on 15/8/02 9:33 PM, maria fletcher at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Hope this goes some way to answering your questions - many thanks for
> the push!
>
> The stories that are missing - for me, stories such as those of the
> workers on the Central Plateau of Tasmania - as documented in the
> Central Plateau Oral History Project - "What's the Land For?"
Hi Maria,
I think I see what you are getting at re these stories. Oral history can be
an important feed for poetry but I'm not sure that it's the only. What about
personal testament? If I can be forgiven for mentioning this, I see that
writing about where I am as some kind of witness or testament. I have often
found that this is literally true, in that I will write about somewhere in a
city and very soon after that place, building, whatever, does not exist any
more. And the work that people did in these places also does not exist. I
see then that some of what I have written becomes a witness to what has gone
and will be forgotten.
I've been interested what Chris has been saying about nomadology. I don't
just situate this in The Bush or some non-urban place. I think there are
urban nomads and an urban nomadology. (I don't think I can deal with the
issue of romanticism tonight.)
I'm not sure that I want to juxtapose the urban and the bush. Why would we
want to do this unless we were trying to set up some kind of argument that I
don't think needs to take place? I'm tired of having to be grumpy about
these things all the time.
Thanks for engaging with this. My questions/concerns were genuine. Isn't it
interesting, I always feel at odds with the same Australian contemporary
poetry that you appear to be referring to, precisely because I write about
where I am and I always (even in this situation) have to continually justify
where I'm coming from. Maybe that is why some of the people you seem to have
problems with look elsewhere for some kind of validation.
On a slightly different tack, but one which some of this discussion directs
me to, I think it's sad that mainstream Australia is never going to give up
on this myth about the bush and the expectation that its poets have to write
about kangaroos and cows in paddocks and drovers and stockmen and/or indulge
in some kind of lyric nostalgia about ANZACS or blokes or gum trees or
whatever. I accept that few in this country can take anything else seriously
(this is the Howard era after all) but I maintain my right to my subject and
to write about what needs to be written - the political is never popular.
I have a feeling, now that the crackdown has started, that people are going
to have to exercise a bit of independence in this place even though it will
be branded as un-Australian. As an Australian, I maintain my right to be as
un-Australian (in this definition) as I can possibly be under the
circumstances.
Best wishes,
Jill
_________________________________
Jill Jones
50 Ruby Street
Marrickville NSW 2204
AUSTRALIA
[log in to unmask]
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~jpjones
|