> Good to see all those people there, Andrew, & although nice to see you
> up there, especially nice to see Andrew Taylor actually holding that
> huge SALT volume finally available in Oz. Especially nice to see the
> seated listeners all looking like they're having a fine time hearing
> what they hear...
>
> Doug
>
Yes, I must admit that if Andrew wasn't on the bill, I wouldn't have told
you all of the site. It is interesting, isn't it, all these layers and
sublayers and subterranean layers of poets. That reading was interesting in
many ways for simply that. Glen and I have been around in this town since
Adam was a boy, and young Kate probably hasn't had a poem published. She
wouldn't have been born when I was first publishing in Westerly and Overland
etc in the mid-sixties. Danny G I don't really know much about, but he is a
very funny and quirky performer and poet - he doesn't fit any school or
poetry party, but is a wonderfully engaging personality when he's up there.
A kind of comedian with Roger Mcgough type echoes. His first book comes out
on Sept 12. Zan Ross likes to stand up and shock - She says so, so defuses
the bomb before she starts. So, each town and/or region has its poets who
have their own little clique, and mainly read to each other and a couple or
three friends in pub lofts or somewhere around a uni coffee house. For some,
this is the stimulation and publishing satisfaction they need, and it stops
there. Others push harder and higher, looking for arts funding to read
across the nation - and that's a long expensive way in Oztralia. With Andrew
it is a long publishing career with high quality publishers, writing and
publishing consistently high standard work and travelling and reading in
many places around the world both in his role as writer and as a
high-ranking academic (professor, etc). The push to make yourself heard is
hard if you're a retiring sort of poet. We have had a couple of poets who
simply drifted into silence over the decades because they never pushed
themselves out there and hence were 'neglected' by the convenors of readings
and the publishers of mags. One guy, after three books published, moaned to
me that he was never published anymore. When I asked where he sent work and
who he spoke to about his work, he said he was waiting for them to contact
him. He felt he deserved their attention. Ha! Good luck, buddy. If you pray
for potatoes, grab a hoe (as an American priest once said in another
context).
I'll shut up now. Sorry to ramble on so.
Andrew
|