AustLit

'This is a book of reflections on poetry and matters concerned with poetry, recorded in reviews, conversations, interviews, essays, and articles published in little magazines, journals, periodicals, and anthologies since the 1980s.'

 (Introduction)

'Atsuko Kouda's remarks on landscape in Australian poetry are particularly interesting because they provide us with an 'outside; view of how the land is perceived by Australian poets. Kouda uses as models Douglas Stewart and Judith Wright. In the first case, Stewart displays a correspondence between himself and the landscape , and a sense of the perfection of creation, in the light of this, the poet can at times 'escape' into a symbolic perfection away from the unpleasant aspects of social life. Kouda concludes that Stewart's poems 'take no further new meanings than we find in the traditional ballads.' (Introduction)

'The following interview was recorded at my Marsh Street flat in Armidale on 19 and 20 August 1981, when Alan Wearne came to read poems at the Uni-versity of New England and visit friends. We listened to classical and other music, drank at the New Englander Hotel, and talked a great deal about poetry, football, and his poems written to date that would eventually be included in his book-length poem The ' (Introduction)
 

'The distinguished Australian poet Roland Robinson [1912-92] was a writer-in-residence at Wright College at the University of New England for six weeks in 1982. He discussed his life and writing with students at the College and further on the university campus, and gave several readings at the university and at the Wicklow Hotel, a regular poetry venue in Armidale. The following interview is an excerpt from a radio university campus, and gave several readings at the university and at the Wicklow Hotel, a regular poetry venue in Armidale. The following interview is an excerpt from a broadcast on 2ARM-FM in August 1982. Roland talked about the early days of the Poetry Society and its public face, the Poetry Magazine, up to the time when Grace Perry left the committee to found the journal Poetry Australia. Roland also recounted the subsequent history of the Poetry Society and the Poetry Magazine up to the time of the takeover of both the society and its magazine. The programme was hosted by Tony Bennett and Michael Sharkey. ' (Introduction)

 

'This interview with Rae Desmond Jones, a second window on the take-over of the Poetry Society of Australia, and the consolidation of the 'New Poets' as the poetry 'establishment', was recorded in 1982, when Jones, along with Chris Mansell, Nigel Roberts, and Richard Tipping were touring Bellingen, Lismore, and Armidale in northern New South Wales. Jones's reminiscences regarding the takeover of the Poetry Society in 1970 by a group of young writers and poets provide an interesting view in the light of Roland Robinson's comments, during a radio broadcast on the 2A R M In Focus programme in August. Rae Jones discussed his early acquaintance with Robert Adam-son and introduction to the Poetry Society.' (Introduction) 
 

Brian Elliott remarked in his anthology The Jindyworobaks that "There is at present a discernible rise of interest in the Jindyworobak movement,"

which may mean that the time is ripe for serious reappraisals; but this interest replaces an attitude which for a number of years has been one of something like contempt." (Introduction)

First, the good news

Around exam time in 1982, late October or early November (it's hard to have assessment of hundreds of students papers on your mind, and the dole queue immediately following your contract's expiry) Barry Sergeant, Elias Levin, and other young writers and poets around the University of New England suggested over a beer or three in the Bistro that it would be a good idea to stage a reading by poets from the country, at the 1983 Festival of Sydney. The time was drawing near, and a hurried phone call and letter to John Moulton, the Festival's coordinator, brought the response 'Interested, very, but it's a little late; maybe the following Festival?" This was sufficient incentive to practise organizing writers all over the northwest and northeast of New South Wales for 1983, and to have some warm-up readings. After all, Armidale hardly lacks people who are, or who think they could be, poets. Over the past three years especially, links have been established with poets around Tamworth, Lismore, Bellingen, Byron Bay and elsewhere. It seemed a great idea to show Sydney people what sorts of talents were scattered about the hinterland and back-blocks. An active publishing scene has also established itself in Armidale through the efforts of Tony Bennett (Kardoorair Press), Don Gentle (Tap Danz Press), and Winifred Belmont and Michael Sharkey (Fat Possum Press), by way of displaying who's in locations alternative to the Sydney and Melbourne groups, and to the poets with national names who occasionally visit Armidale from Brisbane and other capitals. Armidale has a monthly poetry reading at the Wicklow Hotel, and many other regular readings besides the large event at the university's May vacation school. But enthusiasm isn't everything. Now read on.' (Introduction)

'Geoff Page's anthology complements J.T. Laid's 1971 publication (also from the Australian War Memorial), Other Banners : An Anthology of Australian Literature in the First World War. Page's collection seems destined to become a collector's item, not least among those who chart Australia's attempts to revise its national self-image.' (Introduction)

'Reviewers have a habit of encapsulating the smartness of Alec Hope's poetry and the technical accomplishment of John Manifold's lyrics and ballads with puns on the writers' names. Manifold's retrospective selection of his poetry, introduced by A.D. Hope, is welcome. It will after some conventional Hall's fine record of a friendship could not.' (Introduction)

'There is a desperate note in Gregory Shortis's poetry, which registers from the opening of Yarn, Rave and Red Herring. It would be be stating the obvious to comment only that this is an interesting collection poems. It is not a book that can be easily dismissed at the present time, and if it is not a book for which extravagant claims can be made, it offers many terrible judgments on contemporary Australia that may command greater interest and appreciation as time goes by. The collection contains many poems that refute the notion that current Australian poetry tends to statements that are gormless or trivial. Sortis's subjects are large, and his shafts are deadly.' (Introduction)

Geoffrey Lehmann's Nero Poems is an ambitious collection that shows his lyric facility to great advantage. Occasionally recalling the that pungencies of Juvenal's satires and the asperity of Catullus's and Martial's epigrams, the poems invite interpretations of Nero made by his contemporaries the poems mark a pleasant turning in the attempts of contemporary Australian poets to construct 'sequences of poems. We are not only familiar with single monologues on "classical' themes (what Alan Wearne refers to as all those poems after Browning on Italian Popes) and sequences taking on various voices (William Hart-Smith's "Christopher Columbus" standing out as a remarkably sustained work), but more recently with Peter Porter's After Martial, with which Lehmann's collection may inevitably come to be compared, and notably to Lehmann's advantage at that: both collections are outstanding for their sophistication, wit, and range.' (Introduction)
 

'The following conversation with Robert Adamson took place at Nigel Robert's house in Rozelle in Sydney, on 11 June 1984: Debra Adamson was also present, and the talk occurred shortly before those involved attended the San Quentin production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot (referred to in the interview) at the Wentworth Theatre.' (Introduction)

The following interview with Tim Thorne,, a third window on the consolidation of the Australian New Poetry, was conducted at Simon :McDonald's house at 1 Elsie Street. Boronia, on the evening of 10-11 December1984, towards the end of the Montsalvat Poetry Festival. Simon McDonald, publisher of Wildgrass Press, was present and contributed several questions. The topic was Tim Thome's career as a Tasmanian poet and contributing editor of the periodical New Poetry (the platform for what John Tranter and others called 'the New Australian Poetry'). Applauded by some and reviled by others, the journal did have, as Thorne points out, a solid establishment position among the many little magazines of the period 1970-84.'
 

'It is a curiosity  that Nigel Roberts's poetry has not attracted critical commentary to the degree accorded to many of his Australian contemporaries who came to prominence as members of the 'Generation of '68'. In a way. he could be thankful that this is so.' (Introduction)  

'This conversation took place on Friday 17 May 1985 at Geoff Goodfellow's house, 21 Claxton Street, Adelaide.' 

'I don't suppose there was ever a time  when poets weren't concerned to make a splash among their friends and in society with their writings. I base this remark on some familiarity with comments by Persius, Horace, Martial, and a number of Greek and Chinese writers, who all appear to lament their craft's having fallen on lean times, or who make reference - usually dismissive -  to less skilful contemporaries. In an era when Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love were not admired traits in an individual, this might have done well enough. but the persistence of an element of competition among poets in particular leads me to wonder why it should be so, throughout the Renaissance and an Age of Enlightenment down to our own age.'  (Introduction)
 

'In the 1970's, those living in the country outside Melbourne interested in poetry would occasionally hear of the antics of Melbourne writers taking their work public in interesting ways. Most of the news about them was sporadic, since their publications were generally small-press leaflets, broad-sheets. private magazines, and manifestos - often directed against each other, making what seemed like extravagant claims to constitute the real 'New' poetry, Or the most valid poetry for popular consumption. A degree of scepticism greeted their editorials and statements in those benighted places outside Carl-ton. Richmond. and St Kilda.' (Introduction)
 

In August 1987, the Melbourne writer Bidh Hancock asked me about my experience of teaching writing at Melbourne's Pentridge Prison at Coburg, and my poetry and teaching at the Footscray institute of Technology, where I was a part time lecturer. This interview was published in Seed, the newspaper of the Students Representation Council.' (Introduction)