AustLit
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Contents
- Undergrowth (for Sarah)i"in a curving season when the morning glory", single work poetry (p. 4-5)
- Quantumi"The art photographer alone", single work poetry (p. 6-7)
- Breakagesi"A mongrel broken on Parramatta Road", single work poetry (p. 8)
- Commai"silence being plural, last and", single work poetry (p. 9)
- Partingi"When all our metaphysics are confuted", single work poetry (p. 10)
- To Greece Under the Juntai"No bird sang that year", single work poetry (p. 11)
- In Memoriam Phan Thi Maoi"if this were a poem I might have said that", single work poetry (p. 12)
- Climate of Emptinessi"empty faces we once knew", single work poetry (p. 13)
- Dross : Ii"There was I remember a golden storm", single work poetry (p. 14)
- Dross : IIi"Brown water rasps across the mouth", single work poetry (p. 15)
- Dross : IIIi"The pedlar lives at the bottom of a well", single work poetry (p. 16)
- Nikhil Bannerjee: Town Hall Concerti"Music, breathing of statues maybe, but also", single work poetry (p. 17)
- Shadowmass : Ii"I, caught now unawares in the red moon's mouth,", single work poetry (p. 18)
- Shadowmass : IIi"the women's faces swept with crescent shadow", single work poetry (p. 19)
- Shadowmass : IIIi"and yet", single work poetry (p. 20)
- Shadowmass : IVi"railway lines ask nothing only", single work poetry (p. 21)
- That Mine Own Precipicei"this morning I seem to have woken up", single work poetry (p. 22)
- Sequestrumi"There's a special sort of madness in the colours", single work poetry (p. 23)
- Openingi"Lying I felt, between this and that foliate", single work poetry (p. 24)
- Song: Green Moon Bluesi"man on a mountain trying to reach the rain", single work poetry (p. 25)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Steps to Parnassus : Martin Johnston’s The Sea-Cucumber
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 66 no. 1 2021; (p. 60-76) 'Martin Johnston (1947-1990) left behind a slim oeuvre of remarkable poems, lauded for their wit and erudition. The son of the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, he spent most of his childhood in Europe, living for almost a decade on the island the of Hydra as part of an expatriate community of artists, which included the then little-heralded Leonard Cohen. He worked mainly as a critic through the 1970s, and in the '80s wrote subtitles for SBS Television. Johnston's life was also marked by tragedy. His mother's suicide in 1969 was followed by his father's death from tuberculosis the following year, and then his sister Shane's suicide four years later. These events haunt his writing. Johnston, who was an alcoholic for much of his adult life, died at the age of forty-two. During this time, he published an acclaimed experimental novel, Cicada Gambit (1984). He also published a book of modern Greek poetry in translation Ithaka (1973), and three books of poetry: Shadowmass (1971), The Sea-Cucumber (1978) and The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap (1984). An elegant volume of Johnston's selected poems, Beautiful Objects (Ligature), edited and introduced by Nadia Wheatley, marked the thirtieth anniversary of his death in 2020, along with the launch of a memorial website. ' (Introduction)
-
In Transit : Migration and Memory in the Writings of Martin Johnston and Dimitris Tsaloumas
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 19 no. 1 2019;'In August 1964 Martin Johnston boarded the Ellinis in the port of Piraeus, destined for Sydney, Australia, bringing to an end his 14-year estrangement from the land of his birth. Johnston, who had lived abroad most of his life in England and Greece, would return as a literal migrant to his own country. It was a theme that would prove fecund and deeply allegorical for the then 17-year-old son of authors George Johnston and Charmian Clift, later manifesting in his poetic works such as In Transit: a sprawling 14-part paean to Johnston’s immutable sense of displacement.
'A little over a decade before, in 1952, Greek poet Dimitris Tsaloumas would complete the same metamorphic journey, fleeing his Dodecanese homeland and arriving in Melbourne, Australia where he would take up the uneasy mantle of Australia’s Hellenic poet in exile. Despite parabolic overtures of assimilation, paradoxical themes of longing and dislocation pockmark Tsaloumas’s vast canon, tethering an uneasy union between his two divergent worlds both ancient and contemporary; familiar and profoundly alien.
'This essay explores the lives and comparative themes of exile in the works of both Johnston and Tsaloumas—writers who both identified as Xenos, a Greek word that translates as both ‘guest’ and ‘stranger’—and investigates the often incorporeal, irredeemable and contradictory natures of nostalgia and belonging.' (Publication abstract)
-
Martin Johnston (1947-1990)
1992
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Scripsi , vol. 7 no. 3 1992; (p. 229-244) Journal of Poetics Research , March no. 4 2016; -
Exiled by Circumstance and Inclination : Martin Johnston 1947-1990
1990
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Editions , September no. 8-9 1990; (p. 9-10) Martin Johnston : Selected Poems and Prose 1993; (p. 273-276) - Writer's New Gambit Pays Off 1984 single work criticism biography
-
Present Poetry
1972
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , Autumn [June] vol. 11 no. 1972; (p. 250)
— Review of Shadowmass : Poems 1971 selected work poetry ; The Lost Forest 1971 selected work poetry -
Martin Johnston (1947-1990)
1992
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Scripsi , vol. 7 no. 3 1992; (p. 229-244) Journal of Poetics Research , March no. 4 2016; - Writer's New Gambit Pays Off 1984 single work criticism biography
-
Exiled by Circumstance and Inclination : Martin Johnston 1947-1990
1990
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Editions , September no. 8-9 1990; (p. 9-10) Martin Johnston : Selected Poems and Prose 1993; (p. 273-276) -
In Transit : Migration and Memory in the Writings of Martin Johnston and Dimitris Tsaloumas
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 19 no. 1 2019;'In August 1964 Martin Johnston boarded the Ellinis in the port of Piraeus, destined for Sydney, Australia, bringing to an end his 14-year estrangement from the land of his birth. Johnston, who had lived abroad most of his life in England and Greece, would return as a literal migrant to his own country. It was a theme that would prove fecund and deeply allegorical for the then 17-year-old son of authors George Johnston and Charmian Clift, later manifesting in his poetic works such as In Transit: a sprawling 14-part paean to Johnston’s immutable sense of displacement.
'A little over a decade before, in 1952, Greek poet Dimitris Tsaloumas would complete the same metamorphic journey, fleeing his Dodecanese homeland and arriving in Melbourne, Australia where he would take up the uneasy mantle of Australia’s Hellenic poet in exile. Despite parabolic overtures of assimilation, paradoxical themes of longing and dislocation pockmark Tsaloumas’s vast canon, tethering an uneasy union between his two divergent worlds both ancient and contemporary; familiar and profoundly alien.
'This essay explores the lives and comparative themes of exile in the works of both Johnston and Tsaloumas—writers who both identified as Xenos, a Greek word that translates as both ‘guest’ and ‘stranger’—and investigates the often incorporeal, irredeemable and contradictory natures of nostalgia and belonging.' (Publication abstract)
-
Steps to Parnassus : Martin Johnston’s The Sea-Cucumber
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 66 no. 1 2021; (p. 60-76) 'Martin Johnston (1947-1990) left behind a slim oeuvre of remarkable poems, lauded for their wit and erudition. The son of the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, he spent most of his childhood in Europe, living for almost a decade on the island the of Hydra as part of an expatriate community of artists, which included the then little-heralded Leonard Cohen. He worked mainly as a critic through the 1970s, and in the '80s wrote subtitles for SBS Television. Johnston's life was also marked by tragedy. His mother's suicide in 1969 was followed by his father's death from tuberculosis the following year, and then his sister Shane's suicide four years later. These events haunt his writing. Johnston, who was an alcoholic for much of his adult life, died at the age of forty-two. During this time, he published an acclaimed experimental novel, Cicada Gambit (1984). He also published a book of modern Greek poetry in translation Ithaka (1973), and three books of poetry: Shadowmass (1971), The Sea-Cucumber (1978) and The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap (1984). An elegant volume of Johnston's selected poems, Beautiful Objects (Ligature), edited and introduced by Nadia Wheatley, marked the thirtieth anniversary of his death in 2020, along with the launch of a memorial website. ' (Introduction)
