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'Ålvik – setting for the poems in this book – is a sleepy little industrial town, set between the Hardanger Fjord and its own little mountain for climbing. Behind Ålvik the serious mountains go on forever, all the length of Norway, till there’s almost no more north.
'The town is brightly painted and decorated with laughter – a children’s town, if you remember. The artists and the poets, the singers, the musicians – they live in a fairytale house, where winter is always coming, even when it has arrived. But spring is pressing too, and summer is an open book, where the blue goes up forever and a day will never end. The forest is the poor man’s coat. Step in – let other worlds elapse. Read the leaves as they lie fallen. Follow the trail of light.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Magan Magan Reviews S K Kelen’s Yonder Blue Wild and Kit Kelen’s Poor Man’s Coat
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 February no. 95 2020;
— Review of Yonder Blue Wild : Travel and Places : Poems 1972-2017 2017 selected work poetry ; Poor Man's Coat 2018 selected work poetry'Award-winning author S K Kelen beautifully explores the theme of travel in his collection Yonder Blue Wild. For some, travel is a benefit awarded to them by virtue of their class; for some it is a tool to attain an idealised version of the life they want to lead. For others, travel is something they have no choice in. The connecting thread is indeed a kind of escapism, and an attempt to express, through movement from place to place, one’s own humanity. In that expression hides stories untold.' (Introduction)
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Reasserting the Lyrical : Anna Couani Launches ‘Poor Man’s Coat’ by Kit Kelen
2019
single work
column
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , no. 26 2019;
— Review of Poor Man's Coat 2018 selected work poetry'Thanks to Kit for asking me to do the Sydney launch of Poor Man’s Coat.
'Poor Man’s Coat is Kit’s latest publication, one of many books of poetry that have gone before, about 17, according to his online bio. As many of you here today will know, Kit is not in the mold of the languorous poet, leisurely dreaming up another verse but is a phenomenon and a force of nature, tapping into some inexhaustible source to produce a large output of poetry and academic work, to attack his many projects as a writer, publisher, scholar and catalyst for countless other people, including me. And today we’re also launching a book by Les Wicks that is published by Kit’s Flying Islands Press.' (Introduction)
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Kit Kelen, Poor Man’s Coat: Hardanger Poems; Kevin Brophy, Look at the Lake
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , vol. 13 no. 2018;'These two books, different in so many ways, share something that makes a comparison between them almost irresistible. Each is written in response to a period the poets have spent in an environment far different from that which has produced most of their previous poems. Kevin Brophy’s book responds to a year (2016) in the north of Western Australia as a volunteer at a local school in the town of Mulan, next to Lake Gregory not far from the border with the Northern Territory. Kit Kelen’s Poor Man’s Coat is a response to time spent in the little Norwegian town of Ålvik situated on the upper reaches of the Hardanger fjord about 60km east of Bergen as the crow flies (though it would be a tiring mountainous flight). These are both spectacular venues of an almost completely different character – flat, red, dry as opposed to vertical, green, wet – but there is also a touch of the abject about each of them, even in the case of Ålvik which looks, for all the splendours of its setting on the fjord, to be a rather grotty little town, a “company town” dominated by a large factory, the subject of a poem significantly titled, “I Don’t Know What They Make in There”.' (Introduction)
-
Reasserting the Lyrical : Anna Couani Launches ‘Poor Man’s Coat’ by Kit Kelen
2019
single work
column
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , no. 26 2019;
— Review of Poor Man's Coat 2018 selected work poetry'Thanks to Kit for asking me to do the Sydney launch of Poor Man’s Coat.
'Poor Man’s Coat is Kit’s latest publication, one of many books of poetry that have gone before, about 17, according to his online bio. As many of you here today will know, Kit is not in the mold of the languorous poet, leisurely dreaming up another verse but is a phenomenon and a force of nature, tapping into some inexhaustible source to produce a large output of poetry and academic work, to attack his many projects as a writer, publisher, scholar and catalyst for countless other people, including me. And today we’re also launching a book by Les Wicks that is published by Kit’s Flying Islands Press.' (Introduction)
-
Magan Magan Reviews S K Kelen’s Yonder Blue Wild and Kit Kelen’s Poor Man’s Coat
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 February no. 95 2020;
— Review of Yonder Blue Wild : Travel and Places : Poems 1972-2017 2017 selected work poetry ; Poor Man's Coat 2018 selected work poetry'Award-winning author S K Kelen beautifully explores the theme of travel in his collection Yonder Blue Wild. For some, travel is a benefit awarded to them by virtue of their class; for some it is a tool to attain an idealised version of the life they want to lead. For others, travel is something they have no choice in. The connecting thread is indeed a kind of escapism, and an attempt to express, through movement from place to place, one’s own humanity. In that expression hides stories untold.' (Introduction)
-
Kit Kelen, Poor Man’s Coat: Hardanger Poems; Kevin Brophy, Look at the Lake
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , vol. 13 no. 2018;'These two books, different in so many ways, share something that makes a comparison between them almost irresistible. Each is written in response to a period the poets have spent in an environment far different from that which has produced most of their previous poems. Kevin Brophy’s book responds to a year (2016) in the north of Western Australia as a volunteer at a local school in the town of Mulan, next to Lake Gregory not far from the border with the Northern Territory. Kit Kelen’s Poor Man’s Coat is a response to time spent in the little Norwegian town of Ålvik situated on the upper reaches of the Hardanger fjord about 60km east of Bergen as the crow flies (though it would be a tiring mountainous flight). These are both spectacular venues of an almost completely different character – flat, red, dry as opposed to vertical, green, wet – but there is also a touch of the abject about each of them, even in the case of Ålvik which looks, for all the splendours of its setting on the fjord, to be a rather grotty little town, a “company town” dominated by a large factory, the subject of a poem significantly titled, “I Don’t Know What They Make in There”.' (Introduction)
