Australia/New Zealand Mash-Up

I'm still exploring the massive continent of Australia. Fortunately I've had it condensed down to book form in 'Landbrige: Contemporary Australian Poetry' (1999, Freemantl Arts Centre Press) which was kindly lent to me by Chris. It is a fantastic book. I've read/skimmed through about a third of it and almost all the poets in there are interesting/original in their own way. Who knew? So far I particularly like Ken Bolton (who I already know about), Pam Brown (she has that gift or matching disparate images/language) and a prose poet called Joanne Burns who has a interesting style and suprising narrative (if you could call it that). I'm writing these down so I will remember them. The anthology is edited by John Kinsella, so I'm getting a greater sense of respect for him also.

All the poets have an opening section to say what their 'project' is. I can feel their pain. Ken Bolton wrote:

I don't think I have a project, beyond attempting to be interesting...I am also attracted to the aesthetics of the arbitrary and surprise.

Yes! Yes! That is exactly how I feel. The first and foremost responsibility of my work is to those things. I don't really care or even know sometimes what my work is about as long as it is really fucking good. As long as I am excited by reading and writing it.

On that note...I wrote a silly poem today without much direction and perhaps excitement. Maybe I can do a mash-up at some point of it and something to make something more meaningful out of it? 

I've never tried that before I don't think. I probably should. I have plenty of things that will never see the sunlight in their present form. That is not to say they are completely without worth. Who was it who said one of the great delights of poetry is to have to competing ideas/words next to each other and it somehow be true?

Untimely Meditations

I've been reading Untimely Meditations & Other Poems by Ken Bolton (1997, Wakefield Press). It is great to find something enterprising and fresh so close to home. One of my goals this year is to try and get away from reading so many American writers, not that there is anything wrong with that, but I'd like to find really exciting stuff going on in other places that are similar to NZ (culturally I'm thinking of): South Africa, Australia, Canada, England - colonies I guess. It must be out there I just have to find it.

So anyway, his writing is incredibly distinctive, playful and surprising. It has a level of unpredictability that is hard to find in Australasian writing (in my limited experience). I particularly loved the title poem 'Untimely Meditations' which was deliverd like an errant lecture on Australian poetry complete with self-deprecating discussion on the likes of Les Murray and the Australian 'Outback' school of poetry:

Les told us,

'Where's

the beef?'

as if poems were a sandwich

and his

had dinkum verities

and content, while ours were that relativistic nonsense

you learn at unis,

So pretty happy that I have found this guy (in the IIML library) and intend to read some more. Things I don't like are: 

• poems can be very long (why can't I handle that?)
  
• he is quite conversational using 'no, yet', 'let me see', 'when I think about it' that kind of stuff, which is both endearing and at the same time wasteful - I think something to be employed not too much

Also had a poem published in issue 3 of Swamp journal which is a Newcastle University (Australia) thing for postgrad writing students.

I've struggled to write anything that isn't related to our exercises so far. I think from next week I am going to have to start my one poem a day routine to try and get some miles under the belt.