworldasaroom.blogspot.com

THE DORSET JOURNEY, 2011 : LAO LEG

2011-06-09T12:19:00.051+10:00

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[Top, K H at Wattay International Airport, Vientiane; April 8th, '11; second, KH perusing Rasi's photographs at French Centre, Vientiane; third, KH at the Living Museum, Vientiane. Snaps by Cathy O'Brien.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------

PROEM

April 7,'11
Approaching departure. The aisle seat chosen at STA this morning has mysteriously become a window seat. This is OK as long as no one takes the middle of the 3 seats. (I'm praying!)
Neatly attired businessman (from the look of his newspaper, Vietnamese) installed in my aisle seat. Stiff neck installed like a javelin down my right shoulder. I've struggled with it for two weeks and though i enjoyed my sessions with the osteo, it's distressingly present.

*

The flight begins. Suddenly remember i was writing The ABC Book [prose pieces] back in '75, to & fro London. Day-time flight window-seat view revealing plains of cloud -- frozen seas -- glaciers -- fantastic. Discover head-phones. Select 'Western Classical' : Chopin, Mazurka in C Sharp Minor, Op 63 # 3. No such facility 36 years ago. Allowed to be a 29 year old 'student' one enjoyed the modest service -- sometimes, for example, when menu didnt facilitate, cheese sandwiches etc brought by hostess angels.
Can i revive one of the characters of my book back then? Minovlar Ed? -- my hommage to John Riley (he was alive then).

*
Dinner is served! Potato salad thank you! Perceptively the hot meat dish is removed by the hostess. Wine sir? I'd like a red wine too (like my neighbour, the Vietnamese businessman, who fell asleep as he read his newspaper -- would that that was a dream! -- i mean, what sleep wld follow Ho Chi Minh City stock-exchange?) -- Ed says, I never had kids myself but... He's moved --not "to tears" but an absolutely sympathetic amusement. The baby (he's a toddler, son of Indian couple) has the widest brown eyes -- Ed wld talk to him with extended blinks & smiles, on the edge of telepathy -- but the toddler has other thoughts -- I wanted to call him Sachim -- a compliment, madame -- no, thought as much, wldnt know Tendulkar from Boycott -- But, not so fast Ed, --Tendulkar is a national hero, more than --& i loved him too --our Geoffrey, -- especially as a commentator let alone man in boater in South of France, notorious romance? -- someone (Melbourne poet Nick Whittock perhaps) will know.

*
Steal another red wine. Present the G & T plastic cup wch is twice as big as the little glass the first one came in. Chopin's Largo in C Minor through the headphones. Ed says i'm walking on those pompety-poms -- left leg, right leg. But now it's Trois Ecoissaises # 2, G M Op 72 # 4 -- Ah, trippity, trippity. Listen up : he was never a hippy. Who we talkin abaat? (is that Eliot enough for you?) Ed or meself, Christy?

*
Dark -- lights out -- I can see by the light of the tiny screen -- Ah, Fantasie Impromptu in C -- all my life -- whenever i hear it, "all my life" --
Anthony Bourdain's in me now. I want cognac! The perfect nightcap -- & cheese & biscuits -- NOW!

*
What's the difference? Nocturne in E Flat very similar to which track?
Ed's been to the galley -- brandy? -- cognac? -- Cheeky hostess asks wld you like them mixed together? --
Last time i fly so high, Ed thinks whilst smiling enigmatically --

*
Oooh he's got a nerve -- he can hold a note -- Nocturne in C, Op Posthume -- an insult to say 'trill'? --
Thin arms hidden in big jacket -- fingers with long nails poking out of sleeves --
Chopin for a day & a night --

*
But where are we now? Which jet-liner captain's porthole of the Earth?

*
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik -- we've changed (Karajan : Romance) -- The concert's only in my ears -- You can la-la-la to Eine Kleine, but... An adamant Ed : Whatabout Thais? Sacrilege! --

*
Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok

What else but Thai massage -- head & shoulders, 400 baht or $US18. Not the severe work-out of 2009 but recalcitrant muscles required some punishment. Foot massage beside me was in dreamland as the masseuse stroked & kneaded his feet & calves. Clients three times as many women as men, & only one male masseur.

*
Hmong woman in turban-hat & something like a dreadlock marks out her territory, walks around like a rooster or the vainest sentry -- walks in & out of other people's conversations, participates in their hilarity but finally sits by herself, laughing at a joke that's on the rest of the world.
Years pass. Little whore in zebra-stripe one piece, silver heels, lies across two chairs, thighs parted, & the unsuspecting Frenchman, content to watch BBC World News, is suddenly aware of the gesture meant for whomever is sitting where he does. He turns away, drinks from water-bottle. The little whore sits up, looks around, lies down again, peekaboo -- perhaps catch a fallang in Bangkok, albeit at the airport. A touch of Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday in the apparent naturalness of this theatre. She's doin what she's doin & everyone's just getting on with it...

*
WW2. The propellors of Lao Air are giving the blitzed Englanders another shiver. Third World patch-up is the rare contradiction to contemporary western-style slick. The propellors are like hornets at the edge of my eye, window-side. Plane taxis forever around immense Suvarnabhuni. The little plane shudders like a bomber. Ho Chi Minh trail here we come.
Canals? Paddies? Wonderful waterlogged segmented farmland. Above the clouds. City's radial design. The Infinite City.

*

Vientiane notes

Friday, 8th April, '11
At I:Cat Gallery. Five oclock pm. Cat excuses herself to ride bike to pharmacy 10 minutes away. I'm left 'in charge' of the Gallery. I will take my job very seriously. When we arrived here by taxi from the airport around midday (--wonderful to be met : Catherine waving from upper level window as i looked up instinctively, on my stroll from runway to airport building --i waved, continued walking with red backpack & brown shoulder-bag, suddenly normal as off the train from Melbourne to Bendigo) --fatigued as i was from the flight & the frustrations in transit at Bangkok & again at Vientiane, couldnt resist inspecting everything she had up on the walls not to mention the tables & shelves of publications (books, cards including Bernard [Hemensley]'s Stingy Artist ephemera) --"Somerset Maugham, eat yr heart out!" i exclaimed --perhaps Mr Patrick not Somerset Maugham -- : an art gallery wch has its own integrity (well, art & literature's), but situated here in up-market (?) area of quintessential ex-colony --bustling & post-colonial but not sufficient to alter the basic vibe. Even now, with the home-time traffic --mostly motorbikes, old cars, small trucks-- one's able to take it easy --the warm temperature, the country-town atmosphere.

*

Saturday, 9th April, '11

*
C O'B : The temptation of a breeze... but then it withdrew...
K H : The Church of Latter Day Somerset Maughams...
[Late morning drink at the French bar whose reputation is for dinner but not lunch, tho' the young manager wearing Ramones t-shirt, offered us 'le snack' of crab sandwiches. We declined, explaining that for us snack would be bowl of peanuts to accompany the beer. He was somewhat miffed which we attempted to mollify by enthusing about his non-stop playing of The Doors in the bar!]

*
2pm. At I:Cat. Already a busy day. First stop, the French doctor --but the famous physio, Max, renowned for his sore-spot patches, wasnt there. In Thailand for the weekend. When he returns i'll be in the air again! The very nice Lao doctor gave me her opinion (muscular rather than malignant) but stressed she wasnt a physio. She offered a steroid which i superstitiously declined. She didnt charge me a fee though i offered. Conclusion : suffer until England (and it is pinging!) & consult doctor there.
Visited the "Living Museum"/ temple. Cathy tells me that a colleague recently claimed the normal temple protocols didnt apply, but she contradicted her : this museum still facilitates worship, it's a living museum. When the official at gift table roared at visitors one of whom was flashing her camera, scaring them out of the prayer area beside the magnificent buddha (where i'd awkwardly followed Cathy in her oblations, stiff legged, sore backed, even dropping my candle at the alter), the point was proven!
The only exhibition we saw today was by Lao photographer Rasi, at the French Centre. I thought the images were aerial shots --motorway, landscape, at night from aeroplane window. But Cathy laughed at me : they are lotus plants, without flower, modelled on Monet's water-lillies! Hmmm --of course!

*
Sunday, 10th April, '11

Sitting up in bed within the mosquito net pyramid (remembered from my '09 stay). Two comfortable nights so far except last night for maybe an hour, awoken by the loud drone & roar of --what? --low flying aeroplane? trucks? I imagined army trucks racing through Si Meung, which is Cathy's district, to the airport or the border --a war or coup or crack-down! --perhaps inspired by conversation with Cathy's German friend, writer & photographer Martina Sylvia Khamphasith, about the world political situation and her estimation of Laos "open hand" strategy --taking something from everybody so that nobody takes precedence thus keeping them all at bay.
Not long after we'd returned from morning walk, yesterday, in search of galleries, none of which were open just like '09, including what used to be Mr Patrick's gallery, now even more of a joke than it was becoming then (says Cath) --we'd sat down at I:Cat for a little peck of bread, olives, fetta, the large pot of Vegemite i'd brought her from Melbourne, & the inevitable pot of tea, when we had a visitor. Second of the day --Cath's gallery is open between 4 & 6 this weekend, as it was on Friday --(first visitor was Kate who'd picked book up from Collected Works for Cathy a year ago) -- Martina, who stayed for the rest of the day.
They had their photos (haiku-photos for postcards) to discuss, and Cat showed her the new phone recently purchased in Bangkok. Martina wanted our photo then modeled Cat's blue sun hat -- G & T, snack, photos & laughter.
We decided on Martina's recommendation to eat at French place she knew well. Lao & S.E. Asian has been her daily fare for twenty years so European at every other opportunity! Villa-style --veranda, where we sat, + inside restaurant. Pleasant if not sensual humidity; sandles, t-shirt, three-quarter pants; palms, bamboo, cigars : introduction to the Indo-Chinese novella... Cathy & Martina ordered pumpkin & cheese souffle respectively; i had mushroom & garlic pasta. We shared 2 tall bottles of Beer Lao. Gregarious & voluble French, British, Indian, Lao diners around us. Teachers, families, NGOs. Beautiful service from local kids learning the haute-cuisine restaurant ropes.
On long walk back to Si Meung --more or less in straight line with the French consulate dominating the streetscape, Cathy darting in & out of illumination & darkness with her camera like a rudder or persicope while Martina & i walked slowly beneath the rain trees. I asked Martina if she thought she'd ever return to Europe. She described the same dilemma as i've experienced : one could never afford such a lifestyle back home, not in Europe, not in England. Although Oz far dearer than S E Asia, it's also cheaper than Northern Europe. And Cathy confirms it for Laos vis-a-vis Australia : on less pay than a beginner Australian teacher she can afford her palatial apartment-gallery in Vientiane which would be impossible in Melbourne. Are we fortunate or doomed?!

*
Monday, 11th April, '11

Cat & i had recouperative day yesterday on eve of journey to Europe. One outing & that was to Qung's around the corner for a late lunch (declined invitation for breakfast there with Mai & friends, whom i first met here in '09 & saw last night at the French restaurant). Cathy's well known there of course. The old owner, "J.B.", Vietnamese, sat with us, told us his life story & also a prophecy perhaps from our lady of Lourdes --the Earth will almost be destroyed by another planet in 2013. Other elements of the prophecy have already ensued, e.g. catastrophes, wars, diseases. A complex man tho' perhaps similar contradictions are the rule here. In '09, Cathy showed me the free school he had for local kids, at the back of the laneway cafe, which he's given up now. He hasnt been well --heart did he say? Worked for the Americans, & the British (& the French?), speaks five languages in addition to ("my native tongue") Vietnamese. Invaluable.
Superb food. I had noodles & veg; Cathy, the sticky-rice she adores & veg. Shared. Another tall bottle of Beer Lao, two glasses. Changed places around little table --J.B. brought us special chairs --Cat didnt want the full blast of air from fan but no worries for me! In fact, the temp. around 30C throughout my stay has been perfect. I experienced the heat once, the day of the visit to the Living Museum/Temple (Wat Phrokeo) --the sudden sting after hours of exposure. But next day i didnt show any sign of burning, though yesterday i had less energy (pun : burnt out). Dragged myself around. Content to be in the I:Cat gallery most of the day.
*

Bangkok

Pleasant flight in the little plane from Vientiane. Apparently Australian Embassy would once advise against travelling on Air Lao. But it's OK now, Cathy adds. Hostess forgot my breakfast box & obviously didnt hear or rejected my request for cup of tea. Very Lao.
We werent confident of finding a tuk-tuk so early in the morning but there they were --walked around the corner from I:Cat, past the temple (the first Cathy took me to in June '09). Brief exchange with workers she knew then a tuk tuk found us. Cat bargains dramatically --the fare is agreed. A long drive to the Airport. Early morning Vientiane --many people walking, exercising --unheard of a few years ago Cat says --health-conscious Western model (or Chinese?) amusing to us obviously in need of same!
No one in the airport concourse --graciously received & ushered through the immigration & embarkation controls --kop jai & Happy New Year! --Pi Mi Lao has begun --everyone in good mood. Before we left I:Cat the monks walked past on their alms trail. Auspicious.

*
Here at Suvarnabhum went straightaway to Thai International desk --got our boarding passes and then Cathy had her return flight times (Heathrow to Bangkok) changed. No fuss. She has a certain way & the luck goes with her! The later flight means we have all of next Saturday to get to London from Weymouth-on-the-Nod!
Last night Cath insisted we go to the temple to have the buddha we bought for Bernard [Hemensley] blessed. Initially thought we'd missed the opportunity for a blessing --the temple proper had closed --but then we saw the old monk (large man, abbot-like) sitting in his pavilion to the side of the temple in the forecourt. Cathy knows exactly what to do --exemplary courageous!
She steps up into the small pavilion facing the decorated or covered Buddhas alongside the temple wall. Drops to her knees, bows head, gives the sleeping buddha statue, which we bought at the Living Museum/Temple previous day, to the monk, an old Buddha himself. She makes her request or it is implicit in her actions. He examines the statue, turns it over, then launches into talking/singing chant. Halfway through the ceremony a Lao family joins her, --they pray, make their offering to the monk. He takes their gift, continues chanting over the buddha statue. Cathy comes away happy at task acquitted. She's scrupulous about custom/tradition. Lao convention that artefacts must be blessed to retain significance. My understanding is that the statue is an icon, a reflection of God, a palpable connection to the divine. We feel blessed too for our journey to England. Actually, the wish or prayer I made at the Living Museum (Cathy prompted me) was that our visit to Bernard in his house would be a happy one.

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, # 23, May 2011

2011-05-22T19:01:00.009+10:00

PAUL HARPER

THREE POEMS

*

apps

history teaches us
to walk to paris on a fishing boat
with mercury retrograde

recipes for ice so rarely include
a detailed analysis of the advantages
to miniscule machines in bike path gridlock
or descriptions of that hill
where morning is first measured
& any linkage to rachmaninovs recent status
is to our minds self evidently spurious

we suggest a working party
a petition
an online survey
at very least a stern letter to the editor

perhaps a new chef

perhaps sunset over the oasis

idols revelling in the luxuriant garlands
of arrested early childhood development

oOo

local or general

we will always have the irreducible complexity
of weddings on a paddle steamer
the interminable wait for a new suit
beneath the glistening slate roof of the fossilised house

the ironing

the unclaimed spliff in the breast pocket of a blue shirt

discussion of bourgeois economics insinuating itself into a gleaming
aluminium egg
a sculpture partially eclipsed by snow from a mind known for its disinterest
not only in central european but also & perhaps particularly
alpine democracy

we will always have the emergent properties
of one day cricket in a convent
the rush of late wickets
the terror of a lost limb
the night out that ends with poetry
our backs toward the ocean in a hermit kingdom

little red riding hood botoxed for the mysterious woodsman

enthusiasts trusting a high school crush on the girl who can tie herself
through a wall with her own golden tresses
is based at least in part on the benevolent fallacy her blue echo
arrives last monday

oOo

another day on earth

venture with us to a land of sunshine
behind the waterfalls sparkling curtain

a simple rope trick
& we leave that sheepish mask
at the bottom of the stairs
in a drear grotto
with as much time as we need
to find that bowl
of very specific
if unspecified shape

in some quarters this is known as keeping a lid on things

in others two chairs
or mountains mountains mountains

before the space race
it was not uncommon to flit from one thing to the other
scanners riled parlours & dinner parties
with their erudite contributions

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PHILLIP KANLIDES

THREE POEMS

*

1

Talking about the immense scope of the universe
And the length and depth of the world
Of the lifespan of huge trees,
And typically apologising profusely -
I told Virginia about the ants by the freeway
She had seen the dying bees
And how the ants were acknowledged
As being , as entities
Rare living things
Beautiful cosmos
She agreed
And said , write a poem , we'll talk about it.

It was Christmas time and everyone was thinking deeply
The weather was warm and people were celebrating
Virginia was playing the temptress in a passion play
In front of 3000 people
And taking counselling, sorting out experiences.
Virginia , tall as the sky
Unique , bold and valiant
Infinitely worldly and wise
A modern day Saint with long brown hair and jeans
On a personal quest
Dealing with contradictions
Guided by the deep impulse of light
Steadfast in her pursuit of well being
Who does not suffer fools , let alone me
And she passionately strums her guitar
Singing songs of hope and inspiration
Let it be better , in the future
It can only get better , once the plan is in place.

In the city somewhere , Lee was sleeping on cardboard
Barefoot with rags over her head
Drinking cheap wine and thinking sad stories
With 20 dollars in her pocket , a gift from a friend
Whom she hugged and kissed in desperation.

I confirmed Alex's deep strong aura
Almost an overpowering silent presence
And likened hers to sea currents

I was concerned for all , hoping for individual success en masse
In a determined attempt for psychic alignment
For a better domination and overall effect
Where emotions are thoughts
And atomic molecules can be volitionally directed
When white matter expands and flowers
With wishful evolving neuroplasticity
Aiming for holistic geometrical harmony
Against all odds , trauma and despair
Without losing any sleep
Where some parts of the world were collapsing
While in others there was hope
And some special places were mysteriously shining
With an inspired contentment aglow with warm brilliance and peace

My legs were stronger but I was going in for the chop
Another one of those guided near death experiences
"You're shouting into the phone...", Virginia said quietly , wary of my excess
I tried to control my nervous volume
And gulped for breath.

oOo

2/

On Christmas Eve , the gargoyle busker acting like a stone sculpture
Entranced a crowd with his antics on Swanston Street.
I rolled by and caught his still eye and tipped my hat
He acknowledged with a wry smile and salute.
On Christmas Day
Mum found a small brown bird in the yard
Its leg was injured , and couldn't fly
Others birds were picking at it.
She took it in and fed it porridge
Put it in a basket to rest
And later put it outside again,
But it kept coming to her,
From around the front
Onto her shoulder.
Mum saved it
She said , "I am its mother."

oOo

3/

On the day before New Year's Eve
When it was bright and hot
I got off the bus
With a rolled up film poster of Enter The Void in my bag
And went by the path next to the freeway.
A large, scrawny , scraggly rat
Came out of the long grass and followed the footpath
At a leisurely pace in front of me
To the ramp road
It waited for traffic to pass
Then crossed onto a grassy patch on a traffic island.
I followed , on my way home.
The rat was wobbling sideways but kept up pace
I followed it around the grass
then it impatiently crossed the busy wide road
I was concerned for this wily rat
As it made its way across three lanes of tarmac
But in the last dreadful lane
Got clipped by the spinning wheel of an accelerating car
And lay there writhing , tail flickering
This was the worst I could imagine
I was helpless
then another car suddenly squashed it completely
that was the end of the adventurous grey rat
Who had travelled so far
Where was it going?
There was still another four lanes of traffic to go
And beyond that more concrete.
I was sad for this unlikely little creature
Though bush rats in the city are out of favour

I considered an untimely fatal accident
Of one of the smaller things
And the terrible road

What a way to see out the end of the year
With a poor squashed rodent
Amongst the merciless turning
Relentless charging noisy traffic

An unforeseen death one day before New Year
The word rat in Greek is arooraeo

*

[2010]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FRASER MACKAY

Three Poems

*

sahasrara

yellow pollen edges the spring pools
enjoying the interval
unravelling theandric threads

the universe's great joke;
hey you!
can you hold this for a minute?

ah the poignancy of failure
a bitter little dessert
with a twist of Rumi

but to linger a while longer
in your fine company
o press me closer

to your voice
to hear again
your rippling arpeggios

and relieve this hard rock
that weighs on my tongue

oOo

snaking home

word-shedding
the well chronicled
minutiae of addiction
in the usual font

dream hands reach out
but my attentive heart advises
you've been gone now
a tidy week

across the doona
a harvest moon
drapes its casual arm
tomorrow you'll be here
approximately
avoiding heart-spaces
our life slipping
with every relocation.

under a black hill
the future leans
precariously skyward
plunged deep in arrhythmia

I lurch around this broken mind
another skulking fox night to endure
wide awake imagining your headlights
snaking through the pines.

oOo

the tangled orchard

coffee-pot, pain-cracked enamel
shadows dance the river stones

in the tangled orchard
a woman scatters grain

the hens scratch and scrabble
stepping backward for a look

worlds fall from her skin
a twinkle still in the ashen sky

knowing attachment
will inevitably bring loss

storm birds rise -- wheeling south
over Black Hill.

*

[these poems are from the collection New Skin (Greendoor Publishing), 2010]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTRIBUTORS

PAUL HARPER's poems appeared in Poems & Pieces # 21
PHILLIP KANLIDES is a visual artist & filmmaker, lives in Melbourne.
FRASER MACKAY lives in Central Victoria; a music/spoken-word performer. Link to fraser@greendoorpublishing.com. See www.greendoorpublishing.com. Published by Deakin Literary Society, Going Down Swinging.

THE DORSET JOURNEY, 2011 : A CONVERSATION WITH THE STINGY ARTIST

2011-05-01T22:48:00.008+10:00

KRIS & BERNARD HEMENSLEY

[20 April, 2011]

K.H. : So what is the 'Abbey' part of 'Goldy Abbey'?

B.H. : It's gone... it's the 'Hermitage' now.

K.H. : 'Goldy' of course is self-explanatory...

B.H. : From 'Goldcroft Road', plus 'gold' is a nice metaphor.

K.H. : What is the hermitage?

B.H. : It's just my place... people always equated my place with wherever I was working...

K.H. : Is this where the hermit lives?

B.H. : it's where a hermit lives, where he would like to live, he's still on the path –maybe he's an Anchorite! --I've always thought of that –I don't think it'll ever happen now : a self-limiting definition which suited the agoraphobic I was –just practice & meditate & see where that led...

K.H. : I always liked the conceit of the 'Abbot of Goldy'... I was interested in the possibilities of a certain kind of fantasy... like, to take on a role or image which did express a sense of who one was or would like to be?

B.H. : Yes, of course. You & Robin [Hemensley] dubbed me the Abbot because of my meditation practice –at one time it was three hours a day –on & off since 1970. You grow into who you're meant to be, both by the way people see you & how you see yourself. And now I feel I've got the life I always wanted & dreamt about. I'm 'busy' for up to 20 hours every day.

K.H. : So, what is this house?

B.H. : One concept derived from Robin's description of 'art houses' in Belgium, when he lived there in recent years : people would visit a house, the whole of which was an exhibition. My idea was that anything & everything in the house was for sale, including the house! Apart from that it's a place for quietness & contemplation, no longer following any one tradition but with its roots in Buddhism & Zen.

K.H. : The whole house is a living gallery –no dedicated exhibition or shop space?

B.H. : Yes, the whole house as home & studio...

K.H. : Regarding the Buddhism & et cetera : from the look of it –the vast library of contemporary & mostly American & Japanese literature –the tradition you refer to must also be based in the themes & practice of the poets, I suppose the West Coast poets?

B.H. : Not totally –I'm still interested in the New Englanders : Ted Enslin, William Bronk, Cid Corman, Larry Eigner, Wendell Berry. Otherwise it was West Coast, Japanese. The first book to get me going was Paul Reps' Zen Flesh, Zen Bones –my copy is the 1961 Anchor Books p/b edition –bought in the mid to late '60s. The reason for getting it was probably the influence of Dad's collection of of Yoga & esoteric books –also the Master Theiron magazines!

K.H. : Yes, and that's a whole other story!

B.H. : Yes, still very interesting. Dad was ahead of his time –auras, colours, diet –all of the New Age interests predated by Master Theiron!

K.H. : What would you like to happen in this house?

B.H. : I'd like it to bring into focus my interests, in the company of other people.

K.H. : So, is it a kind of b & b for esoterics?

B.H. : Only in a very private way –not open slather. It's not business! By invitation only --via family or my own connections...

K.H. : The obvious connections between literature –or let's say poetry --& Buddhism, say, appear to me, as I look around the house, to be Gary Snyder, the Beats –which aint exactly what you'd expect in an English country garden?!

B.H. : It's not what any other local expects either. My nearest English 'collaborator' is Owen Davis, who lives in Bournemouth, 30 miles away, who's into Bukowski, Kerouac, Patchen, Snyder, jazz... He seems to be following another direction now though these are still references in his head.

K.H. : Yes, I remember interviewing Owen in 1987, at Cemetery Lodge just down the road when you lived there. I had an old tape-recorder & a kind of commission from John Tranter, then with the ABC, to record some interviews with English poets to offer a picture of the contemporary situation in the UK. Pretty eccentric though : Owen Davis, Paul Buck, F.T. Prince! Nothing came of it! Actually, I'm a bit confused about the date, because I also interviewed Nicholas Johnson. Perhaps it was Owen & Paul in '87, and Frank & Nicholas in 1990? We sold a copy of Owen's Che Hamzah's Monkey, which you published (Stingy Artist, '88), at Collected Works recently-- nice poems –

B.H. : Yes, Catherine [O'Brien] thought so too –she bought some copies for I : Cat Gallery (in Vientiane). Also Cralan Kelder, on the phone recently from Amsterdam, said he was very taken by those poems...

K.H. : Ah yes, Cralan Kelder [his collection Give Some Word, from Shearsman, UK, 2010] –he'd contacted me via email having found the Poetry & Ideas blog –he's interested in Franco Beltrametti and read references to Franco in my article on Cornelis Vleeskens. And I put him in touch with you as immense stockist of Black Sparrow / Bukowski titles & everything else. And so you were able to send him the two publications of Franco you've produced...

B.H. : Yes –Three for Nado (Stingy Artist / Last Straw Press, UK, 1992) & Two Letters to Nado (Stingy Artist Editions, 2010). Nado was my nickname and in Japanese means “et cetera, et cetera” (as described in one of the Franco letters.

K.H. : It doesnt refer at all, then, to Franco's character Nadamas, in his novel of that name, a section of which I published in my mag, Earth Ship, back in '71 or '72?

B.H. : I didnt think of that --I dont know...

[Break for lunch : bottle of Old Thumper, Bernard's home baked bread, spring onions, cheddar cheese, hommous.

Bread : organic almost 100% wholemeal flours consisting of kamut, wheat, barley, molasses, barley malt, sunflower seeds, fennel seeds, salt, dried yeast, warm water, olive-oil, oat flakes decoration.

Beer : Ringwood Brewery's Old Thumper --”A Beast of a beer” --wonderful picture of boar on label, full frontal & tusked. Alc., 5.6% vol.

“Hampshire's New Forest was historically the hunting ground of legendary fierce wild boar, the prize kill of many an English king. Ringwood Brewery celebrated this heritage with a real beast of a beer in 'Old Thumper'. It delivers a deep brown strong ale with a spicy fruity hop aroma and a warming nutty finish. The distinctive taste has made it a champion Beer of Britain, popular at home and abroad.”]

oOo

[via telephone & email, 1^st of May, 2011]

B.H. : Coming from a background of residential social care-work, I naturally tend towards providing a nurturing environment at Goldy. How necessary do you think that might be for writers & artists?

K.H. : I'd like to pull your question into a slightly different discussion, namely the kind of therapeutic occasion such a residence might enhance and whether the making of art, the writing of poetry, benefits from nurture! The thing is, you are making an environment at Goldy, which includes its whole house library of poetry & related literature, and, importantly, or important to you, the food you provide & its informing philosophy. You are simply but thoroughly the host. The environment itself is what will or wont nurture your guest or guests. Being a host to such visitors is not social work in the way your professional background understood it. As you say, the house is where you'll “bring into focus [my] interests, in the company of other people.”

B.H. : It's a resource for writers & artists containing an extensive Zen & Buddhist library. And I'd like to offer a healthy, mainly plant based diet. I have also imagined a Zen sitting group. And do you think a structured environment is necessary?

K.H. : Your artist & writer guests (I'm sure you include readers in that swag) might not of course be Zennists or Buddhists, but they'd be accepting of such as the accent of the place. Fundamentally for visitors it'll be a rather special pied a terre. I wonder if you ever came across the term “eco-monastery”? It was used by John Martin & others in the early '80s here, to describe places which tried to live up to (Deep) ecological principals and to be a combination of retreat & sanctuary. The structure youre wondering about is surely more a general environment or ambiance than a workshop with curriculum!

I actually feel there's a connection between your place in Weymouth, Catherine [O'Brien]'s I : Cat Gallery in Vientiane, Laos, and our Collected Works Bookshop in Melbourne. Cathy told me today that she's been congratulated on her gallery's “independence”. I think that means she just gets on with it : providing a space for poetry, art, film events, and a guest-room, for which she takes the responsibility. She's not waiting on other people or organizations' say-so. I:Cat is becoming known in Vientiane but not at the cost of her personal freedom. This her life, her contribution to the creative life where she lives & works. As you say for Goldy, it's not a business! The same at Collected Works : we are a bookshop in the marketplace, but our economics are about surviving & maintaining a particular kind of creative, literary space, not being a commercial success per se.

B.H. : Based on what youve seen of Goldy on your visit, do you think rapprochement between local & international is possible?

K.H. : Well, without being cute, the existence of your house in Weymouth is that rapprochement in practice! And the contradiction of terms, local & international, is only formal; that is to say, it's not mutually exclusive, nor ever was (as if, as said elsewhere, the Ecole du Paris wasnt local)! If you mean, how will you connect with the local when what you've experienced of the local (Weymouth, Dorset, England et al) doesnt connect with you? --then you have to expand your physical/social ambit as well as your definition, otherwise wither on the vine of mutual exclusivity!

When I've asked the question, most recently in context of our Dharma Bum correspondence (elsewhere in this blog), I only ever thought in terms of connections. At the same time, Weymouth isnt Melbourne, Vientiane, California or Japan in its external forms & expressions, but must be connected as yet another place in the world with the potential for authentic encounter & practice!

[Stop, for walking in one hemisphere, sleeping in the other.]

oOo

(edited Kris Hemensley, Melbourne)

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, #22, April, 2011

2011-04-06T21:37:00.010+10:00

C. D. BARRON

3 POEMS & A LETTER

oOo

THE PALM

"Nevertheless the truth that is in the intellect, some is simple and some is complex."

Joseph Delmedigo, 1629

A star-fish
suckered with hope
as a garden postponed

A helmet of shady thoughts
for an artist's hand splayed
brittle as bread-sticks

A hallowed mountain
feathered with eyelashes
as a lost piece of puzzle

A fragment of moss
on which sits an angel
waving a periwinkle

A sealed fountain self-effaced
a broken bell upturned
holding seventy paradoxes

A palm at the end of the mind
beyond bitter waters
and a desert of moon

[2009/11]

oOo

NEW MOON/Aspasia of the Archway

Self reflection
is the praxis of hypostatic unity
trinity in foil
res before convexity
finding your arche become
more knowing than epochal being

Beautiful you say
now shut up
and let the order begin
in wirkel
in gedichte
in principium

Only without principle can we properly live
self complacency our best hope
syllogisms full of bellis and systematic abuse
bending in haecceity catoptric for life
luteo scorpio this iron stillness is like hell
father fear the enemy in dwelling

[9/1/00/11]

oOo

POSHLOST

"before us the future looms dark, and that we can scarcely...."

Gogol, Dead Souls

Birds
fly through water
like silver
in transaction
whether this be deep
or the half life
is not the question

A half moon
like horns on the head
makes for better sacrifice
than the horizon of Marduk
his slavish destruction of chaos
causes us to forget cuppeity
and the filial tussle with quintessence

[2/'11]

oOo

CORRESPONDENCE :

Thoughts arising from a reading of Kris Hemensley article on Grossinger: -

Basically I hold to the anarchist's tenet, that we are best not to be overly-concerned with endings as to do so is to be purloined by "means". Rather concentrate on the paradoxes and interactions of our times beyond solution. Perhaps the Homeric encounter with Calypso speaks best, where one sought, whether reasonably or unreasonably, release from specific mystification for a better journeying. Interestingly, the release was only made possible by Hermes, the mercurial one. For some the vessel of journey may itself bear the veiling name, as with Cousteau, the deep sea explorer: for for some there is no release, life is forever mystery, as with a mirroring sea. In contrast the seduction of the portal accepts some pre-existant framing which may or may not prove useful. Indeed a port-hole as opposed to a starboard hole, would surely have direct linkage with left brain/right brain posturing, which is where I come undone.

Goethe's "gross natural array" has long been seen as obdurate, and it may or may not have something to do with politics. I haven't read Williams' "Kora in Hell" but would be most interested, as formative work usually holds some germ that is enlightening. The present re-appraisal of Goethe's criticisms of Newton I find fascinating. But God forbid some elected or unelected ecclesia have power to declare one or other invalid. We would do well to preserve the Manichees and their unmediated black and white, at the same time, wisely and yet with relish, explore outside possibilities while we have the chance. Why should one exclude the other? Thank goodness for pamphlets and blogs which give rise to dialogue, to disclose, to explore, to express unwillingness to have wool pulled over our eyes, however charmingly . Yet the poet is not always sooth-sayer. I believe, perhaps you think wrongly, that his training should be sufficient to allow him to express untruth with positive outcome. This may be to launch again the good ship Calypso, and furthermore to pit poetry against reason for yet another season. It may possibly even force the composers of music into their diatonic vs chromatic camps again.

[22-1-11]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VERA DI CAMPLI SAN VITO

3 Poems

oOo

Burnley Oval

An orange halo wavers around the streetlight –

a gelatinous moon.

Walk past the children's playground, into the middle.

Let your eyes adjust to the dark.

Now you’re exposed like the whitewashed wooden posts.

Listen to the boom gates clang, train rumble past.

Continue on, away from the houses and the street, where it's darker still.

Beside the tracks looms the stump of the corroboree tree.

Circle it once.

Sense the warmth of its fire-blackened trunk, the didgeridoos, the chanting.

Turn one-eighty degrees to see the moon risen

and ready to burst over the city's skyline.

You could almost howl.

oOo

Heptonstall

Up a steep cobblestoned lane, flies suck

the sun-withered corpses of black slugs.

Gaping ruins of a thirteenth century church

overlook a yard of fallen slabs.

Through an iron gate into a high-walled field

half-filled with graves, only you

the trees and the tombstones are standing.

Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.

The wind picks up a heap of clouds

shoves them across the sun and cools your sweat.

You shiver and start back down.

oOo

Blackberries

“They don’t break ‘em like they used to,”

Mother said, picking blackberries at noon.

We’d gone to the edge of the cliff

where the brambles were thick.

“In those days we kept killer goats, ate anything,

chomped these bushes down to the ground.”

I pictured their cast-iron guts.

Mother licked blackberry juice from her fingers,

her voice as bitter as the juice was sweet:

“Afterwards we’d stamp on what was left with bare feet.”

----------------------------------------------------------------

CAROL JENKINS

The Tassajara Way or Refrigerator No.5

I had my first heart attack at nineteen. I was making bread in a narrow kitchen that faced west. The louvres were closed so that everything hot in an Adelaide summer Saturday, everything compressed and still in the quiet of the inner city block, could build in the room. So the yeast could get cracking.

I was working with scholarly diligence from the Tassajara Bread Book, making a bread sponge - that slurry of yeast, warm water and flour that has nothing in it to inhibit the yeast’s multiplication. The Tassajara Bread Book promised me this would be an investment in gluten development. I wish I still had this book, with its paper bag brown cover, Moorish font, and thick pages that almost had the texture of a dense sourdough. It persuasively explained a system for the care and nurturing of bread that everyone should read, and the chapter on sour dough was excellent.

I was by myself for the weekend, my first term in a new university and a new city. Don’t ask why I was there, nineteen, no friends and no money, living in a semi with a lover who was conspicuously absent and a friend of his trying to make the most of this.

Emeric lived next door, in the ‘mirror’ semi – number 22. Canadian, he said was a geologist, and perhaps he was. What he was definitely, was hunting for company. Anytime someone called in to visit at 22A, he’d slouch over to give his long Canadian vowels a run. At fifty or more, he was in the process of realising he had been jilted by his much younger girlfriend. Maybe she had figured out that the gris eminis and convivial conversation, boiled down to the unforgivably boring much quicker than they should have. I had the idea that he lived on money sent to him from his mother who had a cherry orchard in Canada. Whatever work had bought him to Adelaide, the vicarious grip on youth that prolonged his stay had trailed off to something asymptotically flat. Eventually his mother paid for his ticket home and he announced that was returning to Canada, like he was doing her a favour. In this circumstance, where I could see the end of him in sight, and that he had promised I could have his fridge when he left in 2 weeks, I didn’t mind when he appeared at the back door asking for a cup of tea.

I still have the drop side table he had his elbow on as he sat drinking the tea in the kitchen. The bread sponge was working up at a great rate and I watched it seethe upwards in the bowl as I drank my tea, my back jammed against the makeshift kitchen bench that swayed like a boat and flaked off flat shards of slate.

I can’t remember anything specific Emeric said on that day, until he said It’s very hot in here and I don’t feel so well. He didn’t look well. A fine beading of sweat was starting to slide down his forehead. I suggested in an off-hand manner that he sit in the front room for a while. It was dark and cool in there, in the way of a south facing room with front verandah that had not seen a beam of sunlight since the roof was put on in 1890. And I could get on making bread without his expert commentary.

Emeric went to cool down. I turned my attention back to converting the sponge to dough. It was rye bread, a putty grey coloured flecked with brown. It was a true gaseous mass and the spoon made slurpy belching noises as it broke through pockets of carbon dioxide. The gluten had come into itself and the dough followed the spoon’s progress like fond glue. It smelt sour, and fecund: productive. It was a pity to overwhelm it with oil, salt and more flour but the way ahead was the Tassajara path and I was on the road to bread.

Emeric reappeared in the kitchen. I was interested to see that people really did go grey and he was now one of them. Some distant part of my brain caste a clinical eye on his greyness, the funny hunched way he was standing and I suggested that he take 2 or 3 aspirin straight away. In hindsight this was excellent advice, if a little spooky in its unconscious choice of the need for something to thin the blood. Emeric went home.

A little while later while I was pummelling one load of dough, with another great mass growing like an opera chorus in its bowl, I heard Emeric singing. He sang quite a bit and very badly. My reflex was to turn a deaf ear. But this song had an odd rhythm and after a bit, I made myself listen to the words. Rather, the word, for it was just the one word repeated in rising scale. HELP.

The evidence that been churlishly, unconsciously collecting about Emeric’s bodily state seemed to rush with me as I did the loop out of my back door, around the fence, up the path and into his house. One look at Emeric flat on his bed with blue lips was enough to consolidate my suspicions. I said Emeric I think you’re having a heart attack. No, he said, he had pains, pins and needles in his arms. Sounded more and more like a heart attack. I said I would run to the phone box and call an ambulance. The idea that he needed oxygen, with its suggestion of mouth to mouth, shot me out of the room.

As I ran out of his door I realized my bread dough would need punching down, so I ran back into my kitchen and thumped the hell out of it, turned and ran out again, heading for phone booth a couple of blocks away. I didn’t have far to go, as I capitalized on fellow in the next block who was watering his garden, and begged the use of his phone. With the ambulance on its way I ran back to Emeric’s house.

The ambulance came very quickly, I had opened Emeric’s front door so they charged in like a movie. They asked him if he had had heart attack before. No, No he was saying as if to save himself. They had Emeric on the trolley and out the door while I was still loitering in his filthy kitchen. There was an unpleasant stale smell of dirty socks and sauerkraut.

There is an almost macabre fascination, standing in the kitchen of person who has been taken away by a wailing ambulance. I looked around in an interrogating way, at the dregs in coffee cups, then I opened the fridge. There was not much in it, jars of cheap red fish roe, sauerkraut, a bottle of milk that was mine, beer, mustard, wilted vegetables. A cold chop on a plate, much greyer than Emeric. Emeric did a line in damp dog-eared third hand books, with wrinkled corners and cracked paper spines, that would put most people off reading for life. On a kitchen shelf next to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was a cookbook that caught my eye. The title of it went along the lines “How to Cook so you don’t have another heart attack”. I scrutinized the shelves more closely, this was the only cook book there. It seemed a bit of a giveaway to me. Was this his second heart attack? Was it vanity or some dreadful denial that had prompted Emeric to whisper emphatically to the ambulance officers that he had never had a heart attack. Perhaps he had experienced twinges and the cookbook was some sort of cut-rate insurance.

I thought about cleaning up, but decided against it. I went back to my place and the bread dough.

It turned out that Emeric’s heart attack might have been fatal. He spent a week in intensive care, before graduating to a ward. I got a message from his ex-girlfriend, who came with her friends to clean up his house, that he would have to delay his flight to Canada for six weeks. It would be weeks before he got out of hospital. I was annoyed, this meant that my two week wait for the fridge would slide into six week wait. But then I figured if he was in hospital he didn’t need a fridge. It was a heavy old lumbering fridge and I got my boyfriend and his mate, who was getting more desperate, to move it. It always smelt faintly like stale sauerkraut. But a fridge is a useful thing.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTRIBUTORS :
C D BARRON & CAROL JENKINS have been this way before [see the name index for appearances in previous issues]. Chris is surely due for a book soon, and Carol, if she can spare the time from her River Road Press [Australian poets on CD] publishing, due for a second. VERA DI CAMPLI SAN VITO has been on the edges since it began and at last tips into it. Before returning to Australia a few years ago, she worked at the Poetry Cafe in London. Why did I think she was an assistant at the Poetry Library on South Bank? Occasionally publishes & reads on the Melbourne circuit.

--Now I have a 'plane to catch!
K.H., ed--

April 6th, 2011.

REPORT OF COLLECTED WORKS 'REFERENCE GROUP' MEETING, March 19th, 2011)

2011-03-20T16:23:00.005+11:00

This particular group of friends included Heather Clarke, Steve Grimwade, Kathryn Hamman, Jennifer Harrison, Libby Hart, Kris Hemensley, Ray Liversidge. There were several apologies; in addition as many other people prefer to be in email contact. My report is going out to this variety of friends of Collected Works Bookshop. In addition it will be posted on the Collected Works Bookshop Facebook Page and my Poetry & Ideas blog. (Touch all bases!) Please feel free to send it on.

The non-exclusive nature of this group was reiterated. We consider you all good friends of Collected Works Bookshop. Long may this remain!

Lots of water under the bridge since the initial rallying to the cause in October, November, December '10.
For one thing, John Hunter's creation of the Collected Works Bookshop Facebook Page has proved an invaluable means of communication, especially for publicising the book launches & readings at the Shop. It's also a reflection of the Shop's tone & colour. Readers, writers interacting with the Shop around events, books & ideas.
And the huge success of the pre-Christmas shopping/raffle/auction/benefit (8th December, '10) is still resonating; e.g., although there wasnt & isnt a debt involved, the sum raised on that glorious night allowed us to begin the new year in a better financial position than for some while past.
The higher rent has now kicked in, so whilst the very necessary restocking of the shelves continues we are keeping an eye on the higher outgoings.

The 8th December event reminded us that in the '80s & '90s, Collected Works Bookshop used to hold a Christmas Party. In recent times we have served Xmas Cake (Sheila Anderson's to begin with, Clementa O'Brien's more recently) & Port in the last couple of weeks of December; but we feel an actual event should return to our calendar! This is an 'action' for which we're all enthusiastic & will now begin to plan it.

An idea fielded at the initial Friends meeting, at Jenny Harrison's house on the 21st November, '10, was that of a "Big Read". Philip Salom & Jenny were its proponents, endorsed by the rest of us. Since then, Ian McBryde has made the same suggestion. We well remember the event organized by Ian & Ken Smeaton, summer 2003, which celebrated the Shop's successful move from 256 Flinders Street to the Nicholas Building. (It was one of two important community initiatives : the other being the very deep hat Barry Hill sent around to colleagues which was to offset the Shop's removal costs. And how! Barry's original petition graces the Shop notice-board.) At the big read ('read a poem, buy a book') a multitude of poets, across the poetry community, read for their supper, everyone bought a book, & the Shop catered. It was a great event and might yet be a model again. (Photos of many of the contributors to the event are permanently on view in the Shop.)

The thinking behind holding such an event acknowledges the ever vulnerable economic reality of such an enterprise as Collected Works Bookshop. It also offers a very simple remedy. As Steve Grimwade reasoned, the $$ figures we're talking about are relatively small. We trust to the average cash-flow continuing, but the injection of a few thousand dollars (via one or two events a year) goes a long way to ensuring the Shop's viability. Naturally we're all aware of the Borders/A & R crash & its reverberations.

At yesterday's (19th March) meeting I was at pains to define & re-present our project. The point about Collected Works is that it isnt just another bookshop (although at a rude survival level it is)!
Collected Works Bookshop survives & thrives today as the expression of an idea articulated in the early 1980s, by a group of Melbourne writers, editors & small publishers, on behalf of & enrolling the support of the writing community, to establish a bookshop which would stock local Melbourne & Australian literature (especially poetry) in a context of world literature. Kathryn Hamman & Libby Hart's specific reference to the current bookshop as reflective of (the) community & important to it, is gratifyingly consonant with Collected Works' original impetus.
It has always been a writers & readers interjection into the mainstream book trade. The Shop, therefore, is the space where these particular interactions occur : writers with each other (for information & exchange), writers with readers, the small press with the commercial mainstream, local literature with the world.

Collected Works is a special place. Steve asked me what it was Collected Works sought from its organizational colleagues (as it were). Fair question : it's common knowledge now that we were graciously & generously invited to consider relocating to the Wheeler Centre, but declined. Independence is an issue for Collected Works notwithstanding the fact that all of the Wheeler Centre's residents are independent. For Collected Works, though, a geographical independence is necessary. As supportive as we are of the Centre for Books & Writing, & for that matter, of the City of Literature, Collected Works believes in locational & logistical diversity. Collected Works is its own eccentric self but also a friend, even a potential satellite of & for larger entities like the Victorian Writes Centre, Australian Poetry, Wheeler, MWF et al.
So what we seek is support for the continuing existence of the bookshop assuming the acknowledgment of our historical status & continuing value as a writers' & readers' space. Although it's a fact that Collected Works is mentioned in the UNESCO City of Literature document & referred to in accounts of the contemporary Australian poetry scene, history is often dismissed or forgotten. Believing we're still relevant in this day & age, we'll endeavour to keep Collected Works in mind & in view!

The Shop hasnt had as busy a calendar of launchings & readings for many years as now. Some of this is the result of presses & individuals identifying with the Shop in its hour of need, & some the serendipity of a normal year. There are three events to come in March, more in May, June, July... (In April I plan to visit family & friends in the UK for a couple of weeks; Retta will keep the Shop open.)

The meetings in future will be occur on a needs basis. Obviously, this can be triggered by the Shop or the community. However, email, telephone & personal contact is expected & invited.

Thank you to everyone for your support hitherto & ongoing commitment.

Love & best wishes, on behalf of Collected Works,
Kris Hemensley

THE CHARLES BUCKMASTER MISCELLANY

2011-02-20T19:49:00.011+11:00

(A continuing series of poems, papers, articles, notes, letters dedicated to the memory of Charles Buckmaster, 1951-1972)

Part 1 :

Article, Larry Schwartz (1990)
Poem, Kris Hemensley (1968)
Poem, James Hamilton (2011)

______________________________________________________

LARRY SCHWARTZ

DEATH OF A POET

"Often in full flight of longing my soul storms upward"
--found written on a loose sheet among Charles Buckmaster's books.

A dirt road rises and falls alongside orchards, dams and sheep in the hilly farmland where locals wave to strangers in passing cars. This is Gruyere, a small farming community near Lilydale, where almost two decades ago a muffled shot one night punctuated the quiet, rustic setting.
There is the farm house and attached bungalow in which a mother found the shotgun the following morning beside the body of her beloved youngest son. That was 26 November 1972, just over four years after the youth, stifled by the idyll of the tiny community, left for the city, wearing a new suit and clutching a suitcase and a handful of poems.
A diagnosed schitzophrenic, Charles Buckmaster was to finaly succumb to the agonising mental illness when he re-enacted the suicide of an older brother, taking his own life with his brother's gun, at just 21.
"There was a lot of pain and there still is a lot of pain," says a relative of the dead poet. "You put it away and you deal with it but you never forget."
The fifth child (youngest by eight years) of a taciturn farmer who worked at his cherry and peach orchards, Buckmaster wrote of "silent / desperation / waiting for life to descend".
He finally turned his back on the farming community established by his Swiss forbears, quitting school mid-way through the matriculation year in 1968 rather than heed an instruction to cut his hair. Eric Penfold, a teacher at Lilydale High school at the time, remembers Buckmaster as "a bit of a wild boy." "I don't think Charles was a real conformist," he said.
"When I was young, people thought me a strange and moody kid," Buckmaster once said. "Often I felt myself a stranger among people I'd known all my life ... my wanting to get out, which I wanted desperately, was something my parents knew they couldn't fight."
But the lure of Gruyere was strong. Buckmaster, who travelled extensively around Australia, was to return home often, sometimes accompanied by friends for fruit-picking, and his childhood surroundings featured prominently in the poetry of the young rebel some said bore a strong physical resemblance to the ill-fated Jim Morrison of The Doors.
As the forests were cleared for subdivisions, he agonised over the vulnerability of small farmers, such as his parents, to land developers and Gruyere's future as the city sprawled outwards. "The cities will merge, " he warned in a poem called An End to Myth. "Gruyere is dying ... The green walls dissolve." It was there he returned to end his life.
"He seemed to be a prodigy, sprung from the ground!" the poet and close friend, Kris Hemensley, wrote in the last issue of The Age Monthly Review.
"No one believed he really hailed from a place called Gruyere. And no one believed Gruyere existed ..." Melbourne's young writers of the time had thought he might be a hoax "to Ern Malley their movement", Hemensley said, alluding to the fictional poet at the centre of the now-famous literary hoax created to embarrass the editors of the Angry Penguins magazine decades earlier.
Hemensley's wife, Retta, remembers the scepticism she and Kris shared after reading the "terrible scrawl" of a first letter from a high school student called Charles Buckmaster. A newspaper report on writer and poet Michael Dugan had alerted the country schoolboy to the fresh literary activity in the city. The Hemensleys corresponded with him only after being assured by Dugan both Buckmaster and Gruyere were "for real".

Despite early scepticism and that scrawl, Buckmaster, whose earliest influences included Donne, Blake and Owen, was quick to impress. He has left his mark on Australian letters despite his brief career and even though he burned much of his work, including the manuscript for a novel and poems said to be good as good as his best, before he died. His early death robbed the country of one of its most promising literary figures.
He is remembered as a poet of considerable talent who wrote several exceptional poems, his potential for major literary achievement frustrated because his death came when his career was in its infancy.
Though Charles Buckmaster left behind a small body of poetry, his work had "the best urgency of the new poetry", the poet Thomas Shapcott has said.
"...He produced a core of work quite remarkable for so young a poet..." Michael Dugan wrote in the most recent issue of Overland. "What he might have achieved if he had not been cut down by the cruel disease of schizophrenia can only be guessed at."
Now, almost 20 years after his death, the recent publication of his collected works and extensive articles in literary publications Overland and The Age Monthly Review , have highlighted his place in Australian literature and impact of the generation of writers he epitomised.
The case for Buckmaster is perhaps most forcibly put by a friend and writer, John Jenkins, who believes that had the collected poems appeared sooner it would have "put on the map" not only his own work but a stream within Australian poetry that emerged during the tumultuous transition from the conservatism of the '50s.
Jenkins says during the 1970s and much of the '80s Australian literature had been dominated by conservative elements. Only now that it was not "too hot to handle" could a collection by Buckmaster, published late last year, be released.
He sees the work as still "very contemporary". particularly in the preoccupation with the environment and the plight of Australian Aborigines.
While few of the known poems have been widely anthologised and despite two slim volumes of his poems published when he was alive, much remained out of print until publication of the University of Queensland Press collection, part of a series which includes another ill-fated poet of that era, Michael Dransfield. The publishers say though poetry is generally a poor seller, both Dransfield's and Buckmaster's collections were selling better than expected, the latter less so but heartening at up to 500 of the 1500 printed.
The book's editor, Simon McDonald, also a friend of Buckmaster, cited financial and other constraints including the difficulty in obtaining poems scattered among friends around the country, for the delay in publication. He said he had taken upon himself the task of editing because of his strong feeling for his friend and had at one stage even set up an independent publishing company to release it. He said he now felt he had at last done his duty to his friend.

Buckmaster's book with its many previously unpublished poems, has helped friends in Melbourne literary circles finally come to terms with his death. The family kept the funeral private and some close friends did not know he had died until after his cremation. They have long planned to get together to remember him and the times they shared.
"We cried in December 1972 when the news of Charles Buckmaster's suicide was telephoned through -- but the tears hardly constituted a wake," Kris Hemensley wrote. "Only now, it seems to me, with the Collected Poems in hand, can he return to us in his life and death, our youngest poet, our dear and youngest friend."
His friends remember the good times -- his humor and warmth -- along with the bad of a vigorous young man dragged down by his demons, fighting for survival all the way. Michael Dugan describes the change from "sunny personality" to manic highs and lows, bouts of self-destructiveness, severe depression. So that the Collected Poems "remind us of the essential beauty and value of a friend destroyed by circumstances beyond his control".
"He was in such pain," said Buckmaster's girlfriend, Kate Veitch, "such emotional and mental pain. I could understand absolutely why he did it. Absolutely. this guy was being destroyed from the inside. It was agony to watch. Absolute agony."
Buckmaster was a "skyrocket" which exploded, John Jenkins said. The lifestyle he chose epitomised an era to such an extent he became one of the icons. "He was so much a product of his own era. He was unable to transcend it. He became a victim of it."
The young poet's death coincided with the end of a period of extraordinary creativity among younger writers in Melbourne, railing against a perceived literary stagnation and general conservatism.
The late 1960s had seen a frenzy of poetry in roneod poetry magazines and readings centred on what came to be known as the La Mama Poetry Workshop by a new generation of writers, influenced by the innovations of American poets such as Charles Olson, Robert Creeley and Allen Ginsberg.
"There was terrific excitement," said Retta Hemensley, who. with Kris, organised the first readings at La Mama. "Something was happening in the city that had been dead for so long".
Retta Hemensley smiles mischievously when she recalls running off copies of the magazine, Our Glass, edited by Kris, while doing secretarial work for Laurie Carmichael at the then Amalgamated Engineering Union.
It was a time of strong opposition to Australia's participation in the Vietnam War, a vigorous counterculture challenge to conservatism, an optimism that youth culture could change the world for the better, a naive belief in the effectiveness of "mind-expanding" drugs and a shared joy in rock music. The poetry of this era was strongly influenced by literary movements in response to the frigidity of Cold War America.
Country boy Charles Buckmaster arrived in the city, finding a first job as laboratory assistant, at a time when bonds between young Australians were strengthened by lame resistance from their elders. Retta Hemensley recalls the cries of "cut your hair, Moses" her husband endured on the streets of Melbourne. it was a time of clumsy censorship, raids on theatres with controversial plays. She recalls acting in a play at a local theatre which was interrupted at each performance by a member of the vice squad in the audience threatening to declare the theatre a "bawdy house".

For Buckmaster and his friends, Faraday Street, Carlton, where the first reading at La Mama on 3 September 1968 attracted 17 people, was a focal point for budding writers.
Michael Dugan, who published a magazine called Croscurrents, remembers Buckmaster's regular readings at La Mama. "Keeping his head down and mumbling his words, he did not project his poems, but the poems were such that they commanded attention," he recently wrote. "There was, perhaps, a stubborn defiance in the way Charles read his poems, as if he were challenging his audience to listen." Kate Veitch remembers differently. "I actually thought he had an incredibly beautiful voice," she said.
Most of the writers were male. It took a brave woman to get up and read her poetry at that time, one said. They would hang out, sipping coffee into the night at Genevieve's coffee lounge or the old Johnny's green Room, yack yack yacking about the Vietnam war, Australian culture or what they'd do come-the-revolution.
It was a time to lose oneself in the sounds as disparate as Captain Beefheart's harsh Trout Mask Replica or the Songs of the Humpback Whale in the old Rowden White music lounge at Melbourne University's Student Union Building. It was a time to pore over the American publications at the old Source Bookshop in Collins Street, where Buckmaster and Veitch later worked.
And, at a time when, as one puts it, it was "acid for breakfast", Buckmaster recklessly popped pills, trying LSD, mescaline and marijuana (he is not believed to have ever resorted to 'hard' drugs such as heroin), while writing, partying, travelling around the countryside and publishing his own magazine, The Great Auk. He'd take excessive amounts of LSD, claiming he could control the effect of the drug.
He'd rave to friends about the poetry of Australian Francis Webb or American Kenneth Patchen. After seeing David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia he'd sit up in bed night and day reading T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom so that Veitch, leaving home and returning from work, wondered when he slept. Or he would stroll about with the works of Charles Baudelaire in one pocket and Rimbaud's Drunken Boat the other.

His close friend, John Jenkins, shared accommodation with him on several occasions. They eventually differed and separated after Jenkins objected to damage to a house at Kew they shared during wild parties. But they kept in touch and Jenkins was among those who visited his friend during the last few months, at Gruyere. Long before this, he and others would notice extreme mood swings as Buckmaster became non-communicative and generally depressed.
Buckmaster once returned with a dressmakers' dummy to the flat they shared above The Source bookshop. He dressed the dummy and proceeded to paint it until he became frightened by its appearance; so frightened that Jenkins was persuaded to help him cary it downstairs and through the city finally leaving it outside the Melbourne Stock Exchange.
The flat had no shower. Light was provided by one fly-specked bulb. Double adaptors were jammed into a single power point. Attached to these were a toaster, electric jug and record player. Buckmaster would create collages from magazine pictures and listen endlessly to records by the likes of King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Traffic, Australian folkie Danny Spooner, Bob Dylan, Melanie and, of course, The Doors.
There were times when his condition was distressing to his friends. Once, he stabbed vigorously at a self-portrait he had carved in lead. Another time, during a visit to the farm, Buckmaster showed Jenkins his favourite painting titled 'Self Portrait', by a 13 year-old boy.
Once, when they were no longer living together, Buckmaster visited Kate Veitch in a Carlton house she was sharing with friends including the poet and playwright, Garrie Hutchinson. "I came home one evening and Charles was in my bedroom sitting on the edge of my bed just looking so terrible... grey and frightening and there was blood all over the bloody floor and bed and stuff." He had tried to cut off one of his fingers because voices had told him she "needed a piece of him".
"His finger was not hanging off or anything but he'd done a reasonable job of it. And he said that he had been told that I needed to have a piece of him to keep so that's what he had to do. And he was really upset because it hurt too much. Oh boy. I just thought "Ohhhh, I don't want this, I do not want this'."
Retta Hemensley said Buckmaster, who friends say was obsessed by his brother's suicide when the poet was only a small child, "liked to do crazy things". She would help him gather cigarette butts from the street to smoke. He would eat candle wax or hold his hand over a flame. She and Kris continued their correspondence with him from Britain during much of the last few years of his life. He died soon after they returned to Melbourne. By then, the excitement was gone...
Retta Hemensley is still uneasy at having quoted from a Doors' song in a letter to Buckmaster from Britain after Jim Morrison's death: "when the music's over turn out the lights". Did this encourage his destructive urge?
In one of Buckmaster's most powerful poems, written at Willochra Creek, South Australia, a year before his schizophrenia was diagnosed, he wrote: "What can I say? I now acknowledge / yet cannot understand / the nature / of this fear", of "ice, brooding above me". He wrote also that "all the dark hints / were not, as I had expected, / a part of this game... "
The poem, called Willochra, showed he was already experiencing schizophrenic hallucinations, says Kate Veitch, who was so affected by his decline and death, she has not been able to discuss it until recent months.
Veitch concedes she was a "fairly wild and wilful girl", just 15, when she met him at La Mama. She vividly recalls the innocence of their love; he had told her he loved her soon after they met at a reading at la Mama in march 1970, before he had even bothered to ask her name. And the agony of his decline and destruction of their tempestuous, "terribly Cathy and Heathcliff" relationship.
She was "half stupid with happy, early love" the first time she and her lover visited his family farm at Gruyere. She can still see him skimming stones across the surface of the dam. She remembers the bull-rushes near the water, the thick green grass of the paddocks, stunning paintings by his famous uncle Ernest in the kitchen, even westerns by Louis L'Amour read by his father, Jack.
When she visited him at the farm again before his death, he was cheered to see her but seemed to have lost his will. He stood when she stood. Sat when she sat. Followed her to the door, when she left. It was more than just good manners, she said.
Just after his death, she returned to the farm for a last time and entered his room with his mother. Buckmaster had left her a parcel with several of his most prized books, with a note on one, a collection by one of his favourites, Christopher Brennan. "Kate, please be careful with these things," it said.
It was a summer evening and she had visited the farm after work at the bookstore. She can't remember how she got there. She didn't drive at the time. Neither did the friend who accompanied her. Nevertheless, she vividly recalls a distressing reminder of her boyfriend in his old room.
"For anyone who has experienced a bereavement or a grief there are always little worst moments," she said."There was a jacket that Charles used to wear all the time. It was an old air-force jacket I think, navy blue. His mother opened a drawer in his cupboard and his jacket was there. And his smell came flooding out as she opened it. I almost passed out because he was such a heavy smoker. It was a combination of tobacco and body odors."

Michael Dugan, remarked in his recent article in Overland that the poet was "tidying up" in his last months, "preparing to leave nothing behind". He had received a letter months before the suicide, rejecting an offer to help publish some of his poems, with money enclosed to pay for a book he had borrowed from Dugan and lost.
While some argue that ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) treatment hastened the onset of his schizophrenia, others attribute it to his reckless use of drugs.
John Jenkins remembers Buckmaster had pills in his pockets most of the time. "Sometimes he just seemed earmarked for disaster," he said."He lived very intensely and very fast. He didn't have any insurance policy. It was all or nothing with Charles, all the time."
Buckmaster admitted himself to Royal Park psychiatric hospital late in 1970, discharging himself after several days. he was later readmitted, diagnosed schizophrenic and given ECT which he was to describe as a "roulette wheel" providing relief from his tormented state when the little ball landed in "the right slot".
According to Dugan, Kate Veitch, Buckmaster's main emotional support until late 1971, bore the brunt of the self-destructiveness caused by his disintegration. Finally, not yet 17, she could no longer endure his behaviour.
Veitch remembers seeing him at the institution. "He was kept in a ward with really old people. It was like they just didn't know how to handle him. The first time I went to see him I just rolled up unannounced and got directions to the ward he was in.
"I was waiting in this foyer and heard footsteps coming down this long linoleum corridor and I knew it must be him but I was too nervous to turn around. And then I did turn around. It was a very frightening change. It was really, really scary.
"He was walking down the corridor between these two ... classic great hulking chaps in white jackets and I think he was wearing just standard issue institutional type clothing. He just looked terrible. He looked like a zombie, he really did."
She demanded to see the psychiatrist in charge. "I wanted to know what was going on. Did they understand him? Did they have a clue what they had in their hands? This guy was a very special person. Well you can imagine what the chief shrink thought of me. Here comes this girl in hippy clothes with long hair saying: 'I want you to tell me what you are doing'. He was not interested at all."
She said she was elated when she left. After spending a couple of hours together he seemed to have returned from the grave. "By the time I left he didn't look like a zombie. He was fantastic. It was like he remembered that there was actually a world outside."
Kate Veitch still has the Christopher Brennan book from the parcel left for her by Buckmaster, along with a copy of a Jerusalem Bible Buckmaster had stolen from a bookshop. The incident led to his arrest on a charge of possession after police searched him and found marijuana.
She recalls that they separated after an altercation in the city. This was just after she had bailed him out of Pentridge. "He was out of his mind ... God, he was going to take on the bloody world, I tell you. He took a tram into the city and he was trying to see Frank Galbally. I said 'Charles, you don't just walk into guys' offices like this, Charles, you haven't got any shoes on'.
"I said 'you can't go in there like this. You will get thrown out. He went in, he turned around to me and said 'you don't have to come in, man, you're so gutless'. And that was a real turning point for me. until then I was pretty solid. At that moment I thought: 'arsehole, you are not worth it. I don't care how clever you are. I don't care how talented you are. I don't care how beautiful you are. I don't even care how much I love you, you're not worth it.' And I just walked off."

Charles Buckmaster was given a good behavior bond at his trial on condition he returned to his parents' home at Gruyere. "If I do it, I'll leave nothing behind," he had once told John Jenkins. He spent the last few months erasing traces of his literary life, preparing for the moment he might finally escape his hell.

[This the text of Larry Schwartz's feature article as published in The Sunday Age (Agenda), 5th August, 1990, with minute editing & deletion]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

KRIS HEMENSLEY

GRUYERE : THE PEOPLE WHO STAYED
(for Charles Buckmaster)

1

who stayed only becos they couldnt
find their way out again ( your poem
about them )
: swiss
people.
around 1840.

& the people who are still there now
in Gruyere

you could practically call it
Buckmaster country -
at least one part of it
( yr houses at four points
spanning cherry orchards
the dam with frogs

surrounded by green flora
& brown earth

in view of Mount St Leonard

2

on the outskirts of the water :
a cows carcass

already substantially returned
to the ground

the dead cow
bones turned up / great eye cavities
where 'things' have burrowed into its cranium

its legs become part of the earth
beside the dam.

the roar of the frogs
roar enuf
to drown
out

the Ruston Lincoln
diesel pump ( we

sheltered in its shed from
the rain )

listening to bell birds
piping -
one
grey as the gum
pretended
it
was
just
a
tree

its belly softer grey than its wing.

the clouted earth / broken bracken / grey weathered
grey watered / grey forest . thataway ..

3

you know
the cicada walks right out of its shell
abandons
himself ( the husks

crustate the wooden boards
around

the diesel pump.
stationary -
fixed treadle )

& flies out & over
the patches of black slime
bearing frogs eggs ( ten-
nis balls )
amongst the reeds
& weed
spreading under the surface
end to end

dragon flies
hovering horizontally
hanging
on breezes
making it their own
eery way

4

a tungle croft
of unusual constellations

of floating forests
of sheep following their leaders from
one spot in the field

suddenly

to another part

all of them . .

it pays to look up your stars

( THIS GUN
WAS CAPTURED FROM THE
GERMANS
BY THE 41st BATTALION A.I.F.
IN BELGIUM 1918
AND PRESENTED TO THE RESIDENTS OF
SOUTH GRUYERE )

collecting
sprigs of bacon & egg ( rust &
yellow ) flower

making
garlands to wear round yr neck
: you ancient !

look up the stars .
the familiar spots / stones

you know by heart -
bush fires
some badns

thru the kitchen window
( original oil paintings
on the wall )

going back ( father
& sons )
30 years.

120 years.

30000 years
in one long sweep / of

brown
green
&

the blu of the sky.

5

climbing
over barbed wire
under branches
around thorns

dropping

deeper thru trees
some with
rough brown bark hanging a strip

grey gums
prickly wattle
tea tree

wild heath
creeper
& vines.

treading over centuries of decomposition &
regrowth.

dog
following possum to their tree nests
another cow carcass
head propped on its shoulder
bones.

its left foreleg a
few yards away

hacked off & gnawed clean.

its hide
taut across the backbone &
ribcage

you could bounce on it.

6 (i)

the fording point
too deep -
the centre of the log bridge
covered by the stream.

when cows trespass ( you told us )
others properties
you cant chase them back.

you have to wait til the
owner comes & collects.

& if the trespasser
eats off yr land or tramples
the entire farm under foot

you still have to wait.
( the cows owner pays damages of course! )

(ii)

tasting the sap
dribbling down
a tree -
brown toffee
& a flavor which hardens the entire
palate
coating the tongue with
something worse than detol
"youre not sposed to eat it..."
came
too late !

but what did they live on

before the swiss
say
centuries before
1840 ?

berries. grass. some varieties
of snake,
frogs.
possum.

& bury their dead in the forest ?

making signs
for the deliverance of obstinate
earthly trappings

bury them down the gradient
in the centre
of the thickest bush

bury them maybe
in mass graves
on the down slope towards
the river.

(iii)

one massive skull
the head larger than a cow or
horse

must be an ox
huge molars

the jaws loosened by
the wet

the teeth planted in soil
prettied with moss . .

& the legs of the monster
to the right
of the head
folded casually.

7 (i)

the comings & goings
the mainroad to Lilydale to
the City

- the way 'home' -

cars bumper to bumper

which go right on by
oblivious of the
"barbecue down the road :
if the rain holds out"

of the living
made for 30 years
off the land
amongst cherry trees
with bridesmaids veils ( in
blossom )

(ii)

behaviour patterns of country folk
whether they forecast rainstorms
by rheumatic twinges

the
incidence of various common
& obscure
neuroses

the facts & figures of sociological reports
- apply

as much to the people who go
as the people who stay

8

in the middle of the earth
does anything change substantially ?

Gruyere :

a day in a life.
the visit.

the place exists
thru memories
nothing is more certain than

the recalled materials. the composition of ground :
yr bread & eard.

nothing is deader
than when it is forgotten.

Gruyere.

(September/October 29, 1968)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JAMES HAMILTON

CHARLES BUCKMASTER'S MOTORCYCLE

It is strange, the places
where he rides. The spokes whir
a silver churning, a fuel gauge
where something might be written.
An absent roar the sound
of pages burning, a tank or fuselage
scrapped or kept in a dark garage,
shadow heaped on knowing metal.
I have pages creased in folders
but not the rush of their trajectory,
phantom destinations written
on worn rubber. The one lamp
dull in an old night, tracing names
of towns bypassed by the highway.
A yellow lamp lit up
in a reckless notebook,
youth's windshield. Stored away
the words wait to ride, a poem
on the mechanical horseback
of remembering.

(2011)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References:

Larry Schwartz wrote for the Age & the Sunday Age for many years before going freelance. His poems have occasionally appear, for example in Bob Adamson's Ulitarra magazine in the mid '90s.

James Hamilton whilst not studying at La Trobe University, pursues his own research of the life & times of Charles Buckmaster & the La Mama poets of the late 60s.

COLLECTED WORKS BOOKSHOP EVENTS CALENDAR

2011-02-10T13:44:00.007+11:00

For friends who arent Facebook friends --given that the Collected Works Bookshop's Facebook page has in recent weeks become our information board --herewith the February, 2011 Calendar:

Saturday, 12th February, '011, from 2pm; Paroxysm Press presents annual Adelaide/Melbourne connection. Featuring launch of Teri Louise Kelly's 4th book, TheAmerican Blow Job, with readings from Jenny Toune, Kerryn Tredrea, Hop Dac, Kristy Love, Shane Jesse Christmass. At Collected Works Bookshop, lvl 1, 37 Swanston Street, City, (enqu., Kris , 9654-8873) ALL WELCOME

Monday, 14th February (yes, it's St Valentine's with a difference), 4.30 for 5pm; Anne Elvey's chapbook, Claimed by Country (from Chris Mansell's Press Press), launched by Kate Rigby, with special guest Betty Pike. RSVP, aelvey@tpg.com.au; enqu. Kris, 9654-8873. At Collected Works Bookshop, lvl 1, 37 Swanston Street, City. ALL WELCOME

Saturday, 26th February, from 2pm; Ray Liversidge launches Tasmania's famous Famous Reporter (# 42), the latest issue of Ralph Wessman's unique magazine of poetry, review, poetry commentary, news. Readers to be announced. If you're not heading out of town to the mag's Guildford event please catch it previous day at Collected Works, lvl 1. 37 Swanston St ., City. ALL WELCOME. (enqu,, Kris , 9654-8873)

oOo

Previously mentioned event featuring Mark Tredinnick book launch & reading is probably going to take place at the end of May. Watch out for announcement.
The March calendar of events is taking shape, and may have three events. At this stage the one definite gig will feature Robert Lloyd, reading poems, singing songs, on Wednesday the 23rd.
We're hoping also for a June or July reading & possible launching (if we can get copies of the book) by Kevin Hart.
WATCH THIS SPACE!
And check out the Collected Works Bookshop Facebook page...

READING JOHN RILEY'S "PROSE PIECES" AGAIN : Remembering him on the thirty-second anniversary of his murder (October 27th, 1978)...

2011-01-27T18:32:00.007+11:00

Where does one piece end & another begin? With the exception of the three short series of aphorisms called How To, John Riley's Prose Pieces (Grosseteste Review Books, #14; 1974; Stafforshire, UK) are seamless. A piece begins; the poet (I wont call him anything else) proceeds, & when the writing's finished the text ends. (And this isnt quite self-evident!) It has nothing to do with plot or character, although characters, including the narrator, are easily elicited. It's simply (perhaps 'simply' isnt the right word --simple things are accounted for but it's hardly a simple mind informing the telling) the stop-start style of it, the natural run.
I've always imbued a comment Riley made in his prose work, Correspondences (pub., The Human Constitution, London, 1970), with something like a rationale : " 'Authorship will gradually cease. Future generations ought to set up offices in which every person, at a certain age, should hand in a truthful biography, which could provide material for a real science of human beings, if such were needed.' A certain pondering over that little remark of Strindberg's probably set me to planning this as yet roughly mapped-out series(...) If it were merely an autobiography, none of us would be interested. What engaged my attention is the attempt to make a series of truthful biographies, which, either singly or considered together, may not be without a certain significance. (....)"
I dont think he'd have taken kindly to anything compulsory! 'Offices' & 'at a certain age' --bah! Still, I imagine him embarking with good intentions, but soon enough the statement he was compiling would go skew-whiff --in the name of honesty --a semantic honesty at least & not evasion. Avoidance of narrative cliches would be deliberate.

Against criticism's usual (& often proper) caution that art's product isnt life, I actually hear & see the man in & behind the prose-pieces, if not transparently then lucidly. No stranger, our man, adherent to Russian Orthodoxy, to artefact's palpably divine perspective : why would John Riley abandon his writing, of all things, to materialist one-dimensionality?
Riley is a man by whose thinking he's supposed. His thinking aloud, that is --as though thinking aloud must jump around and thinking in silence be continuous (modern prose vs the Nineteenth Century's).
"If you could set yourself altogether to music, would you? Choose your instruments, your form; take your time, your rhythm." (p24)
Riley's style is unhurried even as he bobs in & out of stories, ideas, like the arch-agent of discontinuity (recall its modishness in the '60s & '70s).
"Deja vu and pre vu : I badly need a theory of time to put this in. Not a circle not an ellipse not an escalation of universes, not not not, but a complexity so precise that it leads by poetic right to that I know about." (p25)

Yorkshire is his rejoinder to anything high-minded. He resorts to Yorkshire to undercut capital 'l' literature and though poems occasionally rise out of the text, a line or two, a verse, his vernacular quips disperse abstraction even as the sound which is the poem speaking. Paradoxically, this is usually the freedom sought by the poet dissatisfied with the occasional --as though Doc Williams hankered after Wallace Stevens or Buk hell-bent on William Bronk!
Prose is where John Riley can be himself --poet keeping tabs on the literally adjacent. It's the frame afforded by ordinary vantage, principally, one feels, the pub. Perfect for hearsay; dictum : "If you could record all the stories round you, and only do it simply enough. Like the man who said to me : 'Ah but the sweetness of the first kiss.' And it was his story." (p23) Relish the hops'-drowze one might dream-write in --slide into pew, surreptitious pen at the ready, and drop into the middle of it.

But this isnt the style of Living In, which is a crafted piece of writing or sets out to be. The "Every holiday I go to my cottage" (p7) paragraphs contrast with those beginning "Every holiday I do not"(p8). The poet-philosopher sounds a little like Rilke or Kafka, whose reverie is located in the actual world from which the narrator is cocooned by desire & despair --desire for the divine or corporeal beloved; despair at his powerlessness &, except for writing, enervation. It contains the existential conundrum, "Who wants to die? Or more accurately, who does not want to die?" Compared to other, no less interesting, pieces it's a construction despite the ad-libs.

The Pig And Whistle Section begins, "And then what we start to do when we have realised all that." (p21) In my mother's Alexandrian family they'd say "and then?" --to induce conversation or to cap it. John Riley's "And then" points also to 'the literature of exhaustion', ca. 1970s, --that is, how to proceed the literary project when it's thought everything's been said --literature after the end of or death of literature.
"And then what we start to do" regales his life as well as his writing (the modern heart laid bare implying no story without bruised & bloodied testament).

Down By the River Side combines all the Riley traits & gambits. The high & the low --thoughts, turn of phrase --standard (even poetic) English & Yorkshire, esoteric & common subjects. As we've appreciated, Yorkshire will always be his stock-in-trade come-uppance.
After the philosophy of the first paragraph ("Always this atheistical 'chance'; which nevertheless alters nothing, salvation or damnation no nearer." (p37)), ships are introduced or, let's say, the sea is. Boats, sailors, flags... "Ships come in and out of the harbour, either under their own power, or towed in by the tug." His registry of ships as evocative as an index of flora, but not a simple list because of the way it commits &, similarly, escapes. Quintessential Riley :
"In Spring rain a seagull cruises with curved-down wing tips. And then the rain clears. The very familiarity of the scene.
Caleyo, Simon, Soviet Mariner, Pelikan, Navigare, Wakenitz, Aramil, Grada westers, Outokumpu, Wega, Tourmaline, Ocean Blue, Harald Bles, Nogat, Valle de Orozco, Madaleine, Jastarnia, Bleikvassli, Poolster. Hasewint, Noblesse, Sota, Emmalies Funk, Ivan Bolotnikov, vaterland, and, I suppose, Dynocontainer I, Dynocontainer II. And certainly the Gribbin head.
This stream is a river big enough to float 3,000 tons.
A forest path through the forest : analogous to setting out to read a history of the Byzantine State, a clean white page, an impetus to restoration." (p38)

Popped into the jump-cut of the narrative is schoolroom & pub slice-of-life.
"You want a good stingy cane and hit 'em across the ballocks. That'll do it. You can hit 'em round the head as much as you like, go all day, break your hand. Get the buggers round the ballocks." (p41)
Often wonder which is the counterpoint : aphoristic musing --"Freedom as a state is creation, which is timeless" --or the one about "a wanked out lad of a painter's mate who'd dropped his bottle of linseed oil"?

John Riley's self-definition isnt over & against nothing, as they say, though figures of nothing might spook him ("memory patterns of almost unsubtle tyranny : an exact repetition of the meaningless." (p40)). He's more gnostic than nihilist ("Our wreckage / is too obvious, the pause between performances too long. / Why else should we speak of that world there / and this one here as if there were a gulf there to be bridged / by senses or ideas? / There is no cure for similes, / or none I know of." (p40)). Good reason there must be for apparent misanthropy --"There are people who wear their bodies comfortably; to be there when needed. And very relaxing they are too for a time. At the other end madness, in various outbreaks or permanencies. There are those denials." (p33)
No disqualification in my mind that these words are from Mary's African Buttenhole Co., a parody, as I recall him impishly confiding, of writing published in a little magazine, (Richard Downing & Andy Wachtel's Sesheta?) possibly by Mary Ferrarri & other New Yorkers. Or for that matter, the nods elsewhere, positively, to Flann O'Brien, Basho, Stevens, Holderlin...

Perhaps all of the pieces turn around the relationship of language to the world's objects & events. Not much doubt attaches to his feelings though plenty to his sense of the living (language) enterprise.

Allow the full circle then : Riley's always the poet writing this prose --the prose, mind you, of thinking aloud, musing, amusing himself, letting himself go just a little off the taut leash. The taught leash? --steeped of course in the language --various languages --Russian, German, French --think only of Riley's unique Mandelshtam & Holderlin versions... How (or did he?) come to rest in English?

"Words are words, man. And a fat belly is a fat belly." (p33)

oOo

[7/11/10 to 10/12/10; cleaned up & typed, 27/01/2011]

AROUND & ABOUT RICHARD GROSSINGER'S 2013 : Raising the Earth to the Next Vibration (North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, Cal; 2010)

2011-01-20T17:43:00.016+11:00

1.

The last occasion I found myself in Richard Grossinger's vicinity was the mid '80s when the equation I'd coined, Being Here (body : text : world), at last seemed a way of making sense of the sometimes contradictory concerns I'd followed since the 1960s (--e.g., the local & the international -- which at times meant junking one to attend to the other-- the hermetic & expressive notions of the art, and literature vis a vis social & political domains).
My head was full of Deep Ecology then --my lack of activism assuaged by the spiritual & non-instrumental imperatives of this revamped environmentalism. It was initially funded by John Martin's perspective, via The Deep Ecologist (his newsletter from Warracknabeal, Victoria), which also included poetry as a category of its eclectic consciousness-raising. And then came Warwick Fox's mind-blowing lecture at a Deep Ecology conference in Melbourne (ca '86) in which he collided psychology, philosophy & the environment in transpersonalism's headiest mix --all the more remarkable, I felt, for his linking of some authors & ideas I'd 'discovered' for myself amongst the dozens he cited never broached at all! I took up his reading list with alacrity!
Editing the Being Here issue of my magazine H/EAR in 1985 allowed me to recover some key references from the magazine's first series, Earth Ship, ca 1970-72 (Southampton, UK). I named them then as Kenneth Irby, John Thorpe, Richard Grossinger & Carolee Schneemann, and heralded "the reconsideration of Richard Grossinger's work, which is prolific & still accumulating..." Unfortunately I never managed to do it.
This mid '80s' reaching back to the late '60s/early '70s uncovered an interweaving of references involving Richard Grossinger & Clayton Eshleman, and the second bite as exciting as before.
I felt that Grossinger's Io magazine & Eshleman's Caterpillar together contributed "a desperate restatement of visionary poetics", specifically identifying Eshleman's Open Letter to George Stanley, Concerning the State of Our Nation, The American Spiritual Body, Which I first glimpsed in Peru; Schneemann's Notations (1958-66); Robert Duncan's Man's Fulfillment in Order and Strife (which I called "a rich & dramatic argument concerning the orders of poetry, & the Orders of the World, incorporating universal poetical & local political commentary, relating to that reality which is an order born of language other than the political, which contained a magnificent plea for a new language to repulse the slanders of the era." ).
About Grossinger's Io magazine I wrote : "Io was a further shift away from the 'literary', after Olson's example. (The whole import of the 'projective', for instance : that human act which prospered thereafter as one of Nature's things; active concordance, together productive.) Io's interdisciplinism was exciting, exotic yet practical because so evidently resonant of the planetary lot."
Grossinger's shift (explained in his preface to Charles Stein's Poems and Glyphs (Io, # 17, 1973), which I read in '84 via Melbourne poet John Anderson who'd bought it after I named Stein as a reference for his own writing) derived from his sense that the New American Poetry figures "The Beats, the Bay area poets, the Black Mountain people, and our own group are all concerned with matters of consciousness, vision, prophecy, cosmology, geography, etc., few of which are even peripheral to academic poetry in America, which is more involved in description, emotional reality, wit, and political rationalism..."
My own direction was subsequently away from the mutual exclusivity implied in Grossinger's distinction & my endorsement of it. The 'Whole House' idea I came up with in the late '90s, whilst relieving some observers, doesnt do justice to the contenders. But, that's another (& continuing) story...

Richard Grossinger, either held in Olson & co's force-field or that of his own making, always walked with an aura . He saw things, he said things --a bit like one felt about Bob Dylan in the mid '60s --the young seer. (Grossinger's image of flocks of seagulls on city rubbish dumps as evidence of the ocean's depletion has stayed with me from the first --such a thought wasnt common in 1970...)
Every time I encounter him these days I think "long time no see" --yet a year or two ago I had looked at The Bardo of Waking Life (& liked Robert Kelly's compliment to him, "To talk about the world as it happens in your head when you are in it." --which is the mercurial nub of our project), --and years earlier books like Planet Medicine & The Night Sky. It seemed to me that our counter-culture, new-writing buddy was now addressing the world audience that the Sixties' oracles assumed.
But it's as if no time has intervened between then & now --no time since the cyclone which that era submitted as our cultural beginning & whose windfall we might be forever gathering (probably the truth of every beginning so perceived).

Imagined as one of 'our generation', admired as 'one of us' who'd already achieved more than a little of our own ambition (like, for example, 20 year-old Tom Pickard being published in Paris Review!), Grossinger's publication of a book with Black Sparrow Press in addition to his magazine Io (not just a poetry mag but a gathering of all categories of enquiry that a poet of the field, let's say, as of Olson's multidisciplinary curriculum, could naturally come into) was awe-inspiring.
The achievement was celebrated by Robert Duncan (or ratified --such was the connotation of the New American Poetry hierarchy one had accepted --& gratefully, as though it were the ascendancy of Camelot).
I hold again Duncan's pamphlet, Notes on Grossinger's Solar Journal: Oecological Sections, which accompanied the Black Sparrow book, and relive the thrill of it -- truly the older generation blessing the younger. And although, typically, two-thirds of the text doesnt name Grossinger, Duncan's concerned to bear the prodigy up & through the literature --that is, literature as though science or as evidently revelatory (--& instantly I'm pinged by memory of Roland Barthes' reference to Marxism as science, the absurdity of which appeared ever clearer for the time succeeding its brazen assertion : 'science' as authority against poetry, philosophy, religion? --considered speculations or, after Merleau-Ponty, events in language but not of the world? --miscasting objectivity, then, within the most ridiculous binary, misapprehending subjectivity also therefore). Robert Duncan's exemplars --Darwin, Whitehead --distinguish the latter. In this view literature is a portal (to use Grossinger lingo), thus Pound, Williams, &, inevitably, Olson --: through that Literature & into the beyond that the visionary, whom Duncan would take Grossinger to be, always made his here & now.

Now it is we encounter an important problem --and I may as well make this its occasion as another more precisely located : the status of the discrete object in a context of the winningly suggestive & infinitely analogical expanse. I suppose the problem isnt so much with the golden chain (perhaps we'd say 'string' now!) but with the damage such understanding deals the discrete object (poem, person, place). Although Duncan himself had it that the truly 'open' poetics necessarily contained the 'closed', the transformational attitude as regards poetry tends to disqualify (certainly traditional) craft. I've always wondered why avant-garde friends could entertain the poem as performing every possible role, as vehicle &/or vector, except its function as poem. Of course, there's just as much error from the other direction : lifeless, soulless form. Yet, since Language-poetry & other strategic practices, 'lifeless & soulless' could describe an array of both conventional & experimental poetry.

2.

Cut to the chase : In the foreword to Grossinger's book, Daniel Pinchbeck (author of 2012 : The Return of Quetzalcoatl) asks these rhetorical questions : "Is there some other dimension of being that our human species has the capacity to access as our current mistreated world convulses around us? Does the tremendous intelligence and integral efficiency of our biological matrix suggest some deeper wisdom operating in the greater universe with which we can resonate and harmonize?" (And his instant caveat : "My own quandary --it has almost silenced me recently-- is the question of what the writer, the artist, the thinker should practically and actually do in this ruinous era.") [p ix]
The first proposition is actually premised upon the second --a reiteration of a philosophical commonplace that one is within Meaning whatever it may be (thus also the World, the Universe, God, Being et al).
Regarding the New Age excitement around the Mayan prophecy, Grossinger cautions, "But I am not looking for indications of renewal externally and historically. I am looking for a gateway inside --inside consciousness, inside DNA potential, inside the zodiac. My book is not what is going to happen (or not) on December 21st, 2012 or January 1, 2013 but a 2013 context for what is already happening and has been happening since the emergence of our species, the advent of life on Earth, and the creation of this universe --impossibly big venues that cannot be queried but that mark abysses we must explore." [Introduction, pp2/3]

I identify with Grossinger's style of thinking & writing; by no means haphazard but the natural order of an intelligence following the maze of references his experience has endowed. Closer to innocence than magic, one's also been receptive to that internal/external match-up of which Grossinger derives a dramatic concordance. But it's the scale of his table & therefore the ability to exclaim & encompass (literally the same breath, the same perception) that distinguishes him.
Reflecting on his lack of recognition of Jose Arguelles' Mayan thesis at the time he was offered it for publication, Grossinger submits, "My snub became an unconscious throwback to old elitist publishing habits as to what constituted a worthy curriculum, attitudes that I was in the bare beginnings of overcoming and that were still largely unexamined. I was an intellectual snob, with vestiges of Black Mountain literary machismo in my head, and I was pretty much in thrall to the anti-kitsch imperatives of Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Robert Kelly and crew." (Introduction, p15) True enough. Which is why, perhaps, the New York Scene is what it is --serious, sincere & hilarious with the junk of the everyday --and not Black Mountain!
I simply havent delved into the authors Grossinger respects as teachers & companions --Richard Hoagland, Arguelles, Terrence McKenna among others. Some I remember from Io magazine & the milieu North Atlantic Books described. I respect that he's done the hard yards (to use an appropriate Australianism) in the mind/body practices either side of orthodoxy.
David Bohm doesnt figure in Grossinger's cavalcade but remembering my '80s reading prompts the hologramic here as relevant to his perspective. And my own sense of the infinite trajectory of pivotal, that is life endowing/defining, events which are always available to intersection & continuation (according to the apprehension one has of any one of them; that is, to reengage with the event's infinite possibility against apparent historical closure; remembering, crucially, that the dynamic is personal), assuredly resonates with Grossinger.

No surprise, really, that Grossinger shivers off association with Ken Wilber --not only because erstwhile comrades criticise him as a "self-aggrandizing, parasitical worm; even worse, a Ken Wilber wannabe" (p 551). He reflects, "Without your accusation, without its gauntlet, my writing is just fancy words, shoplifted at best, restless and hollow, dispensable, a betrayal and a failure of everything they stand for --not even third-rate Ken Wilber, as you duly say. But given what else my work must withstand, the trials coming this way in an ill and binding wind, it must be judged, scoured, and obliterated anyway, and then allowed whatever smidgen of truth and honour, if any, endure. That is the only goal worth striving for, the only reverie that might redeem us both at the final call. What I'm attempting here, consumer-culture drivel albeit, is more interesting to me than what Ken Wilber is attempting, but that is beside the point. He is doing fine at what he's doing and he's not on my radar and I don't wannabe him." (p554).
For my part, what I call the existential imperative, the here & now, flesh & blood vouchsafing of any vision, is what's sacrificed in formalizing & abstracting (whether or not intended) any definition of reality. (In my unschooled mind, totality & the totalitarian conspire.) I seem always to prefer the poet to the logician, the authorial to the theoretical, poetry to the prose of systematization...

3.

One pitfall of history or critical commentary as autobiography is the lack of distinction between the 'gross natural array' (Goethe) & the valued (by attribution or inherent), between the en passant & the gleanings of perception. But Richard Grossinger doesnt want to evade his own fact in the midst of it all. Par for the course in poetry, problematic in prose (because laid bare, unsynthesised).
I give him the benefit of the doubt despite intemperate & wrongheaded political judgments --e.g., what a truly awful analogy here, "In China people who manipulate goods or markets are executed. In the US they are allowed to keep their ill-gotten gains because they are too big to fail and anything else would be class warfare, and, god forbid, socialism..." The context for his comment is an aside on the billionaire swindler, Bernie Madoff, that he wasnt the worst : "The worst are names we will never know, secret bankers behind the global conspiracy and its invisible depositories and exchequers (and maybe even 9/11 and the missing black boxes too)." (p281) Naturally, then, the chic Left conflation with conspiracy theory on Bush, the Clintons, Obama, on Israel, even the Al Qaeda terrorists, monstrously bloated by their New Age appendices.
One's appalled that the American complexion of this politics doesnt cause the embarrassment that might engender a humility and then occasion some worldly reality to the prognostications.
Grossinger's partisan political swipes & snipes --sounding off as a lefty whose profound disappointment with the Democratic Party is matched by the vitriol he would always pour upon the Republicans-- and his rallying to the belated cause of American Pop-music in the wash of the 'the British Invasion', strike me as odd indulgences for a Time Lord. At least, though, he demonstrates fallibility, that is a humanity pursuant on This-world desires & responsibilities.
Can't help thinking that alchemy, homeopathy arent, perhaps, the best analytical tools for This-world politics! Esoteric understanding of the behavior of opposites cannot release us from our solid & historical weight, nor do dreams replace daily discourse. The contrary pertains.
To speak as though one were a player in the Big Scheme, in which game present-day humanity is qualitatitively reduced, smacks of the kind of bad faith which Michael McClure might be compelled to protest (in capital letters) : "I AM A MAMMAL PATRIOT!" Of course it's a conundrum, especially fraught because the transformative impulse, the suite for the new, arises within the breast of unknowing.
We are always in progress, knowledgeable or wise, forever on the way. And no doubt at all Richard Grossinger knows all this & more. He remains tuned in & turned on, abounding in brilliant ideas & memorable expression --loquacious, erudite & gratifyingly flawed.

The 'idiot's guide' to Richard Grossinger's book would instruct that the author doesnt expect anything to happen on December 20th, 2012 or 1st January, 2013. Nothing will necessarily happen except what is always happening. Whatever the Mayan calendar construes is held by DNA & dreamt, as it were, by the consciousness in which humanity is subsumed. Prophecy, it might continue, concentrates the mind. Transformation is inevitable; life in all its forms teleological.
In short, 2013 : Raising the Earth to the Next Vibration is a music of the spheres, and it could only have been written in 2010, in America, on this planet!

-------------------------------------------

[30th September, '10 to the 4th November, '10; cleaned up / typed, January, 2011; Melbourne]

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, #21, NEW YEAR 2011 ISSUE

2011-01-03T12:47:00.017+11:00

PAUL HARPER

TWO POEMS

*

country life

every evening the same story in silence at the windmill

no more poultry
until the officials bow to the river
on a morning the colour of train tracks
near the stadium where we had that mix up with the tickets

laughter in those twin cavities in a kitchen wall
& a shared taste in literature resolve so much

a watering can reminds us of summer holidays
small ferns beside a fence
concrete cool in a place of scant sunlight
mystery & solitude fusing with the smell of green

thunder or fireworks
on a sunday we can scarcely tell
transcription of the protocol proceeds languidly

for each stroke the lustre of banana leaves & the bouyance of balloons released

oOo

heist

in response to an official notice
a blue hound may be reconfigured as a playful black cat

letter about a coral tree may be classified
unlikely to be assistance

& the eight eccentrics encouraged to no longer linger in the undergrowth at dusk
marvelling at fighter jets

the centre does
however
recognise the attraction of such machines

their velocity

their silhouettes
black against evenings sapphire

in her classic of the inner landscape
our village elder speaks harshly of our recently acquired painting

our latest cargo plane escapes comment

-------------------------------------------------------------------

BERNARD HEMENSLEY

TWO POEMS

*

10-XII-2010

CANDLE FLAMES
GUTTERING
AS IF FANNED
OR IN
GENTLE BREEZE
SHETLAND'S AIRES
IN THE ROOM
HARP PIPE & FIDDLE ETC.
AH!
IT'S THE BREATH
THAT STIRS

oOo

14.XI.2010

CRACKED WINDOWS
RELEASE STEAM &
CONDENSATION.
CAULIFLOWER PICKLES
IN MORNING CHILL.
INSTANT MISO
AND STOVE
FOR WARMTH
WHILE POT SIMMERS
FOR HOURS.
B'FAST RICE CREAM
HEALS.
NO SALTED PLUMS.
SCALLIONS TO GARNISH
LATER ON.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BERNIE O'REGAN [1938-1996]

POEM FOR KRIS HEMENSLEY

Every day you wait for the mail
some times it comes late
ten years late
or never

just "one man's opinion of moonlight"
Retta is silent
you are talking

we go to the galleries
we look for delight
in front of Melbourne university
we wonder if we are getting old

oOo

[Jude Telford sent me this poem ages ago, typewritten on water stained A-4 page; salvaged from Bernie's papers, aftermath of his sad demise.]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NICK POWELL

TWO POEMS

*

MAAILMA

You say you 'love the song of currawongs
when they strike up their orchestra'.
Everything is tendrils, special tendrils.

Song is growth; no we are not spared
sentimental formulas
of minimalist photosynth-pop
and acorn percussion. What pomp,

twirling a pencil in the humble world,
or twirling the self, effortlessly.
Perfume on the pencil. Whose?

The future and the frond fan outward.

Maailma: World
Maa (dirt), ilma (air).
Marry me, broadly speaking.

oOo

KUMILY TO COCHIN

In the bus from the highland to the sea
garlands of bougainvillia and marigold
offered to Our Lady of the Highway
glow and swing through fields of tea.

as tired eyes yield to sleep of dream
of gentle scenes more puzzling than art,
so our bodies relax and are vivified
by faith in the invisible and unforeseen.

Looking back, many details are lost,
fine layers of experience shaded,
so that a scene in a life is reduced
to bas-relief: a road, foliage, a bus.

Smoke and mist in the ancient valleys,
your smile on seeing the wide white smile
of the Kerelan girl in the turquoise dress,
or the nun travelling alone. I find my keys

to the many sections of that hasppiness
overlap like clouds, everything touching.

oOo

[from the pamphlet, The True Maps;
horsedrawnpress@yahoo.com.au]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ROB SCHACKNE

THREE POEMS

*

TOWARDS AN AESTHETICS OF BEING HERE
for Will Knox

First, the tunnel metaphor will smile on you too
If the desperate sides be avoided, estrangement
From all that we were never invited to understand;
A sometimes unstately progress through not by
The myriad reasons we have for not being here.

Then, unwelcome, untie that hurt from our own hurt;
There is no minor skirmish that is worth the battle
That lost the war. Anyhow, we’re survivors, not soldiers.
Leave all battles internecine and your self unscathed
As you choose your way carefully through the night.

Then, untouched by insult, chicanery, and deceit
We will at last emerge to daylight on the other side
And looking back…but no, we will never look back
At the unhappiness we did not cause, nor the pain
We did not stop to answer. We were not saints.

(2008)

oOo

IN THE YEAR 2666
for Roberto Bolano

After three wrong turns, a tractor and a flat
You're at The House Of Vanished Writers
After all, that was always your destination
You park your unreviewed car and go right in
Sitting and waiting, smoking and watching
Joe, the Indian, who never could get started
Sophia, who once was beautiful, great shorts
No power to stay long enough on the page
Fred, whose fiction fried like a skillet, killed it
And you, who are merely visiting, get a key
A towel and the schedule of daily readings
Who are these happy people you are thinking
Why do they look at me like that? One part pen
One part the next event, one part is wind
Where did all the vanished writers go?
When did they write their perfect poems
Who said they'd had enough and could leave?
Your room has a limited view of the forest
It is possible the birds will sing there again
Second seating meal is vegetable soup with bread
Dessert is an autumn ice cream you don't remember
Afterwards the word games and the music upset you.

(2010)

oOo

EXILES

It took seven years to build the box
From discarded paper and dreams
As deep as it is wide, at times you forget
Exactly how you decided its dimensions
No candy store, no Chinese restaurants
Many a stained-glass window at the top
Everything is blue when the sun pours in
Deli, record store, a massage parlour
Open all night, oddly buzzing, no customers
There's a very good small library
Of books you always meant to study
Furniture copied from another tidy book
A fireplace that heats but doesn't burn
A few students were allowed in once
They dusted off their prints and fled
On the inside an ornate exit with a sign
That reads Don't Leave Till You're Ready
Next to it a fire axe, a cheap suit on a hook
Today that box is almost empty
Outside is a sunset and birds.

( 2010)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

PETE SPENCE

A GO BY, for Jack Collom

ute with 2 dogs
out back goes by

blue ute
with roll bars

2 birds go by
sans ute!

car does u turn

white car
white car
white car

flaming red flash!

turquoise station wagon
through the trees

the trees aren't moved!

floods in central N.S.W.
roads closed ac/dc!

how many ways
can you close a road?

Jack Collom goes by
looking for the elusive
red car!

oOo

PETE SPENCE/CORNELIS VLEESKENS

from The Glen Innes Collaborations

*

LADY DAY OR A MASS IN MORRIS MAJOR

no!
i don't
think i've met
Agnes Day!

but i know
her mum!
Doris.

didn't she
have a sister
Gloria?

G-l-o-r-i-a

no!
that's a burger
playing Tesla!

Kyrie & Kyrie!

is you lisping?

no!

ahhh! amen
to that!

oOo

THE JACK

figs can fly!

flush!

that's straight!

i have five
sad forests!

i'll raise you
ten matchsticks

must be a pyro hand?

C U

that's a soft bet

chips of down!

fold!

oOo

CORNELIS VLEESKENS

4 Poems

*

LETTER TO VINCENT
for Billy Jones

tiger tiger
old stone house
creeping vines
stony rises

floaters belch

keep those sheep
off the road Velsen!!

Livingstone stumbles
into the Stanley camp
grass orchids
open to the sky

as we cross
Mary Smokes Creek
a blue iris goes by

oOo

THE 98 FLOOD

blue heron out of his depth
egret pale and wan
weeks now and no let up

road closed

moorhen clings to her nest
as it bobs and eddies
(as in whirlpool)
ochre waters rage

road closed (bis)

high and dry
on the verandah
a cheese platter
dolmades avocado
a Chemin des Papes

red cedar floats by

dead cow dead cow
bloated sheep

oOo

JACK'S POEM

the kitchen midden
shows the remains
of a great feast

blood drips
from the seabird's beak
red cargo goes by

the ancestors smile

oOo

QUIET IN MY HAT

line dangling from my big toe
misty mooring dry red

blue whale goes by

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PETER (FREDDY) TIERNAN

Launch speech for Lee Fuhler's We Pale Inhabitants (Earthdance, 13 Jones St., Brunswick, Vic. 3056),
at Collected Works Bookshop, December 15th, 2010.

One of my many distinctions in the literary world is to be the first to publish a poem of Lee Fuhler's. That was in about 1993 when I was bringing out a folded double sided A3 of poems called Poetry on Paper. There were fewer readings then but with bigger attendances and I always thought they doubled as drinking clubs. Less so these days. Much has changed, many people alive then are now dead. Or not so dead but remembered and incorporated into our work, sometimes without our knowledge or permission.

I think Lee was off the sauce by then -- there was something about the intent with which he read -- so I approached him and, I think this is the technical term, solicited a poem from him.

I've brought it today to give back to him -- kind of like the completion of a circle but in a bigger
circle. Before the poems in this book, or most of them, Lee didn't write for some years. So you can get better, but it doesn't get any easier.

You wonder what happens to poets when they go home -- if they get to their desks -- how they drive their minds -- if they can reach into their hearts -- what they can face -- what they can't -- nights alone -- reading poems out of a book -- or dreaming at an empty window -- it's so slow and the notes are so far apart.

The first line of the first poem Lee gave me was : "your heart it is a thief". The final line of one of the poems in this book is "we're only poor tenants and here for a while". I did like that first line but these days he writes fuller, with more depth like the stones are watching. With these poems you can read a line and see how strong everything is, what things are invested with -- you can see everything in the light of a huge apricot -- the man who's wrestled with his blues can split the wind

-- everything is burning -- we're losing it all
what can we do but sing.

[at Collected Works Bookshop, December 15th, 2010. Other poets supporting Lee Fuhler, reading from his new collection, were Ian McBryde, Lyn Boughton, & Lish Skec (who also read for Kerry Scuffins who couldnt attend).]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CYRIL WONG

Excerpts from Satori Blues

*

What fails to be reined in

pushes out, freezes, breaks off—crashes.

No telling who might place a chunk

in their mouth. (Who wouldn’t pay to watch them

taste it?) Some protrusions merge with air, but

not before melting a little, flowing everywhere

within the self, hardening in places it never

meant to make a home.

oOo

Fields of emptiness between the wild arc

of electrons and every atom—a vacuum not

nothing after all, but the purest form

of something like compulsion that fixes

us into being, stopping the self from

coming, no, flying everywhere apart.

oOo

What we talk about when we talk about loss

are the catastrophes: walls collapsing

and the terrible flood. What we forget is what

we fail to detect: the line opening like an eye

from one end of a dam to another;

a startled look and the averted vision

at a wrong word at yet another wrong time.

Loss is an ever-growing thing. The same

is true of how we win.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Typed-up the 2nd & 3rd January, 2011. NOT the Boy's Own Edition of Poems & Pieces, simply how the pieces fell together at this time! --so saith yr holidaying ed!]

oOo

CONTRIBUTORS :

PAUL HARPER, a friend of Collected Works Bookshop, has poems recently in Roomers magazine (Melbourne).

BERNARD HEMENSLEY, previously published here; has revived his Stingy Artist small press (85, Goldcroft Road, Weymouth, Dorset, DT4 OEA, UK) after many years hibernation. Hot off the press are a bunch of ephemera including a Franco Beltrametti fold-out. Welcome back bro!

BERNIE O'REGAN, fourteen years since the photographer/super 8 filmmaker/poet died in Melbourne. See index for Archive of Miscellaneous Critical Writings #11 (7/4/07) re- K.H.'s Introduction to the Archive of Enigma screening of B O'R's films (June 15,'98); also Archive, #10 (24/6/07) re- K.H.'s Words for Bernie : Eulogy... (15/11/96)

NICK POWELL is living in Brisbane after some years overseas, mainly Finland. In 2007 his chapbook Of Fallen Myth was published by the Poets Union (Sydney). The poems here are from The True Maps (Horse Drawn Press,'10), mostly written in Finland.

ROB SCHACKNE born in New York, came to Australia in 1971. We made his acquaintance via the Bookshop in the 90s. In China for a decade, currently Shanghai, where he's published a couple of collections; Snake Wine ('06), Where Sound Goes When It's Done ('10). His self-portrait reveals, "He listens to The Grateful Dead. He claims that he can read Shakespeare in the original. Some days he thinks there is nothing easy about the Tao." His blog is The Tao That Can Be Named, www.borisknack.blogspot.com

PETE SPENCE & CORNELIS VLEESKENS have appeared in Poems & Pieces before (see the index). They're both active in the Mail Art internationale. Their most recent publications are (P.S.) Sonnets (Footura press, Germany) & (C.V.) Divertimenti (Earthdance, Glen Innes).

PETER (FREDDY) TIERNAN is one of the Melbourne scene's true gentlemen. Co-edited with Rex Buckingham, From the Rochester Castle anthology (1988), and his own Poetry on Paper (1989-93). Included in Raffaella Torresan's Literary Creatures anthology (Hybrid Press, 2009).

CYRIL WONG lives in Singapore where he edits Soft Blow poetry journal. One of a group of Singaporean poets who've made substantial connections with Australia over the past 10 years. Has published 8 poetry collections & 1 book of tales. Co-authored with Terry Jaensch, Excess Baggage & Claim (Transit Lounge, Melbourne, '07). Satori Blues, from which the poems here are taken, is published by Soft Blow (2011). Website, http://www.cyrilwong.org

"...AND THE REST IS HISTORY..."

2010-12-31T20:48:00.005+11:00

RECENT GOINGS ON AT COLLECTED WORKS BOOKSHOP

On the 31st October I posted the following email on the Overloadnation site:

"My Fellow Australians... We will fight them on the beaches... no, start again! Dear Overload friends, We've had to consider out future in light of the expected rent rise for our bookshop, to take effect 1st January 11... And, though it may be an extension of the same folly which had us open up in the first place, we will continue! The prospect of moving elsewhere was as awful as that of closing! But the price of the new 4 year lease will hurt, unless I can generate more sales and support. The point about the Shop is that though it is a little company, in the market place, it's never been profit oriented. Most of the receipts go into stock. The wages are minimal. Rent and stock are the major outgoings. The purpose of the Shop has always been to support writing, especially poetry, --Australian Poetry and literature within an international literary context. That's the rationale which makes the bookshop unique (certainly in Australia and New Zealand, possibly further afield). We obviously have sufficient support to be mentioned in the City of Literature document, but for all sorts of reasons support through the bead curtain is less than it might be. The recent rent hike squeezes us even more! The question remains, is there a place for an actual bookshop in this time of online purchasing, the ebook and other new technologies? A rhetorical question for me : the bookshop is a home for readers and writers of poetry and prose, a home for little presses, a venue for launches and readings, as it has been for 25 years or so. In a word, we're there for cultural as well as bookselling reasons. Our acceptance of the new lease will probably be sent this week! It will be a great encouragement to know if you support us! Perhaps a start might be making a new "friends of Collected Works" address list (email), for Melbourne and Australia generally. If you're interested please do write or phone or visit us! Cheers, Kris Hemensley"

The response was immediate & I can now say continuous. Invidious to recall some & not all but as a very partial index of the initial response, simply reading off the names of authors of emails, the list includes Michelle Leber, John Kinsella, Earl Livings, Patricia Sykes, Lyndon Walker, Melissa Watts, Leah Kaminsky, Josephine Rowe, Andrew Lindsay, Chris Grierson, Penny Gibson, Bron Thomasson, Kerryn Tredrea, Joan Kerr, Lyn Chatham, Anthony Lynch, Gregory Day, Ted Reilly, Paul Ashton, Caroline Williamson, Libby Hart, Ray Liversidge, Cyril Wong, Jennifer Harrison, Geelong Writers group, the VWC, Steve Grimwade, Mike Ladd, the APC, Paul Kane, Walter Struve...

Then we come to Facebook... The following is copied from the initial message :

"• Kris Hemensley • Time to grasp the nettle! Will we/wont we stay in business at present address as rent is considerably raised and receipts dwindle? After a week of deliberation & advice from friends we've just about decided to sign up for another 4 years! Any constructive thoughts are welcome! An exquisite moment : status of the book, the bookshop, the booktrade. All up for grabs! • October 29 at 10:35pm · LikeUnlike · Comment · Share

• • Jen Jewel Brown, Jennifer Compton, Nici Lindsay and 2 others like this.

• • Kris Hemensley I might need to sell a couple of valuable things to raise some security kitty! And wd love to know abt the on-line caper. Masterclasses gratefully received! • October 29 at 10:39pm · LikeUnlike
•
• Nicholas Pounder Kris, it is probably folly, but I would do the same if I had your reputation and record. And let's face it, a tradition to defend. • October 29 at 10:44pm · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading...

• • Pamela Robertson-Pearce Kris I am with you in this. I was so inspired by your place/space that I opened up a bookshop/art gallery upon my return from OZ in the Northeast of the UK and it is not easy. I never thought it would be...however. I have planned more events, serve tea, regular sales...I knew a bookshop alone could not make it here and an art gallery alone could not either so I combined them. I will keep you updated AND I wish you all the best! Diversify is my two cents. • October 29 at 10:45pm · LikeUnlike

• • Kris Hemensley If you cld give me a clue abt the couple of books we discussed before wd be good Nick; and i DIDNT know Pamela abt your enterprise! What's it called ? Open All Hours? It was great having you & neil visit but wdnt have guessed i was sowing seeds! Thanks for morale boost! I guess ive sat on hands a little bit. Time to get up going again. Reinvest the 'business'... etc... • October 29 at 10:52pm · LikeUnlike

• • Pamela Robertson-Pearce Mine is called DJANG the art of life! Djang being an aboriginal word which you probably know already. Open all hours indeed!!! Ha ha almost impossible to do. No I bring work to do so I can use the time better at DJANG when it is slow. I am glad to hear you persevere! You are a beacon Kris! • October 29 at 11:15pm · LikeUnlike

• • John Fox Agree about the record and tradition, but feel v selfish about it; great for the rest of us to have Collected Works still there, but I hope it isn't at the cost of your approaching retirement in penury. • October 29 at 11:37pm · LikeUnlike · 2 peopleLoading...

• • Justin Clemens Yes best bookstore in Australia. • October 30 at 12:46am · LikeUnlike

• • Jennifer Compton i must visit more often and i must buy more often • October 30 at 1:11am · LikeUnlike

• • Cassie Lewis-Getman Thank you for keeping up the wonderful work, Kris, but do take care of yourself too! Online sales seem like a good way to go as a supplement, or even email sales- Ken Bolton sends out an email newsletter of books recently in at the EAF, something like this would be a cheap and immediate way to go. A facebook page talking about the history and purpose of the store is another idea that is low cost. For ideas you could look at the City Lights page see http://www.facebook.com/CityLightsBooks • October 30 at 1:15am · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading...

• • Kris Hemensley hey justin! good luck for yr crack of dawn seminar tomorrow! Tina alerted me. And youll be pleased to know the college came good with their cheque yday! see you soon, K • October 30 at 1:36am · LikeUnlike

• • Catherine O'Brien • What to say Kris; take the risk and don't count the money each day....remember one time you had a fund raiser reading. Maybe that is a great idea to bring the situation to the attention of those who would support you but don't know. Online ...cannot work for you as you have no computer at the shop so you would be doubling your work by having to transcribe the books at the shop and then spend time at home on the computer. • Funny my 'hardly ever open" i:cat gallery in Vientianne has now more books than art and it is not really a bookshop...i feel like I am an out post of collected works..how to support you from here??????See More • October 30 at 2:30am · LikeUnlike

• • Judith Buckrich I am delighted that you've decided to stay and will make more of an effort to send people your way - maybe PEN can do something with you - I will ask at the next meeting • October 30 at 7:12am · LikeUnlike

• • Kris Hemensley • Thank you cathy and judith --'counting the money...", come on, that's not my style! I think it's the gradual switch to new technology, new cultural orientation etc --The city, the society more in flux now than when we started --But if i can... have a $$safety net then we can still be the meeting place, the news exchange, the infinite forum on poetry and ideas that is really our stock in trade --The equation of altruism & survival, the esoteric & the commercial --as ever! As i sd to Chrissie & Michael a year ago, after Dylan, you can be in our loop if i can be in your loop! So your thought, j, is pertinent... Now let's enjoy the races and the rain!!!See More • October 30 at 9:47am · LikeUnlike

• • Elizabeth Campbell Kris, I know you don't like gimmicks, but have you ever thought of a fundraiser/mailing list campaign like Salt did - buy one book to save the shop. I know so many people who would respond ps will be in today for two books! • October 30 at 9:57am · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading...

• • David Wheatley I'd support that. Remember Chris Hamilton-Emery's 'just one book' campaign (though why stop at just the one). PS Elizabeth -- I owe you a book! • October 30 at 9:59am · LikeUnlike

• • Susan Fealy Dear Kris • • Four more years of Collected Works would be four more years of soft sunshine for the soul. • • XSusan • October 30 at 10:09am · LikeUnlike

• • Viki Mealings that's terrible that they've hiked up the rent so much • October 30 at 11:23am · LikeUnlike

• • Kris Hemensley Oh dear, what hath thou unleashed upon thy head and those of thine... um... I think it's much more a matter of getting with it in terms of the on-line biz, events, and reminding institutions who're in need of let's say australian poetry (but hey! the world's our oyster) that we can supply! The rent is inevitable, the commercial reality when i look at it calmly... After yday's excellent discussion with Ellen i feel heartened & resolved! Thanks everybody! • October 30 at 11:35am · LikeUnlike

• • Susan Hawthorne The book business is a tricky one right now. Like you Kris we halve trembled on the edge several times. But we're still here and I have some optimism for the future. • October 30 at 12:40pm · LikeUnlike

• • Philip Salom Kris, I have to agree with Elizabeth. There are multitudes of us and if we want you to stay on (and we do) we should (yes, I'm happy with should) do something to contribute. One book each? Easy. Maybe even have annual subscriptions of some sort? Many of us would be in it. • October 30 at 12:44pm · LikeUnlike

• • Elizabeth Gertsakis Hard one Kris; you represent a special place, but also need to take care of yourself. I would support the idea of all supporters/readers coming in to buy a book. Will come in to see you soon. • October 30 at 3:11pm · LikeUnlike

• • Brendan Ryan Kris, • I'd be happy to buy a poetry book as well. Collected Works is a special place. • October 30 at 3:34pm · LikeUnlike

• • Catherine Bateson I really like Philip's idea of an annual subscription - like a poetry club. In knitting circles there are indie spinners and dyers offering three month/six month sock clubs - you sign up and receive fibre/yarn, a sock pattern and often a small treat....fair trade coffee beans, a stitch counter. Six random months of poetry books - sounds great! • October 30 at 4:21pm · LikeUnlike

• • Kris Hemensley Thank you everybody... As it happens, this half day session at the Shop was reasonable what with races and rain... Carol Jenkins was visiting and also people from Perth and the continental perspective/reach of the Shop was so apparent... Interested in Philip's & Batherine B's club suggestion. I can be quite dense abt things so do email me for tips on how this cd work! • October 30 at 6:46pm · LikeUnlike

• • Kris Hemensley Batherine B? who she? I mean catherine Bateson of course! • October 30 at 6:47pm · LikeUnlike • •

Philip Salom Some sub. your customers - call us fans! - are happy to pay out each year. Maybe some discount deal as Catherine suggested, and/or just some 'privilege' from the shop. It can guarantee a sum each year for your budget, but on top of our and everybody else's purchases. We are direct beneficiaries of CW and this shouldn't be at your expense. • October 30 at 7:55pm · LikeUnlike

• • Catherine Bateson • No, I didn't mean at Collected Works expense - you'd sign up for three months - a book a month - what would that be? Average it out at $30.00 a book + postage - say $100.00, or $200.00 for six months and then Kris would choose three or six ...books to send out to the lucky person. These might come with a special subscribers newsletter - maybe with a couple of poetry reviews. It's actually not a discount deal at all - the sock clubs are part of how indie dyers/spinners make an artisan living out of pursuing their craft. The point is really in the element of surprise - you don't know what yarn you'll receive. Ditto with the books. But CW would be guaranteed of how many sales for that period. Naturally, being greedy little consumers we'd want to feel special - hence the newsletter or whatever it was - maybe an exclusive invite to a poetry club party....obviously you'd need to do the figures - and equally obviously this would be evened out - a $20.00 book one month, a $35.00 the next...I have no idea if it would work for books, but I've joined sock clubs! (Oh, and the other thing that the sock clubs often do is work around a theme - which would be possible for poetry, too.See More • October 30 at 8:28pm · LikeUnlike

• • Leah Kaminsky Sign me up for a subscription Kris! I also like the idea of all us poets getting together for a fundraiser for Collected Works, which is truly a Melbourne icon... it could be a HUGE event!! • October 30 at 9:11pm · UnlikeLike · 2 peopleLoading...

• • Sam Byfield I'd be up for a subscription Kris and for attending/participating in a fundraising event- anything to help out. I also wouldn't mind getting occasional emails with updates- recent books, things that have caught your attention, events coming up at the bookstore and poems on the blog- all things i'm interested in (and other people) but don't always have the chance to be as engaged and up to date as i'd like to be. • October 30 at 9:24pm · UnlikeLike · 1 personLoading...

• • Philip Salom Sorry, Catherine, I wasn't suggesting you meant that. Just that _whatever_ scheme comes up should have the balance of expenses in mind. I would be quite happy to pay a sub (with no special return, or maybe just a piss-up and reading get-together!) just to know that CW was safe. • October 30 at 9:51pm · LikeUnlike

• • Tina Giannoukos Any way I can help with will do; the shop is a community: refuge; ideas centre; meeting place; singular in every way yet plural. • October 30 at 11:20pm · UnlikeLike · 1 personLoading...

• • Jen Jewel Brown • dear Kris, you and R run a precious and highly respected resource. Wonder if you could link onto/affiliate with APC so that they publicise every book launch going on at Collected Works with their website, and in rerturn you cross-promote th...eir books and events on your blog by providing links and blurbs about their writers/events from time to time. As the sole bookshop in Melbourne which specialises in and stocks large amounts of poetry, especially Australian poetry, it's vital for Australian poets that you can go on, and your presence benefits the APC by helping poetry remain on sale. I also support the idea of buy one book.See More • October 30 at 11:53pm · UnlikeLike · 1 personLoading...

• • Rosemary Nissen-Wade Now that I live elsewhere, I would love it if you had an online list of your stock to help me shop there! • October 31 at 1:41am · LikeUnlike

• • Christopher Barnett kris & retta • • wish you both & the bookshop only the best but we live in a age of great barbarism • • avec force et tendresse • October 31 at 10:27am · LikeUnlike

• • Jennifer Compton a fundraiser - great idea - with a raffle etc • October 31 at 11:50am · LikeUnlike

• • Jennifer Compton • can i suggest a (small) book crossing shelf I saw this at a bookshop in rome and was delighted! when peop[le come in to liberate their books into the wild and see if there is anything they want on the shelf - then because they have a free b...ook they look about me and think, well i have saved money, i will buy a book too • at least that is the way i think it could workSee More • October 31 at 12:55pm · LikeUnlike

• • Rosemary Nissen-Wade The 'buy one book' idea is a real winner, too. • October 31 at 8:13pm · LikeUnlike

• • Natalie Davey Just have to add my note of deep support for what ever you do!! Plan to be in more often to allow my lovely shelves to groan with the delight of your Collected Works amore amore books! • Natalie xx • November 1 at 11:10pm

-----------------------------------------

I dont think I'm exaggerating to describe this as an avalanche of support! John Hunter conjured up the Collected Works Facebook Page one day. "What you need..." he said. I'm eternally grateful. This page has become the prime distributor of bookshop information. Early November, the following message from Robyn Rowland appeared :

"Dear Book Lovers
As you can see from Kris Hemensley’s public letter below, this icon of Australian Literature is struggling a bit in this climate. Remember the Salt appeal a couple of years ago, when Salt decided to ask every supporter to buy a book? It saved the press ...for now. Please do all you can to support Kris and Retta to keep this wonderful and rich bookshop going. It is a cultural landmark and deserves our wholehearted loving kindness ... And cash!! Over the years we have all benefited from the books we can peruse there and buy, but also for the support K and R have given through conversations and knowledge. Just passing on this info which you can find also on overloadnation.
All the best
Robyn"

This also elicited many responses including a suggestion from Alan Loney for a meeting at earliest opportunity. On the 12th November, Jenny Harrison wrote the following letter on the Overload site:

"Dear Friends of Collected Works
We've recently (and belatedly) become aware that the most significant poetry bookshop in Australia needs our support. We are forming a Friends of Collected Works, and we invite you to the inaugural meeting to discuss collaborative plans to support the bookshop (whose current directors are Catherine O'Brien, Kris Hemensley and Retta Hemensley) in its iconic literary vision. Many of us have already offered our support and we are interested in planning a series of events into the future. We intend to meet several times until we're assured that Collected Works continues the sure footing the principals have maintained alone for twenty years in the stead of the inaugural group of 1985. I imagine that future meetings would best be sited at a central point such as at the APC or VWC, but you are all invited to join us at Jennifer Harrison's place at 36 Upton Road, Prahran, on Sunday 21st November from 2 pm to 4 pm, to begin planning.
Warm regards
Jennifer Harrison"

At the meeting, attended by Elaine Lewis & Judith Buckrich (in their own right & representing PEN), Libby Hart, Ray Liversidge, Heather Clarke, Jennifer Harrison, Bob Morrow & Philip Salom, various questions were discussed. I quote the Aims & Objectives (discussion of ideas) from the agenda : "Why do we need a Friends of Collected Works? What do we want to achieve? Wider perspective : what kind of arts scene do we want to see? Short term: what help does Collected Works need now? Long term: imagining Collected Works in 5 years/ 10 years. How will we know we have been successful? (NB we need to remain sensitive to the boundary between Collected Works business practice and the role of Friends of Collected Works)"

As it transpired it was agreed that a formally constituted body wasnt the way to go, after all Collected Works is anti-bureaucratic & informal in its nature & modus-operandi. However a 'reference group' was happily accepted.
In my report to the meeting I mentioned an important earlier meeting with Ellen Koshland who counseled against approaches to the well known trusts & agencies, encouraging us to promote the Shop as the service provider it has always been in respect of poetry in Melbourne &, indeed, Australia, --thus the relevance of subscriptions, mail-order & web-site, & more in-house literary activities...
I pointed to the spontaneous action of 'friends', endorsed by the Bookshop (e.g. the jig-sawing of Libby Hart's twilight shopping event + raffle with Heather Clarke's idea of a promoted pre-Xmas shopping week), as the natural way of proceeding.
At this stage initiatives & ideas were flowing from all directions! Collaborations mooted between Collected Works & organizations like Australian Poetry, the VWC, the MWF, the MPU, PEN et al were especially encouraging.
What it all represented was a reactivation of the community support the Shop enjoyed back in 1985. It felt like a rebirth (a second honeymoon?)!
I did also say to the group that of itself none of this remarkable response had changed the fragile commercial reality but it had changed my attitude to it.

The event of December 8th at the Shop was astonishing ("historic" as Alex Skovron suggested).
There must have been in the vicinity of 150 people over the space of 4 or so hours in & out of the Shop. Many stayed for the duration despite the sauna type conditions! This event contributed significantly to the Shop enjoying its best trading month ever in 25 years...

And the rest is history!

------------------
[finished! New Year's Eve, 2010]

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, # 20, December, 2010

2010-12-05T22:48:00.003+11:00

MAR BUCKNELL

4 POEMS

*

lichen on headstones

even the marking

of death

makes life possible

necessary

*

the sky can kill you

laugh back

*

irony is lost

on the iron

*

o

brave new word

*

[reprinted from MINIKINS, 2010 (PO Box 1497, East Victoria Park, WA 6981)]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

GLENN COOPER

4 POEMS

Remembering Jerry Hall in Brian Ferry’s Let’s Stick Together Video Clip
(after Paulus Silentiarius)

I was eight years old in 1976.
I had never seen lips
so plump and red,
eyes so inviting,
hair so
lustrous. The way
she moved, cat-like
and purring, sashaying
across the stage …
If she had plucked
just one strand
of that golden hair
and tied my wrists
with it, even at such
a tender age,
I’d have pleaded
with her
never to release me.

oOo

Second-Hand

In the second hand record store I sift
through row after row of dusty LPs,
pausing from time to time to consider
a name scrawled lazily in blue ink,
a coffee cup stain, a trace of ancient
lipstick smeared across a dog-eared
copy of Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits.
It is in these places we discover the
true history of the world, of ourselves,
the way things were and in some fashion
will always be, though the discs
of plastic have now turned to metal,
and the people with whom we shared
these songs are vanished or
changed, our emotional landscape
often untended, like scratched vinyl, hissy
and unlistenable, as we ride the eternal
turntable on its circular orbit
into the dust of all our tomorrows.

oOo

Ashtray

The house grown quiet and still,
a single butt of a cigarette now rests
in the smooth rut of a glass ashtray
filled with dozens of other such butts,
this one still smoldering, sending
its tiny but significant plumes
into the atmosphere already heavy
with loss and departure, like a wispy
trail of vapor behind a jet aircraft
high overhead, its occupants weary
with thoughts of arrival and destination.

oOo

After The Power Has Gone Out
(for Ronald Baatz)

Huddled under
the avalanche of covers
he reads by flashlight
in a storm of ice and wind,
the electricity gone
the same way
as his dear old Dad –
still with us somehow
but no longer visible
as photons or
however it is light
appears to us as
we go about our sad
and inexorable ways,
our days habitual
like the seasons,
the earth turning slowly
in its starry grave.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MICHAEL FITZGERALD-CLARKE

A Quadraphonic Whisper

Inside the inside, the world flutters, and eyes close.
Each search is an appeal to mindfulness.

Browning and Patmore walk arm in arm from the earth.
All the flowering plants speak purely, gracefully.

Our genes carry our imagination along the long diagonals.
The unreal duties lovers assume for a while develop, then fade.

It is in the smaller things – governments, wars, religions –
we get lost. Let the promise of a single fleeting breaker

dying in the shallows be reason enough.

*

“An instant of pure love is more precious to God and the soul, and more profitable to the Church than all other good works together, though it may seem as if nothing were done.”
-- St. John of the Cross

Her soul is engaged to the highest cloud, and when
she moves, its aimlessness becomes otherworldly.

How do we salute the inspired upper reaches?
Surely, as the sun drops from the afternoon,

nothing is more precious than our umbilical thread
to voice, to words that pass through walls

and give images of those walls, for, little by little,
shapes of life compose, troubling a soil

in the throes of divorcing bedrock for the sky.

*

“No great art, no really effective ethical teaching can come from any but such as know immeasurably more than they will attempt to communicate.”
-- Coventry Patmore

I know an instant, then I am gone.
I learn from the coldness of fires.

I am an animal, and I am the flame of the sun.
I take the air, and fashion it.

I use opium, and marijuana, and prepare for sailing.
I peel the arms and legs from my body.

I own knives and sexual desires.
I beg for the status of language.

Ask me, and I will courteously reduce these things.

*

The lovers are gentle. Goodbye, friend,
the plane is on the tarmac. Watch the seas below,

and believe. Believe in the driftwood and shells,
believe in change, growth, the poor courageous holiness

we all somehow sense through computer and TV screens.
In the hall are all the shoes ever worn.

The accompanying souls say what they said before:
be aware, tolerate, give each special situation a value.

Why are we so occluded we starve our insight?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CAROL JENKINS

POST

Galileo says people are like paper;
would I dispense with 'are' or 'like'?

Last life I was a silver fish
this time I took to ink,

and when the post floats in
with a letter, an elegant sketch -

simple paper, complex idea, Oh I
praise reading's merit, to deliver

an afterlife, a parallel, a re-incarnation
a vicarious sense of being someone &

somewhere else, in here and now
while holding nothing but cellulose

perhaps a gram of ink, a slip of graphite,
a lined page, headed 'Dear Carol'.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

CORNELIS VLEESKENS

4 POEMS

PARASOL

I soar on paper wings

it was never
about your sister!!

I shuffle my feet
on the doorstep
of the Julian Ashton
School of Art

it is 1968

your lines are smooth

oOo

ANOTHER DAY

tomorrow
is the feast of All Saints

today
it's a Lavazza torino
and a walk
up the deserted main street

I'm visiting
the 18th century
with Schmitt
Fodor Meder and Wilms

fried chicken
choy sum on rice

during a break in the music
Sri Lanka demolish Australia

marinated feta
kalamata olives
sundried tomatoes

a fine
Boorolong Road
2006 Shiraz

oOo

HONGKONG INTERLUDE

linen wash
never smelled so sweet:
hung on bamboo poles
high above
this polluted Kowloon street

congee in the alley
for a hearty breakfast

Ezra loved the intricacy
of the Chinese character
almost as much as Michaux
but I still
can't make out the signs

avoid the snakes
on Fuk Wa
and settle for roast duck

Kwan Yin
the Goddess of Mercy
smiles from her niche

I leave Bronwyn
to her family on the island:
it'd never come to anything anyhow

out on the harbour
a junk passes
red and orange painted prow

oOo

COMPOSITIE: ROOD/WIT/BLAUW

Dopper and Vermeulen
resume their stoush

a bit like Mondriaan
employing a Toorop
to block the draught
from a broken window

the public
is momentarily bemused
then walks on

Kronos ticks time
the rain (as always) the rain
lightning on the ridge
a black Opel cruises by

always shop at Ivens
for your photographic needs

Piet Hein sets out
to capture the Silver Fleet:
the cupboard is bare
and energy costs are on the rise

tap
taptap tap

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTRIBUTORS :

MAR BUCKNELL; Perth spoken-word poet. His inter-media performance includes The History of Glass (in 2008) featuring his poems, Alan Boyd's soundscapes & Stuart Reid's live drawing. This was the sequel to Unawares, performed in 2000 at the Artrage festival. Minikins & other chapbooks available from the author at P O Box, 1497; East Victoria Park, W A,, 6981. Contact : marbucknell@gmail.com
GLEN COOPER, MICHAEL FITZGERALD-CLARKE, CAROL JENKINS & CORNELIS VLEESKENS have all appeared in Poems & Pieces previously. These are all recent writings.
Long may their poetry prosper!

oOo

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, # 19, October, 2010

2010-10-09T21:57:00.018+11:00

WARREN BURT

Correspondence

August 31, 2010
Wollongong

Hi Kris!

My cousin Wilbur has been doing genealogical research, and although he's found some interesting stuff in the past (we're very distant relations with both Walt Whitman (yay!) and Dick Cheney (boo!)) he's finally struck gold. My grandfather's grandfather John Burt had a brother, Foght Burt, and Foght had a son Richard, who became a civil war hero and a poet. Had quite a few things published too. You'll be happy to know that the stuff is pretty amazing doggerel - William McGonagal comes to mind. Here's a sample:

http://www.warrenburt.com/richard-welling-burt-archive/

We did a bicentennial piece, of course, in 88. Richard beat us to it by 112 years. I've only read the first page, and I have no doubt that that's all you'll read as well. However, out of misplaced family loyalty, I think I'll try to make it through all 20 pages. I might even have some computer voices speak parts of it - although I don't know how far I'll get with that. Read it and weep! Tears of hilarity, I hope.

Cheers,

Warren

oOo

I have read the dialog with you and Cathy [Kris Hemensley & Catherine O'Brien, Art & About in Vientiane, #2, August, 2010, re- Hans Georg Berger's photography & etc.], and found it fascinating. That the abbot had a huge photography collection is not surprising in one
sense, but a delightful surprise in another.

There are a lot of amazing stories of East West contact. One of my favorite is about the Japanese composer of the 30s and 40s - Mr Ozawa (I forget his first name). He studied with Schoenberg in Berlin, then went back to Japan, and wrote orchestral music in a style very similar to the French neo-classicist Francis Poulenc. Things like the Kamikaze Piano Concerto (not related to WWII suicide bombers, but the experimental fighter plane of the 1930s, which was quite an innovation when it happened, apparently). These days, my Japanese composer friends are more than faintly embarrassed by the renewed interest in him in the West...but it is pretty amazing - the unknown "Sept" of "Les Six" and he lived in obscurity in Tokyo......

---------------------------------------------------------------

JUSTIN CLEMENS

3 POEMS

*

Space Pen

The manufacturer informs us:
It writes UNDERWATER!
In 400° CENTIGRADE!
In ZERO GRAVITY!

So tell me, my friend —
where do you plan to use it?

*

Perfective II

EMPTY fur-flesh
skin-fear uneffaced;
even meat there found
its letter-plug
litter of silenced earth.

*

Oh to hello ago I go agogo

The more I know his trumpet ‘tis truly so
me trumpet’s trumpet pinned his pegs akimbo,
clyster-pipes and organs humpherumphing happily
hanging a tail by many a wind instrument that blew
the bag-men’s big cheeks pup-puffing up to kiss
the equipment of their pleasures — reserve
this vessel for my lord! they insinuate,
as if they’d walk to Palestine for a touch
of his nether lips and a long hard look down the gyrating barrel
of the biggest revulva youse or I’s has ever seens.

---------------------------------------------------

TINA GIANNOUKOS

from SONNETS

III

When you touch me it is the hand of God.
I agree to restrain the gravity of this emotion.
I begin the long march in death's dominion.
I bear the thought imperfectly that I'm alone.

Mona Lisa's smile remains enigmatic.
This is the only wisdom I possess:
They marked you. They marked you all your life.
Moonlight still shines on what you left behind.

The will is muscular. Like muscle, it tears.
You sentence me to hard labour. Once,
I was beautiful but that was rapture.
The tongue of love tastes tough in these bull days.

This is the conspiracy of the figure two:
the flowers in the garden grow mottled.

oOo

XXX

When the time comes, whenever that be,
I shall look back to my ancestors,
seafarers all, gliding over oceans,
now coming into ports. This earth,
this blue planet, will not circumscribe me.
I will sail across the empty doom searching
for cyclopean marvels; a half-horse, half-man
figure will appear from behind that band
of stars beyond the edge of the Milky Way.
The astrophysics of our encounter,
this dark energy of love, are unknown.
In a singular moment the explosion
that drove all things apart drove us too.
In space I hold the horn of plenty.

------------------------------------------------------------

JENNIFER HARRISON

Ian McBryde’s The Adoption Order
(published by 5 Islands Press 2009)

[Launch Speech presented at Collected Works 15.10.09]

Rapture be pure
Take a tour, through the sewer
(Rapture, lyric by Blondie)

It’s a privilege to launch Ian McBryde’s sixth major collection of poetry, The Adoption Order, here at Collected Works by grace of Kris and Retta Hemensley. Thanks to Ian and 5 Islands Press for the honour. I hadn’t actually seen the book until tonight but I can see the fine publishing job accomplished by Kevin Brophy, Dan Disney and Lyn Hatherly at 5 Islands Press. When I was reading Ian’s book in manuscript form, as I have several times over the last few weeks, I began to think about the light and dark, the beauty and horror, that makes Ian’s poetry so wild and impressively individual. The French poet René Char once said (quote taken from The Poet’s Work):

‘behind the poet’s shutter of blood burns the cry of a force that will destroy itself
because it abhors force . . . Read me. Read me again. He (the poet) does not always come
away unscathed from his page, but like the poor, he knows how to make use of the
olive’s eternity.’

Or as Blondie expressed it in a lyric from her 1981 single Rapture:

Rapture, be pure
Take a tour, through the sewer.

In The Adoption Order Ian does not flinch from the dark and desolate places of the heart. From the dystopian palace in the poem ‘News from the Palace’ to the abandoned landscape of ‘Tunnel 3’ with its nameless station, its unknown slope, its unreadable lights, its rusted, unused rails, its uncertain carriages and clammy track to nowhere, we enter an imagination that is surreal, tender and savage. Take, for example, these memorable lines from the poem ‘A Second Lake’ (the quote is the entire poem):

Deep in the interior water has cut stone open, filled in
the scar, iced over. No fish swim beneath this seal,
and no animals venture down to test the edge
of this ripped shore, this brittle lace,
this ghost of gauze over the old
and frozen wound.

Take note of the arrangement of the words on the page, the inexorable tightening of skin over that strange and frosty wound. An Ian McBryde poem is never un-imperilled. Words are never wasted. His imagery is both elemental, often of the sea, the dream, the cave, the animal - and his imagery is sharper than the sound of the words that make the image—by which I mean it is the visual elements of Ian’s imagery that etch themselves so sharply on the mind. Whether this particular talent comes from Ian’s drawing and illustrative abilities I’m not sure. It is a talent.

Blondie’s Deborah Harry, was also adopted and although many of the poems in Ian’s The Adoption Order do touch on that theme, the poems seems less interested in recording or evoking confessional feelings about adoption or loss and more concerned with embodying the ongoing struggle of words to ground themselves in a world where loss, separation and grief happen. I spent some time thinking about why these poems, despite their sometimes bleak imagery, are so moving, so emotionally chiselled and fulfilling to read. I did not experience them as nihilistic, but as generous. I think it has something to do with what, again, the French lyricist poet René Char (1907-1988)[1] said (as reported by Edward Hirsch in How To Fall in Love with Poetry): that ‘the poem is the realised love of desire still desiring’. The Russian poet Tsvetaeva asks ‘what shall I do as I go over the bridge of my enchanted visions that cannot be weighed in a world that deals only in weights and measure?’

Whether it is the child who desires a mother or father they might never know, or a lover who desires the one they might never attain or keep, or the adult who desires a childhood that continues to mesmerise time, Ian is exploring marooned desire, a grief that somehow becomes a wound of history because we are always losing the present and never in perfect harmony with the world. Perhaps love and loss are the Castor and Pollux of poetry, the twinned forces which poetry attempts to reconcile yet ultimately fails because the past, the beloved are beyond the temporality of language. As Ian says in the last stanza of the villanelle ‘We Touch On and are Lifted from the Earth’:

All our art is the murmuring of surf
Love is where the sea spray meets and marries.
We touch on and are lifted from the earth.
We now are past the moment of our birth.

and later in ‘38th Parallel’: ‘ I have learned nothing but thirst, the only truth of the marooned’.

And later, still, in ‘A Silhouette on Water’:

The image quivers, disperses, splits into

patterns of shadow and elusive light which
never really finish, never really begin.

We often talk about the strength of image in this or that poetry or in this or that poem, as though it is in opposition to weaknesses of image. In Ian’s poetry imagery isn’t a strength, it is the essence of the poetry. The book is a beautiful imagining of imagery. And so beautiful. Here in the poem ‘Before Waking’: ‘I dreamt rain on slate. I dreamt fine china carefully arranged on the floors of caves.’ When I read these images, these lines, I think of carefully arranged words in the darkness of the poem’s cave, I think of all the cultural history of civilisation from the cave to Doulton’s fine bone china factories and I think of human skulls, Pompeii and the fragility of bones. Every poem in The Adoption Order is a scene of spare, concentrated imagery, a dramatic distillation of the lyric’s power and each poem is a play where the self takes centre stage as landscape, as divided mirror or as a numbed survivor on a raft drifting.

The whispering of the poems is intimate as though it’s assumed that you, too, are familiar with the longhouse, the disintegrating palace, the old and frozen scar and the faces of the other children of the raft. The language is very precise and the choice of a particular word often startling. For example, consider the final lines from ‘Instead of Your Breast’ (again reproduced here in its entirety):

Instead of your breast
a ghost treasure,
an alarm sent out.
Instead of your voice
the locked wing,
the lightning shield.
Instead of your breath
a jungle of drums
and the gathering dusk.
Instead of your hands
the terminal, the stretched
mile and instead of your
presence, the faces of
other children of the raft.

Instead of other possibilities (other children on the raft) these are the children of the raft: children who are perhaps destined for dangerous sadness, adventure and drifting. When I read these lines I think of Klaus Kinski in the Werner Herzog film Aguirre, The Wrath of God, (the final scenes of the film when monkeys overcome the raft); I think of asylum seekers adrift, I think of the literature of shipwreck and of the often vulnerable children I work with as a child psychiatrist. This power of imagery does not open a small niche in experience – this imagery opens a tender Pandora’s box of history, both personal and shared, both particular and ethereal.

The Adoption Order is about the power of families. It begins with a poem called ‘Genealogy’ and ends with a poem called ‘Motherlode’. In between are poems about the loneliness of childhood, about the pain of adoption, about the Irish diaspora. And there are magnificent elegies for lost parents. The poem ‘Satellite’ from Ian’s first book The Shade of Angels (1990) re-appears and Ian and has given us another poem/chapter from the ongoing sequence ‘Reports from the Palace’ a sequence which threads through his earlier published works, with versions appearing in The Familiar (1994), Flank (1998) and Equatorial (2001). Thus, in terms of the process of the book, poems can be traced back to past collections as one might also trace the genealogy of a family (or be unable to do so, at least in the past, if adopted). The Adoption Order is the fruit of many generations of poems, not only Ian’s. McBryde’s ‘Icarus’ joins a long tradition of Icarus poems including those of Auden and William Carlos Williams to name just two. This is one of my favourite poems in the book, although to say so feels a little unfair to myself as I value so many. In this Icarus tale, the son’s fiery death is the final triumph which frees him from family and, strangely, this poem seems to capture the actual moment a real event becomes myth.

Icarus (Last Words)

As I fall I watch
my father float
to safety on less
rapid atmosphere

His wings intact,
he hovers high above
me as I plummet.

And yet long after
he lands, long after he
is held in my mother’s

grieving arms it is not
his wisdom but
my bright death that will
be celebrated.

My ribbons of wax.
My shout in the clouds.

A glassy sea beneath
me as I melt and am
finally unfeathered.

At last I have
honoured my island.
I have passed beyond
family. I will be

Falling for centuries,
suspended forever
in the rich, dense air
of legend.

This is a classy, humane book. It deserves great respect and recognition. Although working at an interface that is almost pre-speech, pre-definition these poems are paradoxical artworks of precise speech, chiselled lyricism, formal refrain and earthy textures carved into the cave wall of a page. The Adoption Order is a book of dreams, a book of riddles and a book which fears the end of dreams. René Char said in ‘The Formal Share’: ‘It is from a lack of inner justice that the poet suffers most in his relations with the world. Caliban’s sewer window, behind which Ariel’s powerful and sensitive eyes are angry.’; Ian McBryde says:

I bit the rain.

oOo

Notes:

[1] Rene Char’s mature poetry was published in the aftermath of the Nazi occupation of France; his poetry is at once a lyrical summoning of natural correspondences and a meditation on poetry itself; his single line famous poem To the Health of the Serpent’—published in Fureur etmystère, Éditions Gallimard, 1962—for me has a kinship with Ian’s fabulous one-line poems published in Slivers, Flat Chat Poets, 2005.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

ANNE KIRKER

THE PORTRAIT

I am hung
next to paintings
about the same size -
an unorthodox
(conservative-wise)
gesture
nailed into place

One precise metre
from the curlicues of
my frame
a landscape with tower
is abstracted into
vertical planes
defying depth

From the other side
florid dahlias
in their crystal vase
suggest a tasteful encounter
with the zig-zag
rhythm of my
portrait's scarf

These companions
are unknown to me
(and I to them)
though we are linked
capriciously for a month
as intimates
on public display

------------------------------------------------------------------

DAVID SHEPHERD

KING KONG GOT IT WRONG:
NO MAN IS A MANHATTAN

That ain't no monkey on my back
It's a gorilla

That insidious old ape
Still crouches on my shoulder
He's perched up there
Like Goya's grinning ghoul

He just climbed up
My skyscraper spine
You can still see
The marks he made

He razed my city
To the ground
And stole my loved one
With his gnarled hand

He's too big
And heavy
To stay up there for long
One good bi-plane
To the back of the head
He'll fall a hundred stories
And crush everything

Then I'll be rid of him

Until the next organ grinder
Comes to town
And his simian side kick
Casts his dark shadow
Down my long haul
Whispering
Every man is a Manhattan

[2004]

oOo

ACROSS CHERRY LAKE

Smokestack
Bellows black
Bluffing its way
Into innocent clouds.

Turner's torrid trowel
Smears
The bloody sunset

Grey

Broken winged duck
Last spastic dance
On dim mirror plate.

Chimney vomit
Turns white
Near night.

Atomic bomb crucifix
Smites the sun
Of man.

Burning tonsure.

Cold halo.

[Winter, 2010]

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CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES

WARREN BURT prolific composer & performer, for many years on the Melbourne scene, currently in Wollongong. His website is www.warrenburt.com

JUSTIN CLEMENS active in literature, philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, art criticism, & is the author of several books including The Mundiad (Black Inc, '04), Black River (re.press, '07), Villain (Hunter Publishers, 2009). Phew! He teaches at the University of Melbourne.
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TINA GIANNOUKOS has published In A Bigger City (Five Islands Press, '05). She teaches at University of Melbourne where she is completing her PHD. In 2010 addressed a conference in Shanghai, read at the Beijing Bookworm & gave lecture in Beijing. Link to the review of In a Bigger City
http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/ras/article/view/444/490
Her review of Angela Gardner's Views of the Hudson in Jacket 40:
http://jacketmagazine.com/40/r-gardner-rb-giannoukos.shtml

JENNIFER HARRISON has published several collections including Michaelangelo's Prisoners ('95), which won that year's Anne Elder Award; & most recently Folly & Grief (Black Pepper, '06), & Colombine : New & Selected Poems (Black Pepper, Melbourne, '10). Co-edited with Kate Waterhouse, Motherlode : Australian Women's Poetry, 1986-2008 (Puncher & Wattmann, '09).

ANNE KIRKER, well known as a curator of modern & contemporary painting in New Zealand & Australia; appears in Poems & Pieces, # 1, & #8. Her website is, www.annekirker.com.au

DAVID SHEPHERD's website is http://www.terrorlostralis.blogspot.com/ which contains extensive biography. Similarly see http://fitzroydreaming.blogspot.com/ for recent feature with Dave Ellison on Karl Gallagher's illustrious site.

ISLE OF WIGHT DREAMING

2010-10-08T21:44:00.005+11:00

ISLE OF WIGHT DREAMING : Robin Ford's On the Brink (Cinnamon Press, Wales, 2010)

Leaping out of a catalogue description of Robin Ford's new book of poems, On the Brink, from Cinnamon Press, his third, was the reference to the Isle of Wight. I didnt know his name but instantly he was my man! --the open sesame for the Island of which my own dream has always been waiting. (Long gone, I readily confess, my younger shrinking, taught by betters, from any such affiliation. The notion of poets representing this or that geographic region considered an utter joke --as though poetry was separated from the poets' own places or rather, ought to be, for the language's sake. Another of my generation's exciting but specious mutual-exclusivities which provided for the beauty of the autonomous object whilst undermining the truth of description & evocation.)
My brother Bernard, reviving as a small publisher with a renewed interest in the local via his Stingy Artist press in Weymouth, is keen now to foster my Dorset connection, as though I really were a 'Dorset poet'! --after all, I've been visiting Dorset since 1987, a few years after my younger siblings moved there from neighbouring Hampshire, followed by my parents. And Dorset's inner & outer landscapes have certainly inspired me in ways that Hampshire, apart from the New Forest, never did. However, because of what the catalogue had aroused in me, I suddenly rankled at Dorset's definitive claim! At least, I thought, if Dorset then Hampshire & the Isle of Wight too! Southampton & environs is something else : it was where I grew up, my home, the place from where one dreamt the future and opposed the small town tyrannies. But Ryde, Isle of Wight, was my birthplace, where my grandmother lived for decades (at Tangley Lodge, Salisbury Road) and where we holidayed through childhood & teens. The last time as a family was in 1965, the summer before my emigration to Australia, a brief sojourn sandwiched between clerking on British Railways in London, travelling on the Continent, & sailing on the Fairstar (I was a one-voyage mariner, jettisoned just as I was getting the hang of my hold & shop duties, worst luck).
My father, who grew up on the Island, suggested to me that perhaps we'd make a trip there, walk around his childhood haunts (Ryde, Bembridge), but it never happened. Instead I went myself, visiting my uncle Dennis there in 1996, accomplishing the reorientation Dad & I had planned. He, of course, was all ears for my report. In retrospect, lack of sleep & jet-lag from the Melbourne flight was the perfect preparation for the encounter --and my uncle's no show at both Waterloo & Portsmouth just another share of transcontinental displacement. But he was waiting at Ryde, --and all over the place in Ryde as that & succeeding days arranged themselves around his peripateticism & the wild oscillation of his sleeping & waking. Four a.m. kettle-boiling & cups of tea ushering in conversations to last the day about literature & philosophy (he was full of Ray Monk's biography of Bertrand Russell I recall) & music; walking miles around town & into the country; drinking with his young & old cronies at the London-style pub (captured for me now from memory of Graham Greene's novel or the film of Brighton Rock) --where 'London style' implicates all Southern England, transcending rural society's cap-doffing hierarchy --wherever found & whomever has the readies uncoupling ease from class --the comfortable shabbiness of carpet & furniture, and much the same for the patrons whether or not of the spiv & toff, flit & bot segment of Uncle Dennis's society.

I imagined Robin Ford's poems delivering me a version of my dream, but I should have known that dreams arent ever on tap to one's bidding! The cover of On the Brink (& that title should have been a warning) is an Isle of Wight view --cliffs, shale, white-tipped incoming seas, the dark-blue depths, the fast clouds in a sun-washed sky. And there in the centre of the book the sequence Wight.
Instantly he's given it to me, for example, At Dimbola in Freshwater (which is all about the famous Julia Margaret Cameron) : "Tennyson of course, a private path and gate for him / from Farringford, all the fashionable and great / who take up Freshwater : Browning, Darwin, Millais, / happy to pose as kings and mythic figures, Dodson's / Alice, staying up the road, whole lot fixed for us / by silver nitrate..." Or, In Clerken Lane : "Fooled by nostalgia I leave the main way, totter / on a muddy tightrope of a track, ridged high, slippery / with autumn, find it now cut short mid-way, mid-air."
There's a lovely thing apparently derived from a 1930s IOW memoir by wonderfully named Fred Mew -- A Glorious Morning 1913 : "I sit by Blackgang Chine / four hundred feet above a sea / that's brilliant, blue, / a thin, white line of foam / kissing at red shingle beach / which stretches from / St. Catherine's Point up to / the dreaded ledge at Atherfield, / graveyard of many fine ships ..." --a precious postcard.
From On Chalk, last verse : "and in an abandoned marlpit / when I brush againt / bramble dock coltsfoot / where it's claggy / thistle spring and anthill tussocked / I turn child again" -- more or less the idyll's caption.
Contrast the 2nd verse of the scene-setting Flotsam : "We walk the low tide shore; a cloudy day, storm passed, / sand dull and flat. Lugworm casts like walnuts, / knot and dunlin feeding at the water's curl. / Above sea's usual reach a mesh of blowsy rubbish: / cans, plastic, oil, tar-clogged garments, rope. / There's been a wreck along the coast, cargo flicked / off decks, tossed from holds and split containers. / Round the bay a line of heavy duty rubber gloves / gagged up by sea, orange as funeral garlands on the Ganges, / fingers splayed as if cold hands, at last gasp reach, lay dead in them: / Albatross, Sirenia, Irex, Clarendon." Of course it's an elegy, governed by essential pathos, but the utterly particular vocabulary is indispensable.
Juxtaposition elsewhere of "in summer sweet, by autumn treacherous" speaks to our Isle of Wight poet's internal & external weathers...

Let's suppose one hadnt gone instantly to the Wight section; instead read first the Asyla & Faustus poems. Then one would have begun with terror ("that haunted wing, my mind") & been riveted by the collection's major poem, Audrey at Whitecroft (--"the former county lunatic asylum on the Isle of Wight" , Ford notes, "later the psychiatric hospital until it closed in the 1980s" --where, indeed, he was too (Whitecroft Revisited 30 Years On), "The old wards named for poets: Shakespeare, Browning, T.S. Eliot. / Gascoyne had his time here. "). This memorable dramatic monologue features a female persona ("They called me Screamer. I do not think I screamed / but it was better not to question them. "), whose testimonial, ameliorative of what in other hands would be diatribe, reminds me just a little of James Dickey's May Day Sermon to the Women of Gilmer County, Georgia, by a Woman Preacher Leaving the Baptist Church --it is transported, heightened, & similarly transgressive god-talk.
"My world seemed right for me alone, when I felt sad or down / and violence came my way, I could enter it to blessed peace, // a meadow filled with ox-eye daisies, quaking grass and sorrel / with fairies fine as dragon flies. I quickly learned it was unwise to tell / the doctors of this special place because, in envy (their own hell), / they turned the taps on me, brought out syringes, wet towels, // said I was away with birds and so I was and that is how I wished to stay / but even birdsong turned to screams which seemed inside of me; then I / was sent into the cells for days, where peepholes watched me, demon's eyes. / I wrestled myself quiet, ate filth they pushed at me through long, bad days // of stinking rain, carbolic soap and loneliness..."
A lifetime of institutional degradation passes followed by the advent of mental health's 'Community' solution. And then, one late day, "a nurse, a good one, best of seven, / taught me embroidery. My world lit up. I saw my brilliant heaven / through her, for God has many means to show Himself to us, the open eyed. // Suddenly I found my voice. // (....) Silks, wools, cottons, they worked with me as if the linen wed the thread. / I grew well, though old. One day they said, You have your own home now. /Shocked I left the ward in fear, bid farewell to every flower, / walked down the drive. Then God said, Audrey, come. And I was glad."

Audrey cant help but be a kind of surrogate, genuine creation though she also is --it's more to the point that Robin Ford's own experience of illness ("my storm of sickness"; "How to still a mind that pours / unstoppable as water over weir") & institution --that is, the ability to absorb & transform what any life throws at one --conflates exquisitely with the fiction : if not the character's doings then the atmospheres inhabited & projected.
Treacherous to take any work of art literally, as though it were an affidavit, yet feeling (pitch, ambit, tone) always attracts narrative. Why, for example, in The Oxus, the Indus and the Aral Sea, doubt this poet's confidence :

When I am well again I will lie on a chalk hillside,
breathe calmly, turn my head to see sunset fall

on sedge, burnet, harebells, float on scent of thyme
and marjoram; spring will warm my bones and over me

crossbow swifts will wheel and tumble. My eyes
will rejoice with hawkbit, speedwell, scabious,

bloodspot orchids will be the only stain the world knows,
my mind will be a new hatched butterfly

testing unexpected wings(...)

In my book it's the chalk hillside, the herbs, flowers, grasses, the birds of any season that constitutes the restorative. Indubitably, no dream, even of the Isle of Wight, without shadows, but Dream & dreaming nonetheless.

---------------------------------------------------------
Kris Hemensley
September 2nd-October 8th, 2010

ROBERT GRAY AND PETRA WHITE READING AT COLLECTED WORKS!

2010-10-03T23:11:00.004+11:00

Collected Works Bookshop's first poetry event of Spring is on Monday, 4th October, when we host Robert Gray & Petra White. It's an honest to goodness reading not a launching but hopefully a swag of Robert's older title, New & Selected Poems, will arrive in time to supplement his most recent, the prose memoir, The Land I Came Through Last (Giramondo, 2008). We will also have copies of Petra's second & recent collection, The Simplified World (John Leonard Press, 2010).
Let's fill the Shop!

time : 6 for 6.30
wine & nibbles : YES!
address : level 1, Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, City
enquiries : tel 9654 8873

*

Ray Liversidge's reading/launching advertized in the M P U newsletter, POAM, for October 14th at Collected Works, has been postponed until November 11th. More information closer to the date.

DIVERTIMENTI : VLEESKENS, BELTRAMETTI, CALDWELL, LEBER, SPENCE

2010-09-19T19:10:00.017+10:00

Why wouldnt I admit it? Bored, irritated, enervated by the whole biz --what John Forbes, amplifying the Sydney/Melbourne, 1970s, 'new poetry' discussion about the mainstream, called "talented earache"! Then again, as one good poem doesnt make a summer so one bad poem doesnt herald winter. Yet it speaks volumes of one's expectation for poetry that bad writing (and I hasten to qualify : in one's own opinion, thus disposition as well as the particular education undertaken in service of the art) can cause more misery than an inadequate menu or perpetually late train.
The more important complaint is not being able to see the poems for the poetics (or less --for the method of their construction). In my head I sound-off like that 70s discussion & rail against the sound of squeaky clean construction & its inevitable decorum, regardless that some of my own (particularly '90s) production is pronged on the same indictment!
And then, out of the blue, the universe deals a delightful hand --Grant Caldwell's glass clouds, Michelle Leber's The Weeping Grass, Pete Spence's Sonnets, Cornelis Vleeskens' divertimenti. Or do I simply wake up on the correct side of the bed? (Surely I dont have to explain that!)

A first impression of clarity of thought & expression, as I skimmed Caldwell's new collection, had me imagining a poetry of wisdom. And the image (or proposition) was still in my mind as I read Leber's poems, that they were knowing & wise. For example, regarding the latter, the gleaming blade of the line which introduces her poem, The Boonwurrung Coast, located at Cape Paterson (coincidentally where Cornelis Vleeskens hung out for many years) --"We let all things take form in the morning light."-- is capable of cutting through anything, including the taxonomy & imagery of sea-birds & flora let alone hints of initiation into shamanistic mysteries. And the triple repetition of the pregnant phrase "In the best part of May" (in the poem of that name), is similarly almost independent of the narrative (however brilliantly inhabited by the anthropomorphised persona telling its creation tale).
In Leber, the gainliness of that combination of scientific & perceptional language evokes authority. Local Barometer, for example : "Port Philip Bay is quicksilver in a glass. / Grey beryllium dust and copper sun-shards rise above waves. / A wind-whip of a baton conducts in tricky 7/8 time. / Ordinarily, a sea-gust's libretto is sung from a silver gull, / and now a gannets' gale-force chorus carves sandstone. / Within this capsule - held up by vertical cliffs / - an interior spring prevents a cloud's collapse. / The weight of water once floating in Torricelli's tube, / now scummed on a pollution-meniscus. / As a desert licks a city's hem-line, / fever rises in pacific oceans, shifts moisture to the equator; / flash-flooding in the north, yet our backyard is cinder / - tomorrow, horizon's axe will swing at noon."
No doubt these are crafted poems --they had to have been carved & chivvied to make their particular density, and a long way from what I'm going to say about Cornelis Vleeskens... But I'm being led to contradictory propositions : firstly, that what she has to say calls the tune; secondly, that her keen observation imposes veracity regardless of subject-matter. One thing for sure : no ho-hum in Michelle Leber's Weeping Grass (Australian Poetry Centre, 2010)...

As I've flagged, something of the same's entailed in Grant Caldwell's glass clouds (Five Islands Press, 2010). The tone of 'something being said' emanates from sufficient poems to impress authority. Not the old literary gravitas (no matter 'made new') but the conjunction of writing and spoken-word's well oiled tongue. From the outset let's insist Caldwell isnt casual however relaxed --the relaxation with syntax, that is, which is the crux of modern English-language poetry, --allowing then its objectors to be eccentric rather than reactionary (except for the vanguard camp, censorial to the last). Plain-speaking, however, is only one of the founding twins; the other never ditched the richer dictionary. Thus the double spring & thrust of 20thCentury & on's poetry. Caldwell's stepping-off from that rung doesnt yet qualify as construction --it's still utterance, more or less (the how it is, the what happened). And maybe it is 'irony' which distinguishes him from numerous other common speakers, and most of them unheralded --as Vleeskens is, for example --not that he's bitching : equanimity rhymes in divertimenti with wine & good music, and what more would one want?
Further to 'wise' : as though ancient Chinese hermit or mendicant poet...! Maybe it was the haiku-like poems in the centre of glass clouds (though that's 'Japanese') as well as his serious meditations on perception (necessarily equating phenomenal experience & language representation --"the window of the past is complete / but you are blind, or a blind") --which compelled the impression. Not to say subsequent reading disabused it --more, that the amount of distress also gathered there revoked the semblance of resolution. In Melbourne, though, as any capital of the Western world, where else does wisdom lie than in the tension of normal attachment & its desired opposite? Caldwell's erstwhile persona of the wry humorist (open his last book, Dreaming of Robert de Niro (FIP, '03), at random for any example) is perhaps succeeded here by the poet following doubt's philosophical trail to a halfway house of serenity (if one accepts as influence two of these poems' dedicatees, Derrida & Claire Gaskin).
Caldwell's tour de force is the hypnotic across the sea, which begins "the sea comes / across itself / here it comes / across itself / see it coming / it comes and comes / across itself / it keeps coming / it never stops", continuing in like fashion for a further 35 lines. It is a reiteration of the fact of sea --of 'the sea' as an event --which succeeds in summoning sea's ceaseless movement whilst rendering each wave's singularity, and the poet's observation of it a definitive exhileration!

Reading Cornelis Vleeskens' divertimenti on random days (Earthdance, 2010), has me thinking of Franco Beltrametti, as occasionally I do : almost met, courtesy of Tim Longville & John Riley, who'd advised that Franco, our fellow Grosseteste Review contributor, would be visiting London in '71 --or was it shortly before the Hemensleys returned to Melbourne in '72? --but that was cancelled. Any meeting in the flesh was forever thwarted by his sudden death in 1995. He remains an exotic correspondent, then, from the golden age of hand & typewritten letters, always missed now as though a friend.
And Vleeskens' book instantly recalls Sperlonga Manhattan Express, an international anthology edited by Beltrametti (Scorribanda Productions, San Vitale, Switzerland, 1980), because of the A-4 / 210-297mm page size & the visual content --Franco's pics from all hands & lands (e.g, P. Gigli's photo of the Berrigans, poems by Koller, Raworth, Gysin, Whalen postcard/cartoon, J Blaine, G D'Agostino, et al); Cornelis' own montage, drawings, calligraphy, typography --the same mail-art internationale, Fluxus, neo-Dada style more readily recognized from Pete Spence's affiliations & practice --particularly relevant here because of the latter's regular appearance in the divertimenti.
Vleeskens & Beltrametti are both Europeans who've crucially intersected with the anti-formal (looser, casual) English-language poetry (are they 'casualties' then!), especially the post WW2 Americans, progeny of Pound & Williams, New York, San Francisco, the West Coast, at a time when Europe was reaffirming its own liberatory tradition (Dada, Surrealism & on) &, similarly, opening to new worlds. And because they're not British or North American or Australian, except by adoption, their European origins & references are never out of mind.
Not an exact match, by any means --but somewhere along the line they've both decided to riff on life & not on literature, though there is a literature of just that sort of thing, and a life that contains literature, music, painting, etc. But theirs is another reminder of the efficacy of the un-made, journal-esque writing, --as clear & direct as we reconstruct the Ancient Chinese & Japanese to be, and whose transparency doesnt necessarily prefer the naive to the esoteric or the well-known to the uncommon (take the music Vleeskens listens to daily &, therefore, records in his communiques --or his philately habit or the breadth of his correspondence, all noted).
Beltrametti's poem The Key might be credo for Vleeskens too :

What was well started shall be finished. / What was not, should be thrown away.
Lew Welch, Hermit Poems.

1 ) the place & the season : winter
2 ) somebody (myself) right here : real & unreal
3 ) what is he doing & what's going on in his head
4 ) how & why is he saying it
5 ) to somebody else (you) elsewhere
something happens?
the circle (real & unreal)
isnt closed

[27/1/72]

--published in Face to Face (Grosseteste Review Books, 1973), the blurbs for which by Gary Snyder, Cid Corman, Claude Pelieu, Adriano Spatola, Giulia Niccolai & Guillaume Chpaltine are fair snap of his American/European compass.
Context & correspondence, as in O'Hara, Berrigan, Phil Whalen of course, are vital here in distinguishing such notes & exclamations from the bagatelle they might otherwise be --and Jeremy Prynne's terrific comment on O'Hara jumps to mind, that unlike New York's "art gallery nympholepts", he "always has that pail of serpents in view" --: the poet's obligation, as felt, to be right here, to tell how & what it is without literary diversion, the further extent of which is selling-out, blunting if not losing the existential point. (Echoing Olson's Human Universe suit for the poem as 'one of Nature's things', Ray Di Palma hazards, "a poem is one of the almost successful / forces of nature", --in the 3rd of one of Language Poetry's more beautiful sequences, Territory (from Numbers & Tempers, Selected Early Poems, 1966-86; Sun & Moon, '93), which begins, "the desperado / and his abacus / in utopia" --the perfect cartoon for what I'm getting at?! --but that project was performed within /refined writing, albeit a stepping-up of the casual, and isnt the minstrelsy of the memorandum with which I'm ever besotted!)

Divertimenti : to amuse himself & his friends --to divert & be diverted... Diverted from what? Old cliche : the bind of daily life. But hardly, since it's all this poetry's made of. His note : "These divertimenti originally appeared as individual leaflets and were written for the poet's own amusement and that of the handful of friends who were lucky enough to receive the odd one in the mail or at a poetry reading during the last two years of his life on the Victorian coast... he now lives a totally different existence on the NSW Northern Tablelands."
How would you know? His latest Earthdance chapbook, Sandals in camel (drawings & poems), is surreal as narrative & peppered with elsewhere's place names & distinctions (New York, Parisian, Berlin, Belgian, Catalan, Japanese, Thai, Italian etc), persuading one of his long assumed cosmopolitan ambit. Interesting inference though --'texts' of the life as lived versus 'poems' (importantly, formed in the cross-wires of Dutch & English).
An earlier collection, Ochre Dancer (Earthdance, '99), has the same atmosphere & tone of divertimenti or better said, the divertimenti are cut from his familiar cloth differing only in the attitude of making or framing.

That's the discussion then, in the blur of any such distinction these days... Bits of life (titles & notes of musical recordings, books, lists of food & drink bought & consumed, incoming mail) intersect with thoughts, observations, conversation.
Recalling Kath Walker (Oodgeroo of Noonucull)'s admonition not to appear like a preacher or a politician, Cornelis muses, "Sometimes I wanted to PREACH // But now I just want to share / some of the ordinary things / in the days of a retired poet..."
Diversions from the notion of retirement? Retirement from poetic ambition (craft & career)? I'd identify with that myself. Breaking the cast but keeping one's hand in, and surprising oneself when something more poem than antidote happens along. The list/letter/journal poetry of our time makes it harder to distinguish source from artefact, but found or made they provide as many pleasures as there are days.

"Ah! a new month!
So I turn the calendar to March
A Corneille arial landscape
looking like a cross between
Mondriaan's sketch of a jetty
jutting into North Sea waves
and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri

The calendar was published
for Corneille's 70th birthday
11 years ago but I still
flip over each month
to show that not all days are the same"

Divertimenti is a book which can be taken up anywhere. It invites flicking because of the open-endedness of its narrative.

"Find an image
of the sun's atmosphere
in The Nature of the Universe
by Fred Hoyle (1950)
so reach for Catherine de Zegher
Untitled Passages by Henri Michaux
hardback catalogue
of the exhibition at
The Drawing Center, New York, 2000

& put on an old vinyl recording
of Peter Sculthorpe's Sun Music #1
for Orchestra (1965)

The sun sets at 5-58

Broodje haring
broodje kaas
en 'n zure bon

Enjoy a glass or two of red
& the clear sound of Marion Verbruggen
playing airs from van Eyck's
Der Fluyten Lust-Hof "

So many dates & times of day, month, year, but the book is always written in present tense, and a sense of the present, in which historical time is subsumed, pervades. All times in diverimenti are concurrent; even the different places defer to the here of Vleeskens' whereabouts.
Despite it being a kind of 'in-lieu of writing' (an 'in-lieu-of-writing writing'?), possessing the light touch of genial conversation & a journal's talking-to-oneself, it also teases one as a discourse on time & place, & of poem as its own place where, paradoxically, its own mercuriality might be traced.

Unsurprisingly, much of this has been the preoccupation of divertimenti's fellow classical & modern music afficianado Pete Spence --typically recalled by Vleeskens at one point, "I think up these lines / while walking home / after putting Katherine / on the 6.37 a.m. bus for Melbourne / but have to wait to write them / till the telephone wakes Pete at 10.35 // My pen & paper are on the desk / in the guestroom where he snores on"...
Spence's Sonnets (a co-production of Karl-Friedrich Hacker's Footura Black Edition, Germany & New South Press, Kyneton, Australia; limited edition of 50, 2009) have been with me throughout these reflections. Sonnet 9 is a good example:

" walking Planck's constant in a red shift?
great day! upwind the day winds down
squares of light are thrown about
should i feel ok now that yesterday
is the subject of these poems? better
to be quick about it like a shadow
taking shade from today's sun! when
will i have room where there's room
where i can roam variously & hang
my tantrums & other guests?
the pushbike's 15 minutes in the frame!
its the end of the terror of Perrier fever!
a mullet sidles through the air
& i'm stunned by its flight! "

Riffing off life or literature? Seems to me it's a perfect blend of voice & reference, where perfection refers to an individual's inimitable register, in this case Spence's naturalization of reference, the opposite of ornamentation, of literary embellishment. It's all become as particular as experience, and 'all' are the prime sources he's so kind to append : Ted Berrigan, Laurie Duggan, Peter Schjeldahl, plus Forbes, Satie, Beckett, Shakespeare... All adds up to "Spence"!

Looking now for the perfect conclusion I find this from near to the 'end' of divertimenti :

" That photo of Peter-Jan Wagemans
makes him look like
a well-fed Vinkenoog from the sixties
In his liner notes
he comes across
as didactic & conceited

I pull on my walking-boots
& listen to Het Landschap (1990)
played by Tomoko Mukaiyama on piano
It is not the landscape I see around me
It is not any dutch landscape I recall

He states it is the landscape
of his music - but he is wrong

It is the landscape of my writing"

Boom-boom!

------------------------------------------------------------------
[16-8-10 / 18-9-10]
Kris Hemensley

ON THE DHARMA BUM(S) WITH THE HEMENSLEY BROTHERS, Number 12, September, 2010

2010-09-02T21:29:00.024+10:00

Melbourne
16 November/ 30 December, 2009

Dear Bernard,

I've begun watching the DVD of Richard Lerner's What happened to Kerouac? --such an inspiration when I saw it on the big screen in 1987. You remember the story --Retta & Tim caught it in Sydney, on their holiday with Anna Couani, same time as I saw it in Melbourne, and we all loved it --in my case, literally bounding the few miles home from the Valhalla cinema in Richmond --for the relief of it as much as anything --that the Beat life & literature had survived despite the tragic rise & fall of the chief protagonist, and was even now inspiring. I confess, though, the monster fan I'd been in the Sixties had taken a political hit from Kerouac's own, apparently reactionary, mouth in '69 when I read Vanity of Duluoz in Melbourne, and then received an aesthetic broadside in England, after reading Ed Dorn's comment in New American Story (Grove, 1965, bought from one of George Dowden's sales), that "Kerouac took care of all of what the informal range of the personal ruminator can do with our material. He continues to do so. I value his writing very much. But it is only partly satisfying. His syntax is quite dull. It allows the use of the 'I' only one device(...) But the limited presence is perhaps our greatest problem." (1963)
But, back to the film, what a buzz! I was totally energized, like Ray Smith emulating Japhy, running down the mountain --the method we learnt ourselves from Dad, as kids, --Isle of Wight summer holidays --to trust the momentum, without thought &, therefore, self-consciousness & fear! (And years passed before I tried that again --around Port Campbell (S.W. Victoria), goat-footed down the rocks & gullies, early '90s with Cathy. Must be time again for another such descent --which is a bit like saying, time I had another flying dream!)
Young acquaintance James Hamilton leant me the DVD --and it occurs to me he may be thinking of just such a project regarding the Melbourne '60s La Mama poetry scene --like, "What happened to Buckmaster (& Co.)?" The scope could & should be expanded, though the earlier one goes the less likely the subjects will be alive. This was underlined for me recently with the death of Alan Murphy. I'd hoped to conduct a formal (publishable) interview with him, informed by numerous chats we had when he visited the Shop --we'd reconnoitre his memories of WW2 & after, the '50s & '60s Melbourne scene, which I delightedly realized connected to my own forays, since the '80s, into alternative histories.

*
One of the gifts of What happened's second viewing is John Clellon Holmes' conception of Kerouac as "a prose experimenter of consequence who can be spoken of in the same breath as James Joyce." The context for Kerouac's originality, says Holmes, is "The interaction of imagination & reality [which] is the source of all literature (perhaps not the Goncourt Brothers or those Realists, Naturalists, whom no one reads) in which the personality of the author, the consciousness of the author, the point of view of the author, never gets into the book."
No shock of the new when it's enjoyed or suffered half a century of amelioration! One needs, therefore, this kind of literary reminder of Kerouac's stylistic novelty. Even I tend to normalize the style as 'talk-write', familiar now in the contemporary practice of both literature & the variety of non-fiction. But when Kerouac reads from On The Road, accompanied on piano by Steve Allen, you hear the jazz of it --and it's the music of his language, as tho' poetry, which impresses --the texture resembling the process of remembering as well, perhaps, as the way jazz is constructed.
None of that in Bukowski whose talking-writing is more or less as-it-comes but, to use blog-lingo, he's always 'on topic'. Bukowski's facility is that ear-&-tongue craft which knows & trusts to the natural succession, succinctly deployed. No associational runs or fields, nor need there be for the writer narrator he is --just what is, what happened, what happened then, & then...

*
I'm reminded of Bukowski's great little piece on Neal Cassady as I watch the footage of Cassady & Ginsberg at City Lights Bookstore in 1965. "his eyes were sticking out on ye old toothpicks and he had his head in the speaker, jogging, bouncing, ogling, he was in a white t-shirt and seemed to be singing like a cuckoo-bird along with the music, preceding the beat just a shade as if he were leading the parade." (Notes of a Dirty Old Man; City Lights, '69.)
In the footage, Ginsberg's stoned silly, wanting to ameliorate his friend's hostility to the young counter-culture audience. They're in front of a camera amongst a crowd you'd bet were its subscribers. Cassady ("where's the fee?" he says, as though to provoke any hippy anarchists present) can't settle. He's awkward, agitated, speedy, as if compelled to be on show --nervous as one's read of Ken Kesey or Kerouac himself come to that --nervous to express opinion. He resorts to what sounds like parody of Burroughs & Kerouac paranoia & cynicism : "All the extremists, all the civil rights, all the kids, anybody on any side(...) this is all hindsight what we're talking about --it's already too late --the Pentagon's taking care of all... they're killing us all deliberately..."
Ginsberg burbles : "Well, that's the point -- I have no idea who's running the country..." (It's only the point if running the show's important --our holy man's political shadow or his share of politics' own shadow.) As for Cassady --never an easy place to speak outside & think against the consensus. Much reason, therefore, to be jumpy.
Bukowski perceives Cassady as Kerouac's boy : "you liked him even though you didn't want to because Kerouac had set him up for the sucker punch and Neal had bit, kept biting. but you know Neal was o.k. and another way of looking at it, Jack had only written the book, he wasn't Neal's mother. just his destructor, deliberate or otherwise."
Now what a can of worms that is. Off the top of my head : the ethics of attribution however complicit or acquiescent the assignee; the double edge of exemplarity; the downside of fulfilling the mythic life however transformative its promise...

*
I'll close on an entirely optimistic & beautiful note --namely, the letter from Henry Miller to Kerouac's publisher at Viking, written October 5th, 1958, reproduced in the 50th Anniversary (American) edition of The Dharma Bums (Viking, '08), which Karl Gallagher, another Dharma Bum I assure you, recently showed me. (As I understand it, your British edition has Ann Douglas's introductory essay but no letter from Miller, which is a pity.)
The line we always felt existed, as far-flung readers & enthusiasts, between Henry Miller & the Beats --though aspects of Miller also obviously resonate in Bukowski : the pariah-worker novels --Miller's Molloch, for example, a first cousin of Post Office , Ham on Rye, etc. --is here joyously underlined.
The Dharma Bums was the first Kerouac novel Miller read. His letter ripples with praise with praise & enthusiasm. He's led to say that Kerouac "is the first American writer who makes me feel optimistic about the future of American letters. Whether he is a liberated individual I don't know, but he certainly is a liberated writer. No man can write with that delicious freedom and abandonment who has not practiced severe discipline." After many similar compliments, Miller concludes, "Others run out of 'material' sooner or later. Kerouac can't. He's all there is, because he's identified himself with everything, material or non-material, and with the silence and the space between. We've had all kinds of bums heretofore but never a Dharma bum, like this Kerouac. He doesn't throw dust in your eyes... he sings. "God, I love." Take hope, you lost ones --Jack's here!"

All best wishes for the New Year!
love,
Kris

oOo

Weymouth,
25th August, 2010

Dear Kris, Yer 'tis -- the letter that's been so long coming. I think you'll understand that I was absolutely swamped by family events. It was so difficult coping with looking after Mum as she declined following her fall last July (2009) and fracturing her left hip -- which impeded her mobility -- wheel-chair, zimmer frame and stair-lift. And then her Alzheimers.
Everything passes she said. And now she has -- April 3rd. And slowly, slowly I emerged. She released me from her for the second time. It was truly cathartic. Now I'm flowing and blossoming like never before. And I'm ready, and up for getting back to being a Dharma bum.
Having said that, I'm curtailing this correspondence for now. It certainly sustained me. Your letters kept the light flickering within me. I did tell you that it hadn't gone -- that it was still there! But now I fully understand things in my heart instead of in my head -- that poetry can save you, And what is working for me at the moment is the new initiative with my publishing. Stingy Artist Editions lives.
I've not had the head or feeling to publish anything since 1996 --14 years --& now everything --including the publishing --is flowing again. It started with my poems for Mum in July (4 Poems, i. m. Berthe Tawa). And because of that I thought of two further projects. One, for Franco Beltrametti -- a folded broadside -- two of his letters to me -- facsimile -- & two poems I'd written for him. The other publication is for dear friend Marilyn Kitchell --I wonder where she is? --a similar thing --but a folded card. In total I've got plans for a dozen or so publications between now & the end of next year. I'll be ready for 2012!
Big Dharma explosion? Where will the Bums take us? Reminds me of Franco's poem, Crucial Matters (to Robert Creeley), in Three for Nado, by Franco, which I published in 1992 :

come here
see it in print
keep it together
give me a break
and never be done
with all of it

hummingbird
on snapdragon

(?. VI.89)

We'll never be done with any of it! Anyway, Dharma brothers forever!

Love,
Bernard

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