AustLit
Latest Issues
Notes
-
Dedication: This book is for Nadia
-
Epigraph: [lengthy quote from The Golden Bough]
Contents
- The Sea-Cucumberi"We'd all had a bit too much that night when you brought out your painting,", single work poetry (p. 1-2)
- Mazurka for Buzzing Fly (Grand Master Akiba Rubinstein Speaks)i"The spectacles perched on my brain", single work poetry (p. 3-4)
- Gradus Ad Parnassumi"Over a tabasco sandwich, with black coffee", single work poetry (p. 5-8)
- Poem Resumed after Its Interruption When in Draft Form by the Death of Igor Stravinskyi"bubbled over the caulked side", single work poetry (p. 9-13)
- Letter to Sylvia Plath (i.m. C.C.)i"Impacted fans of dawn unfold", single work poetry (p. 14-15)
- Fault Linei"One might be happier if they were less banal", single work poetry (p. 16)
- The Blood Aquariumi"Pan Apolek's scarf whirls the horizon inward,", single work poetry (p. 17-35)
- Critical Notes on Marcel Prousti"Rain slaps the bridge and the sea tilts. Water gathers", single work poetry (p. 36)
- Moriarty at Reichenbachi"I squat here under the falls waiting", single work poetry (p. 37)
- Cavei"Sharp mornings on railway stations", single work poetry (p. 38-39)
- Uncertain Sonnets : 1 : (Airport)i"Her arms are gravelled at the undertow", single work poetry (p. 40)
- Uncertain Sonnets (for Julie), single work poetry (p. 40-44)
- Uncertain Sonnets : 2 : (the Decisions)i"Not to be human but an emerald", single work poetry (p. 41)
- Uncertain Sonnets : 3 : (Vernal Equinox)i"Polychromatic springtime's gay cadenza", single work poetry (p. 42)
- Uncertain Sonnets : 4 : (for George Seferis)i"Delicate veined pale green sepals arching in nightfall's turquoise quiver", single work poetry (p. 43)
- Uncertain Sonnets : 5 : Directions for Dreamfishingi"First you must blow a bottle round your sleep", single work poetry (p. 44)
- Quantumi"The art photographer alone", single work poetry (p. 45-46)
- Spinozai"Spinoza scratched a core of light", single work poetry (p. 47)
- Sequestrumi"There's a special sort of madness in the colours", single work poetry (p. 48)
- That Mine Own Precipicei"this morning I seem to have woken up", single work poetry (p. 49)
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)
-
A Quick Graph : On Martin Johnston
Paragraphs from an Unwritten Letter to John Tranter
2000
single work
prose
— Appears in: Jacket , April no. 11 2000; -
The New Mannerism
1993
single work
review
— Appears in: Martin Johnston : Selected Poems and Prose 1993; (p. 278-282)
— Review of The Sea-Cucumber 1978 selected work poetry -
Poems of Subtle Perception and Ruthless Intellect
1993
single work
review
— Appears in: Martin Johnston : Selected Poems and Prose 1993; (p. 276-278)
— Review of The Sea-Cucumber 1978 selected work poetry
-
The New Mannerism
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: Southerly , September vol. 38 no. 3 1978; (p. 342-357)
— Review of At Last No Reply 1977 selected work poetry ; Icelandic Solitaries 1978 selected work poetry ; Shakti 1977 selected work poetry ; Round Trip 1977 selected work poetry ; The Departure 1978 selected work poetry ; Crying in Early Infancy : 100 sonnets 1977 sequence poetry ; Hovering Narcissus : Poems 1977 selected work poetry ; The Sea-Cucumber 1978 selected work poetry ; West of the Cunderang 1977 selected work poetry ; Vita Australis 1977 selected work poetry -
Poetic Images Bright and Not-So-Bright
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 6 June vol. 99 no. 5111 1978; (p. 61-62)
— Review of Icelandic Solitaries 1978 selected work poetry ; The Sea-Cucumber 1978 selected work poetry ; The Departure 1978 selected work poetry ; Thrusting into Darkness 1978 selected work poetry ; Product : Later Verses 1977 selected work poetry ; Friendly Street Poetry Reader No.2 1978 anthology poetry -
Poems of Subtle Perception and Ruthless Intellect
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: The National Times , 26 August 1978; (p. 42)
— Review of The Sea-Cucumber 1978 selected work poetry -
Reality Transformed by Art
1980
single work
review
— Appears in: Makar , June vol. 14 no. 2 1980; (p. 59-61)
— Review of The Sea-Cucumber 1978 selected work poetry -
Poems of Subtle Perception and Ruthless Intellect
1993
single work
review
— Appears in: Martin Johnston : Selected Poems and Prose 1993; (p. 276-278)
— Review of The Sea-Cucumber 1978 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) -
A Quick Graph : On Martin Johnston
Paragraphs from an Unwritten Letter to John Tranter
2000
single work
prose
— Appears in: Jacket , April no. 11 2000; -
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)