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is a must have collection. Published by Puncher and Wattmann and edited by Martin Langford, Judith Beveridge, Judy Johnson and David Musgrave, this 658-page book anthologises Australian poetry for the last 25 years.
Taking 10 years to compile over 200 poets and 500 poems, it really is a landmark publication, a credit to the Australian poetry scene, and includes some incredible poets – Ken Bolton, Jennifer Compton, Peter Goldsworthy, Jill Jones, John Kinsella, Mike Ladd, David Malouf, David Mortimer, Les Murray, Jan Owen, Dorothy Porter, Mark Tredinnick, Fiona Wright, not to mention the editors themselves.
It’s being launched in Adelaide at the SA Writers Centre next Friday, which unfortunately I can’t make (off exploring Noosa), so I promptly ordered a copy. Flicking through for the first time, because this will need endless reads, two poems caught my eye – ‘Grief’ by Elizabeth Allen and ‘Snowflake’ by Anthony Lawrence.
Elizabeth is a Sydney-based poet and her chapbook Forgetful Hands is on my wish list. Hers is a powerfully poignant piece about her sister, who having lost her ‘Botticelli curls’
‘…has been looking into people like mirrors
but does not know how to make a face
that resembles the pain inside her.’
Anthony I saw at Mildura’s Writers’ Festival the year Sharon Olds headlined, who I was lucky enough to meet. His poem centres around his mother who cultivates a snowflake in the freezer ‘between the peas and the ice cream’, setting sapphires into her teeth:
‘At dinner I would pretend
to be a good son, and her smile
enameled the table
with points of dark blue light.’
This is a remarkable anthology, to be read, smiled, laughed, cried and absorbed between breaths, bit by brilliant bit.
Well I got me some done. Mainly because I was getting fed up of writing my details on any scrap of paper to hand, plus I do think it looks a little bit professional, don’t you?
So far I have parted with only a few – the obligatory one to the husband, and then a couple were given out at my recent trip to the Mildura Writers Festival, including one to Eileen Chong.
I do have more readings, festivals and workshops booked in to attend and participate in, including the launch of my first chapbook Smashed glass at midnight, so plenty more opportunities to spread the word of my own 🙂
And so the second session I attended at the Mildura Writers Festival was an insight into the work of Eileen Chong and Anthony Lawrence facilitated by Judith Beveridge.
I must confess I had never read either of their poems before and so was very keen to be introduced to them. Judith began by asking them how they write. Eileen explained how she allows a poem to ferment and doesn’t normally write until it is almost fully formed. She went onto confess she is a compulsive reader, books, packets, labels, really anything with words, and that she casts around for ideas to find a voice or mood to fit the subject matter. Anthony said his poems begin with an emotion, giving the example of driving from work one day when two gulls angled away from his fender and he knew at that point a poem was on its way. He also explained that he read a lot of lyrical poets, citing Leonard Cohen as one of his favourites (mine too!).
Both read poems about their grandmothers – Eileen about her paternal grandmother in ‘My Hakka Grandmother’ from her debut collection Burning Rice and Anthony read ‘Need’ from his forthcoming collection Wax Cathedral.
When asked by Judith about the actual process of writing, Eileen said she usually goes straight to the keyboard, whereas Anthony has a passion for paper and fountain pens, making meticulous changes by hand, although did confess that for his new collection he went straight to a Word document for the first time. Judith also explored if either have any particular rituals when writing, to which Eileen replied she has to have a clean house before starting and is not able to write if she’s anxious about something. Anthony said he can write anywhere without need for a formal structure and read a poem called ‘Murmuration’ about the movement of starlings. Eileen also read a poem from her forthcoming collection Painting Red Orchids to be published by Pitt Street Poetry who also published her first.
After hearing Eileen read her work it resonated with me, so I purchased a copy of Burning Rice and asked her to sign it, which she happily did. Having read it from cover to cover there are so many delicious images weaved within, and I particularly like her style of writing, succinct and yet so much depth is shared.
And so my first experience of this particular festival ended with a quick review over wine with two very good poet friends – Jennifer Liston and Louise Nicholas – who opted for the early bird package, something I plan to do next year.
The Mildura Writers Festival – what an amazing whirlwind experience! I say whirlwind because we drove for about 10 hours for me to attend 2 sessions totaling 3 hours, thankfully with an overnight stay! Next year better planning’s required, mainly signing up for the whole weekend but anyway, it was well worth the drive.
The first session I managed to sneak into just before it started, having totally forgotten about the half hour time difference, was Peter Goldsworthy’s chat with Sharon Olds. Peter began by asking Sharon how she came to write and so she explained at one point she used to speak to her friend in sonnets after studying Shakespeare at 14, and started writing out of love for it along with music and rhythm, soon having a preference for 6 beats per line. Sharon felt she wasn’t suited to become a scholar having failed her dissertation, and would happily give up everything she’d learnt to write poems, adding that she had, in fact, learnt very little! And this was just one example of Sharon’s gorgeous sense of humour collapsing the audience into laughter.
Sharon went onto confess she only wrote good poetry after writing a lot of bad poetry and had some nasty rejection letters, one from a literary magazine that replied if you want to write about your children, we suggest a women’s magazine a better fit! And that’s what Sharon is, a family poet, writing about a range of human wealth some find confrontational, a bit too close for comfort. When writing Stag’s Leap published by Jonathan Cape in 2012, Sharon explained she didn’t feel she was still under the vow of marriage and so could write about this very personal experience with a poetic rawness. She added it doesn’t matter if a poem makes her feel vulnerable, as long as it has emotional gravity.
Sharon read a couple of poems during the session and ended with ‘Ode to the Hymen’, a piece that was both funny and poignant generating loud hysterics that ebbed into thoughtful silence. And that is the power and magic of Sharon. Listening to her was divine, she is such a beautiful person and I wished the session had been longer, but I was absolutely thrilled to have her sign my copy of Stag’s Leap and felt she shared with us all a certain sense of peace, quiet in its power.
J V Birch 