Sure, and from this distance the edges blur if not become indistinct.
I don't claim to know many rooms in that mansion (then again, I don't
really know about the different quadrants in English poetry). We don't
receive the latest this side of the world, and I've been engaged in
much navel-gazing recently but I'll do my best to respond. Mostly it's
poets I've met at conferences or who've published over here or who I
talk to on email lists, so it's not a deep sample. I would be
interested in any pointers deeper.

In part it's due to my travel, I've been to Australia a couple of
times back in the 80s. I have have memory of Flinders Square, the
Stockmans bar, sailing up the long lanky coast for days on end. So,
nostaligia, and travel-memories. Another part, it's due to the
qualities that I think Australian poets exhibit, a confidence, a
feeling for words that speaks of not so much exoticism (although that
plays it's part, the experiences of the Pacific rim, a relatively new
land, also it's an exoticism that seems to speak to me in a way that
others do not), a way of putting things that made them strange without
unduly being constrained by the kind of circumstances I see around me,
or having the edge of ideology without the need to swing at it heavy
handed. Turning a neat phrase with punch and twist (leafing thru the
Ern Malley Affair, I come across the phrase, "the duke of dark
corners"), also a hardness, a toughness, a fuck-you-ness yet a
fragility, an underlying neurosis, possibly, a history of fake poets
which seems to me to rival the great Ossian. The Ern Malley affair
fascinated me for a long while, in all its small-mindedness yet
acheiving the wrong ends. In part it tuned to the fakeness I didn't
know I was going through at the time, a marraige about to break apart.

Yes, I know Oz is a monarchy (*rolls eyes) but still there's a kind of
I know no masters, independance about your poetry, a willingness to go
to the edge of syntax and expect or not care that we follow. There are
also darker edges, pain, harshness, cruelty.  A lyric which is new. If
I blindtasted a number of poets, I reckon I'd pick an Australian poet.
For a while I've been trying to emulate some Australian poets without
much success. There's something elusive about how poets down there
weld abstraction and concrete without it becoming wooley. OTOH, poetry
that comes from every day speech yet is plainly poetry, but not,
somehow, conversational poetry.

Sorry, not many technical reasons, mostly from the heart.

If I were to do a mashup, this is what it might look like:

                                                   I am still
the black swan of tresspass on alien waters
as they place a small bundle wrapped
in linen inside a hessian sack - the red stamp
of ASW wheat glowing like the stamp
of death
hushed to inaudible sound
the deepening rain closed around me
on those ridges where the road
has led me to hunger and darkness and again
pain grabbed me cruelly and tossed me
into the violent land of my body

Yrs
Roger

On 12/15/05, Jill Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Sorry Roger,
>
> I'm not quite getting it. 'Australian poetry in general' is too big a
> beast to, well, generalise about. Or to use another cliche, too many
> rooms in that mansion.
>
> What do you mean by 'guiding light', if you don't mind elaborating? We
> can leave names out, or list names anyway, but I'm curious now. I'd be
> interested to know from a non-Australian familiar with the field.
>
> Cheers,
> Jill
>
>
> On Thursday, December 15, 2005, at 08:51  PM, Roger Day wrote:
>
> > On 12/14/05, Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >> The Republic has been on the public agenda since the 1850s. It says
> >> something that it's not here yet.
> >>
> >> On 15/12/05 9:27 AM, "Roger Day" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I hear you taking traditions come as you please, given the freedoms
> >>> you say you have. I just don't see it in operation
> >
> > "in your poetry or attitude". Australian poetry in general - even down
> > to Banjo Patterson - has been my guiding light for years. Serves me
> > right for writing this whilst trying to write build tools for
> > cross-compilers.
> >
> > Hey nonny-nonny
> > R
> _______________________________________________________
> Jill Jones
>
> Latest books:
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>
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> PO Box 853, Warners Bay, NSW, 2282. [log in to unmask]
>
> Struggle and radiance: ten commentaries (Wild Honey Press)
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>
> web site: http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~jpjones
> blog1:  Ruby Street http://rubystreet.blogspot.com/
> blog2:  Latitudes  http://itudes.blogspot.com/
>


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