Alison, a small but for me significant note: Whenever a poet [Australian or
not] writes about things [flora, fauna] and places that I don't know and,
more important, can't 'see' [ie have no memories from experience or intense
reading/viewing], I draw a blank. Therefore, if an Australian or New
Zealander describes her surroundings, my mind reads "blank and blank and
more blank". I can read Glen Philips whose work I especially value or John
Kinsella and 'get' what they're saying because they tend to include few
indigenous terms. Unlike most of you, I'm a lazy reader; I won't stop and
research plant, animal, and place names, and if they load up a poem, I'll
just turn the page or put down the book. That applies to all the 'usual'
old literary references, as well, so I stay fairly ignorant, only
infrequently jumping to google or <gasp> read a book on exciting-to-me
references.
I find fascinating Max's 'tour' of Australian, Scottish, and New Zealander
poetry's connection to London [I read 'acceptance' by Londoners or
Englishpeople] and the wrestlings with conforming or nonconforming to
colonisers. In my country, USA, we have had successions and an increasing
proliferation of ethnic groups who've gone through a similar process, and I
think it has made us politically and poetically richer. There will always
be extremes as well as accommodations in the poets' works as they confront
their connections to the colonisers, and this will always result in extremes
in response.

Re the 'colonial' aspects discussed here, that wouldnae be offputting to me
simple because it has a near-universal ring to it and because I come from a
former colony. That said, my own preference, generally, is not for
political poetry; it is a poetry that is so difficult to write excellently
that it defies nearly every poet.

Best,

Judy

2009/2/24 Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>

> Thanks for those responses, fellas. Clearly "Australian poetry"
> doesn't mean much to anyone who doesn't live in Australia...
>
> I confess, I've never thought of myself as a Victorian writer (though
> I've often said I am a Williamstown writer, which makes sense).
>
> "Australian poetry" as a concept tends to fill me with depressing
> images of the kind that Max describes. It's still wearing its colonial
> rags, I fear, one way or another. Why frinstance do we have an
> "Australian Poetry Centre"?? Why not a Poetry Centre? (Why have a
> Centre? I suspect it's because the word "hub" makes bureaucrats gets
> all touchy feely and excited and they start throwing money...)
>
> xA
>
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> > That phrase, Alison, makes me chuckle. We don't want chauvinism in
> literature,
> > but Gwen Harwood seems more than a Tasmanian poet and you more than a
> Victorian.
> >
> > When I came to Australia after four years in Scotland, and twenty five
> years in
> > New Zealand, I realized I was being exposed to my third regional or
> national
> > literary culture with its anxieties about the relationship with London.
> >
> > The first evening I spent at Melbourne University in late 1967, or early
> 1968, I
> > noticed how the current 'names' in poetry were never introduced at a
> reading as
> > mere poets but as Australian poets. I asked about this, and without
> anyone
> > saying so sensed there was something defensive in the phrase, related to
> the
> > talk then about a 'cultural cringe' which once-colonial cultures exhibit
> in
> > relation to the metropolis.
> >
> > Scotland has a long famous history of debating how Scottish poets stand
> in
> > relation to their country and to 'English' poetry.
> > At least there the long history of Scots language gave poets there in the
> > twentieth century a range of choices - 'pure' English as Edwin Muir
> chose, or as
> > his contemporary Hugh MacDiarmid (born Chris Grieve) chose: a rich
> version of
> > vernacular Scots, beefed up with dictionary reading. Both achieved
> highly,
> > though late McDiarmid lapsed into standard English.
> > (BBC Glasgow in the 1960s however used voices almost unidentifiable as
> Scots.
> > That was then, and the diversity of voices more recently is welcome.)
> >
> > As a student and would-be poet in New Zealand up to 1963, I warmed to the
> older
> > generation of NZ writers who spoke of acclimatizing poetry to the new
> > environment. When I heard of Australia's Jindyworobak movement I
> respected their
> > dream of a nativistic culture, though some of the practitioners committed
> wacky
> > poems in their effort.
> > The models for all new literatures in an old language had better be Irish
> and
> > American, because of the greatness of their writers.
> > Yeats showed NZ poets and Australians how they needed to acculturate
> themselves
> > to the home country before they 'reached out to the universal'.
> > FOMatthiessen's book 'American Renaissance', focusing on Emerson,
> Hawthorne,
> > Melville, and pointing on towards Twain, and Marius Bewley's 'The Complex
> Fate',
> > taking up James's phrase about Hawthorne, seemed to show how attention to
> the
> > life and language of the knowable communities you come up through was
> > fundamental.
> > Your first audience is local, and if things go well larger audiences may
> warm to
> > you.
> > It had better not be legislated for, of course!
> > And it would be a foolish young poet who didn't read very widely.
> > The language of Australians deserves being registered by writers. Its
> rhythms
> > may even be detectable in some poems by Australians. Peter Porter, once
> thought
> > of as an expatriate, has said he was told in England that his pentameters
> were
> > unEnglish.
> > Oh I haven't got to the heart of the matter.
> > Max
> > (like the late Wm Hart-Smith, a poet of two countries)
> >
> > Quoting Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>:
> >
> >> Out of curiosity: (and also because I am writing an essay and am
> >> coming up hard against this one)
> >>
> >> What do you think when you see or hear the phrase "Australian poetry"?
> >> What does it call up? Does it mean anything at all?
> >>
> >> --
> >> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
> >> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> >> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>