For those who haven't read it, Alison's novella 'Navigatio' is a
tour-de-force, that takes off with the speed of a multi-booster rocket and
ends up somewhere in orbit. Earth-orbit. Available from Black Pepper Press.
'Child's Play' has a combination of lyrical deftness and moral awareness,
those short lines, carrying lightly gravitas, that makes it an especial
delight to me.
david
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 11:08 PM
Subject: Re: bios, poems, and poetics
OK, I'll join in the toe-shuffling and embarrassed hand raising.
I find poetics statements very difficult, so I'll pass on that one. They
always seem inadequate and totally embarassing after the fact (though I
liked Les Murray's in Landbridge: "Poetry is indefensible"). For what it's
worth, here's a standard bio:
Alison Croggonıs poetry has been published widely in anthologies and
magazines in Australia and overseas. Her first book of poems, This is the
Stone, won the 1991 Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes. Her novel
Navigatio , published by Black Pepper Press, was highly commended in the
1995 Australian/Vogel literary awards and is being translated for
publication in France. Her second book of poems, The Blue Gate, was
released in 1997 and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premierıs Poetry
Prize. Her theatre work includes the operas Gauguin (Melbourne Festival
2000) and The Burrow (Perth Festival, Sydney, Melbourne 1994-95 and
broadcast by ABC Radio), and the plays Lenz (Melbourne Festival 1996),
Samarkand and The Famine (Red Shed Company, Adelaide 1997 and ABC Radio
1998). She wrote lyrics for Confidentially Yours (Playbox Theatre 1998,
Hong Kong Festival 1999). Many of her poems have been set to music by
various composers, including Smetanin (Skinless Kiss of Angels, Elision New
Music Emsemble), Christine McCombe and Margaret Legge-Wilkinson (Canberra
New Music Ensemble). She was poetry editor for Overland Extra (1992), Modern
Writing (1992-1994) and Voices (1996) and founding editor of the literary
arts journal Masthead. She was recently the 2000 Australia Council writer
in residence at Cambridge University, UK. A book of poetry, Divinations,
will be published by Arc Books in the UK next year, and Salt/Folio is
publishing her translations of Rainer Maria Rilkeıs Duino Elegies. With
Michael Smetanin, she is working in their third opera, The White Army.
Like David, I find it hard to pick any representative poems, but here are a
couple of recent ones.
_A digression_
Being proved non-existent, I rejoiced in the delicious air. Alas, an angel
grabbed me by the heel and started whispering flatteries. I floated to the
ground in order to hear him more clearly.
As the dust cleared, I saw the usual disasters were taking place on a huge
screen in the city square. A hundred children vanished in a puff of smoke.
A magician pushed his goggles onto his forehead and scratched his nose. A
woman sang the same words over and over again.
Then I noticed how many people were shopping. They walked indifferently
past a man who was weeping on a unicycle. Everything they bought turned to
rubbish in their hands.
I realised I must be at a fairy ball and that all those masks were futile
defences against enchantment. Only the clown bought nothing. He ground a
pomegranate into pulp with his oversize heels but not one coin clattered
into his hat.
I thought he must be very joyful, to be weeping so copiously. But as I
approached to ask his secret, he turned and vanished into a department
store. A beggar started foaming at the mouth and ran down three fat
children with a knife and fork. A mangy dog with worms drilling its back
was fossicking in a bin.
What is this? I asked the angel. And who dictates these horrors? But the
angel was trying on a new tuxedo.
From this level I could see how each smile dissipated into the dust of
reflections. Again I demanded, What is this? An answer came back to me
like confetti on a cold wind. It is called the Real World, the angel said.
It doesnıt look real to me, I answered, but he had already gone.
_Silence_
Silence broke my mouth:
the crumbs flew out the window
like paper butterflies or those magnolias
nonchalantly shattered on the grass.
These mirrors are confusing,
so cold and expensive, they ripple out
noiselessly like the sweet curve
of water from a cliff
where I am looking down, seeing further out
that blue point beyond
any voice.
_Childıs play_
What grieves terminally in that warm
angle of sun fat with voices
vapourised from play? You
know the calculation of angles, the nice
cut to the cushion: arcs of panicky
alternatives, weighted at the edge
of what is possible. The play
beggars choice: a willed act
cleaves trajectories where
eyes turn, and the hand
opens thus and the mouth speaks
doubtlessly. Luminous,
like a memory of god,
you can believe in it, knowing
it is everything there is.
Making the true, even
if itıs pointless. But no gripe this, just
the courage it gives you. Hold that feather
close: itıs all youıve got. Days
might dribble through your hands, leaving
their tried sediment, each morning
might seem heavier, but itıs how
images flicker past you faster and faster
without touching, that drills you
coreless, insubstantial. You have to reach
further inside, through deeper skins:
the animal curls up, refuses
your call: and then nothing.
But still you hear its breath, a bristle
of shock, walking unwarily
on a lightless road or perhaps in the sudden
gesture of a leaf. Only that eyes
flower all over you, and forget your name,
and you hollow and replete.
How damaged, that this is so little,
this lightness, that we must inhabit names.
What matters most is least, and that
refuses us shelter. How slight we are,
wrens running on a skin of rubbish
over a dark river: but still distinct, like actors
costumed as kings. A kiss will do
in lieu of meaning, its violent
unselving which tumbles us out, unlovely,
rotting, the blind dream
forging itself, intricate dumb chemicals,
and we their flickering screen. If
language infects us, our unease, itıs one of our
few beauties. No solace there:
what hones us makes us war.
So the Word
muscles in to save us, warping to false order
the desperate ignorance on which we stand
our vanities, only to crumble
on the cusp of speech.
Music might be us, deeply,
but we canıt bear it: our instruments
are too crude. We have
our hands, our lips, our eyes. Nothing.
Each other? Only what is released
briefly into lit arms. If we could hold
the dream of play and vanish
in the shimmer of that
blinding stream.
Alison Croggon
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