Round Table with Anna Kerdijk Nicholson

Anna Kerdijk Nicholson, Greg Tome and Berlio 

Thank you to everyone who joined Anna Kerdijk Nicholson and I at Gilbert's of Mittagong yesterday for a chat about her poetry; the what, how and why.

Anna Kerdijk Nicholson currently holds a position on the Board of Directors of Australian Poetry and was previously an editor for Five Bells. Along with Anna's contributions to the Australian poetry writing community, she has published two books of poetry, the first of which, The Bundanon Cantos, was mentioned in the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Books of 2003. The collection of poems which became The Bundanon Cantos began in 1998 when Anna was Artist-in-Residence at Bundanon, near Nowra. Anna's second book, Possession, was published in 2010 and received the Wesley Michel Wright Prize, the Victorian Premier's Prize and was shortlisted for the NSW and ACT Premier's Prizes. Anna told us that the success of Possession was like 'having a child and watching them go off to uni and get a real job', she is amazed at how well received the book has been. Anna has also won the Arts Queensland Award for Unpublished Poetry and has been a prizewinner in The Society of Women Writers NSW Inc. National Poetry Prize.

The afternoon began with Anna reading three of her poems, one of which was 'Terra Australis ... land of the inmost heart'. This poem, like many of Anna's, carries a hard hitting message about the colonisation of Australia. Anna has written:
                       ....The mail-box names down the Dam Road are recent tributes
                       to us coming here to find, by digging the earth, what
                       in our hearts we sought: Eccles, Johnston, McWhirter,
                       Naidu.... (2010, p43).
Here Anna acknowledges that all who have migrated to Australia have come to find a home, a place where they can belong. Many of the poems within Possession, as Anna pointed out, are modern sonnets, this poem included. The modern sonnet holds to the 14 lines, but is not concerned with rhyme in the same way that a traditional sonnet is. It was remarked that within her collection Possession the use of the modern sonnet is a tool through which Anna is able to create a conversation between the ideals held during the time of Captain Cook and twenty-first century, postcolonial Australia. Anna commented that she was once asked if she viewed herself as a 'postcolonial' writer. In order to respond to this she researched the term and was thrilled to find that her writing could be described as postcolonial, but noted that she would not have described herself as postcolonial, as she does not think in those terms when she writes. Though, she does believe that a good poem should always carry some hard hitting message, the politics of the writer, underneath the imagery and beauty of the writing. She hopes that her poetry is able to draw a reader in through her use of language and description, but that they will come out the other end thinking about the political underlying message that is conveyed.

One poem that is perhaps a bit more hard hitting is 'Canto XX', which explicitly describes the inappropriateness of non-Indigenous Australians presence in Australia:
                       ....I look down on the lands

                       through my telescope -
                       armies are driving
                       across the plains
                       as I watch. I can see
                       spotted-brick encampments
                       and four-wheel drives... (2003, p49).
Our group discussed how the short lines of this poem echo the sound of marching. Discussion of the line divisions here, and of Anna's adoption of the modern sonnet, lead to a conversation about contemporary poetry in general and the forms of poetry that are most popular at the moment. Those present discussed what inspires them to write and Anna suggested other poets that we should be reading, poets who write on similar themes to what we explore ourselves. This is an important point, anyone who enjoys writing poetry, or any kind of literature for that matter, should be reading. Anna herself stated that she reads as widely as she can, with some particular favorites, such as Jill Jones, Peter Boyle and Alison Crogan.

Anna Kerdijk Nicholson deep in conversation with Ken Challenor

We moved on to an exploration of ekphrastic poetry, with Berlio reading Anna's poem 'Studies For a Nude'. The circularity of this poem was noted, with "...the very bare / soles of her feet..." appearing in the first stanza, followed by the repetition of souls in the last stanza, with "...toughness peeled to her / uninhibited, naked soles" (Meanjin, p216). Anna explained that the 'darker work' in the second stanza, asserting "...its alien qualities, andogynous / and defiant..." was a metaphor for herself. Anna discussed how interesting the process of writing from a painting can be, as well as writing from a journal, such as in many of her poems in Possession, which have been inspired by Captain Cook's journals, and some in The Bundanon Cantos, inspired by writings by Arthur Boyd. She told us how she will read a journal and take out the narrative, cutting the journal entry back to one core image, and then select lines from the journal which contain this image, randomly compile them to then gradually chop and build the words, lines and imagery that will become the final poem. This was a process that Ken Challenor was particularly interested in having recently experimented with writing an ekphrastic poem of his own. Ken and I will be reading our ekphrastic poems opening of an art exhibition, 'Zwischenräume - Spaces of Convergence', in the Faculty of Creative Arts gallery at Wollongong University on the 27th of July, from 12.30pm.

Greg tome expressed an admiration for Anna's use of imagery and the way that she is able to compact so many different ideas and meanings within one poem, but it is still able to flow and remain connected. Greg read Anna's poem 'Today the Distance Between the Threads of the Net':
                         Let us imagine it is the width of a chink of light
                         falling near a wife's foot as she passes her husband's door;
                         the worn dip in a butcher's block on the Mile End Road;
                         the width of a carriage rut in the mud in York;
                         the fatness of folded secret orders from the Admiralty;
                         or perhaps as thin as a goose's quill in an ink pot
                         on the St Lawrence River; but how shall it be measured
                         now, and how will we know when it is done? (2010, p51).
Within this poem there is an exploration of gender, colonisation and the passing of time. Jennifer D. Maree was interested in how Anna selects the right words for a poem, it is something that Jennifer struggles with, knowing if a word is to abstract and therefore readers will not be able to grasp the meaning. This interested Anna, who described this struggle as Jennifer's politics. Jennifer wants poetry to be for everyone, accessible for everyone. Personally, while I do think that poetry should be accessible for everyone I would like to stress that a word, if it appropriately captures the image, sound and texture of a poem should not be sacrificed. A reader will be able to learn through their reading, gaining a wider vocabulary, and these days with google it is so easy to look up an obscure word that might not be understood with a first reading. Though I do respect Jennifer's politics and I am interested to read some of her poetry as she informed me that she does have a self published book out.

You can purchase The Bundanon Cantos at http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Bundanon_Cantos.html?id=LW-tAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y  and Possession at http://fiveislandspress.com/catalogue/possession

By the Estuary

Jonathan Bate writes that “[a] Romantic poem may be regarded as a model of a certain kind of being and of dwelling… the poem itself is an image of ecological wholeness which may grant to the attentive and receptive reader a sense of being-at-home-in-the-world” (2000, p109). In this sense Mark Miller’s poetry could be described as post-Romantic or a reconfiguration of Romanticism. Within his poetry Miller describes the natural world in such a way that the people who are featured in his poems are embedded in their surroundings. An example of this is his poem ‘By the Estuary’, a poem in four parts, where Miller paints images of the activity of one day, from morning till night: “Making the most of the failing light, / a flurry of gulls / scatters like flecks of silver / late children shriek and dive / from the pier into the herringed tide, / down into the lathing currents / before scurring home / with the salt-tang still on their skin /…” (2010). Within this poem the birds, a dead seadragon, moored fishing boats, swimming children and fruit bats are all described in such a way that they all, the human and nonhuman elements, appear natural and ingrained into that place. The majority of Miller’s poetry displays this ‘ecological wholeness’ that Bate discusses, exploring the majesty of life, both human and nonhuman, along the Shoalhaven River. As Mark Miller stated in an interview, “[a] lot of my poems are about place, and although they… don’t have that overtly environmental, or conservation message to them, it’s there inherently or implied through the impact of the environment on me and on my sensibilities” (2012, pers. comm. 1 June). This comment by Miller demonstrates his mission to create a sense of ‘dwelling’ within his poetry, where the reader may take away lessons of preservation through an experience of the majesty of nature, as Miller views it. 

You can buy Mark Miller's Conversing with Stones at http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Conversing_with_Stones.html?id=twpgAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

The Secret Life of Poetry

On the 19^th of May I sprang out of bed, printed out a selection of my poems and headed to the State Library of NSW. With my precious poems clung to my chest I found my way to the Mitchell Meeting Room and made myself a cup of tea in anticipation of a day workshopping with David Brooks. Fifteen eager poets sat down to learn ‘the secrets of poetry’.

Brooks gave us some excellent advice such as, if you are interested in writing poetry you should be reading it. This is something that my dad has long been telling me and that I indeed do practise. I have been reading Mark O’Flynn and John Watson’s new books which I also discovered at the Sydney Writers’ Festival and am thoroughly enjoying. Watson’s poetry, in Occam’s Aftershave, is witty and fun as he explores the process of writing and the purpose of poetry. Flynn’s Untested Cures… is a beautiful exploration of nature, with imagery such as “…Leeches, loving the rain, turn acrobatic somersaults towards us. / They drop from trees…” (2011, p55).

Another piece of important advice that Brooks gave was that if you want to be published and you want to get your poetry out to the readers then you have to apply for every competition and send off your poems to journals and publications. He told us that you shouldn’t be scared of sending one poem to multiple journals. Just be honest, if someone picks up your poem, even if it isn’t the journal you would prefer to be published in, you must withdraw your submission from any other publications that you sent it to. This is something that I have been terrified of, sending my poems to journals and competitions, but with Brooks’ advice in mind I have been putting myself out there more and I will continue to do so.

An important piece of advice for me was to be careful not to write beyond the end of the poem. This is something that I have a bad habit of doing. It is very difficult to know when you have written enough, but not too much. For example, a poem of mine:

the girl in the bar

smashing of glass, a cry of ‘TAXI!’

movement of bodies,

money, drinks.

noise, DJ scratching all of the popular tunes,

poker machines sing,

a woman screams, ‘Bottoms up!’

one girl sits still,

silent, sipping cool wine.

she wears blue,

sweat glistens on her forehead

eyes gleam the colour of her dress

her cheeks and lips are flushed.

a fleshy faced, Mitch,

is already entangled in the image.

Brooks suggested that this poem should perhaps end at ‘eyes gleam the colour of her dress’. 

Another brilliant recommendation was to contemplate where to place line breaks and how to effectively use enjambment. In consideration of this, Brooks referred us to Denise Levertov’s article ‘In the Function of the Line’ (1979). Levertov notes that traditional poetry forms such as sonnets do not suit contemporary subjects as well as free verse: “…there are few poets today whose sensibility naturally expresses itself in the traditional forms … [t]he closed, contained quality of such forms has less relation to the relativistic sense of life which unavoidably prevails in the late twentieth century than modes that are more exploratory, more open-ended” (1979). Levertov wrote that “[t]he most obvious function of the line-break is rhythmic: it can record the slight (but meaningful) hesitations between word and word that are characteristic of the mind's dance among perceptions but which are not noted by grammatical punctuation” (1979). This is the best explanation of enjambment I have found so far. Brooks hoped to stress the meaning that a line-break can carry and remind us to be careful that we are not splitting up a single concept, confusing the reader by placing a word at the start of another line, which may not flow from that previous image.

All in all this was an informative workshop and I walked out with my poems still clutched to my chest, ready to test out some of Brooks’ techniques.

One Long Summer Afternoon

I have been busy working on my honours thesis the last couple of weeks, so much so that I haven't been able to find any inspiration for writing poetry. So, I have instead been reading. I thought I should share some readings of poetry with you.

David Tacey believes that “…good poetry (contemporary and traditional), is written from a spiritual perspective, and is often a celebration of the spirit of life, society and experience” (2004, p55). For Tacey literary theory has for too long practised secular readings of poetry, neglecting and sometimes refusing to acknowledge the spiritual undertone of much poetry, and it is this spirituality that Tacey believes attracts general readers to poetry (2004). In this sense, Tacey argues that literary critics have been interpreting poetry in a way that opposes a general reader’s interpretation. Tacey views the Australian natural landscape as a key source of spiritual reverence in the twenty-first century stating, “…in Australia, the country of reversals… the celestial realm appears to be ‘below’ us, in the earth itself, in the soil, rocks and plants of this ancient land” (2000, p94). By this premise place-poetry in Australia must be spiritual, displaying a level of intimacy between the poet, speaker, reader and the natural subject of the poetry. One example of such a poem is Australian poet Bruce Beaver’s poem ‘One Long Summer Afternoon’. It is set in Bundanoon, in the Southern Highlands and is aesthetically motivated, describing the visual appeal of lilacs: “…The lilac / lulled me away from dusty heat / to scenes as distant as another / life…” (Beaver 1991, p250). Beaver’s poem is transcendental in that the lilac transports the speaker to another space, where the speaker “…hovered half-in half-out of / myself…” (1991, p250). The representations of nature within Beaver’s poem are used as a metaphor for the speaker’s emotional experience of 'the country'. These emotions are linked to the place, but remain human-centred. The speaker is in awe of the space but is not concerned with the human impact on that space as the speaker drives past cow and sheep farms. Although the speaker does not openly acknowledge, for example, the devastation that hard-hooved cattle may have on the Australian earth does that mean that there cannot be a message of preservation taken from the poem? Jonathan Bate writes that “[i]f mortals dwell in that they save the earth and if poetry is the original admission of dwelling, then poetry is the place where we save the earth” (2000, p283). For Bate place-poetry does benefit the natural place that it engages with, through a connection of the heart with place, and by modelling relationships of praise, spirituality and respect for the natural environment. It is my contention that messages of dwelling are conveyed through recognition of a level of spirituality, or the sacredness of nature, within the poetry. In this sense Beaver's poem, where the speaker is in awe of the lilac flower and surrounding nature of Bundanoon, carries in it an underlying message of preservation. In this time of increasing environmental crisis messages of sustainable living are important for the continuum of species of flora and fauna that may be under threat from climate change and various agricultural, mining and development practices.

Slam Poetry

Friday the 15th of June at Gilbert's I was joined again by Gregory Tome to discuss Susan Stewart's poetry among others. Gregory introduced Stewart to me the week before, but though I enjoyed some of her poems as single pieces I struggled to read her book Red Rover in an entire sitting. This week I have also been reading Dennis McDermott and Peter Minter. These two poets are masters of imagery and language and I am afraid that Stewart's imagery of child hood games and nursery rhymes were obvious and repetitive compared with McDermott and Minter. It was great to talk to Greg about these poet's works and his own poetry.

FAW and SCWC member Ken Challenor and his wife came and had a coffee with me and discussed the process of writing in response to an artwork, as well as writing to a theme. It was lovely to meet Josephine and talk about the writing process with the two of them.

I have been thinking about attempting a slam poem for a while now, but yesterday, while attempting to write a poem on the theme 'Forgotten Days' for the FAW homework I found the perfect inspiration. Here is a first and very rough draft. I need to extend the poem and add some rhyme. My inspiration for this has come from Kasabian's song Days Are Forgotten. The lyrics for this song are absolutely the worst thing I have ever read, but a great starting point for a slam poem, hopefully!

Let’s set ourselves free with a helping of monkey brains

that’d be the way to go. Forgetting

days of our lives and the surfing couch

as we disappear under bleeding stars.

Kasabian get it,

we need to be free.

Put an end to black

too toos, tattoo sleeves

and bathroom tears, cos

we got blood lust

we’re going to live Twilight

8th of June Cafe Poet Residency

Another productive day at Gilbert's yesterday. I wrote a draft ekphrastic poem for an upcoming exhibition at the University of Wollongong Creative Arts Faculty gallery. I won't post the poem, just in case it is good enough to be published as part of the exhibition. But, let me share with you how I went about responding to Gela Samsonidse's artwork. He begins his art works with words and through his work explores the aesthetics of the word, rubbing the words back out. The piece that I have responded to is a charcoal and graphite rendering. I have tried to draw the words, emotions and concepts back out of his image, commenting on the sound of the words and how that relates to the meaning those words hold.

I also, had two people come in to workshop their poetry with me yesterday which was lovely. It was very enjoyable talking with some fellow writers, Berlio and her husband Ron, as well as Gregory Tome.

Yesterday I read a selection of Libby Hathorn's poetry from Talks with my Sakteboard (these can be found on a great blog 'An Australian Poem a Day'). This selection is written for children and is a great read. She uses rhyme and draws upon the everyday life of a school student to craft something, or multiple somethings, that is witty, clever and fun.

Finally, I began writing a poem on the theme of 'The Winter of our Discontent' for the second UOW literary Society Zine. I began by doing a twitter search of this quote and I rate the top tweet as: "now 'really' is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by cheesecake and fork" by @PresumptuousBug.

Fly

I didn't make into the cafe this week, as I was interviewing Shoalhaven poet Mark Miller about his work. I'll post some snip bits of this interview in a couple of weeks, when I have finished collating the wealth of information I gained.

Here is another poem that I wrote last week, to tied you over. It's a little silly, but it was fun. This piece was inspired by Craig Billingham's poem 'The Fan', from Going Down Swinging. A great little poem (Billingham's poem that is...)!

Fly

Can you fly?

What a wonder!
Please, let me ponder,
what it would be
to perch in a tree,
wind in my hair,
way up there,
to spread my arms
and prepare to charm,
as I whoop and hook
around for a loop-the-loop...


No, I said, Can you swat that fly?