I grew up with the usual range of Australian poetry at school that spoke of the land and people (Dorothea MacKellar, Judith Wright, Oodgeroo Nunuccal), though they didn’t move me a great deal. It was a different matter when I encountered haiku, beat poetry, and the Mersey poets in my teens, alongside Dylan Thomas, James Dickey, Sylvia Plath, Denise Levertov, and so on. They opened a world of musical expression, narrative, introspection, social and political issues that connected with my own times, and they were taking risks with form and voice. At the same time, the explosion in pop music put lyrics in every house via the radio and TV. That made it seem possible—even necessary—to write one’s own poetry and songs, and to experiment.
Would you say your childhood and teenage experience of poetry has had a distinct influence on how you write poetry now, and why?
We’re all products of our upbringing, consciously or not, and whether we happily embrace or resist it. The experience of reading and writing poetry from about the age of 9 onwards coincided with political upheavals and a growing focus on the individual viewpoint, all captured in poetry and song. Popular music, in particular, helped develop an ear for sound in poetry, however subtle that might be in application. The poetry and songs of the 1960s onwards also validated domestic reality, the features and landscape of the everyday, as a fit subject to sit alongside bigger concerns. These works were talking about our own lives.
Who is another poet whose poetry you admire and why?
So many, and for different reasons. I come back to Les Murray, Seamus Heaney, Wislawa Szymborska, Eavan Boland, and a host of others, but feel connected to the poetry of Billy Collins at the moment. While often criticised as an ‘easy reading’ poet, he uses his conversational tone and small-world subject matter as stepping off points for wry commentary on who we think we are and how we see the world. That humour both takes the side of the reader and questions it, especially through sudden shifts in perspective. His poetry is less about overt uses of sound and line break than structuring the presentation of an idea, though there is clearly a wry, narrating voice there.
It’s often said that a writer should show rather than tell. Sometimes that ‘show’ worries me, though, and it really depends how it is done. I prefer to suggest and almost show (well, usually) rather than to directly point, which would be a kind of rudeness to the reader unless delivered with appropriate irony. I like what Karl Kraus said: ‘A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.’ Leave the reader to do a share of the work and they will own the poem.
How would you summarise one of your poems in one paragraph?
‘Thirteen Ways a Blackbird Looks Back’ is a poem that hung around me for years, waiting to be written. It is a response, of sorts, to Wallace Stevens’ famous poem, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’. In short stanzas, it tries to get into the mind of the bird, sometimes with a bird’s eye view, and at other times with the quality of the bird’s perspective translated into a human setting.
How would you describe the appeal of this poem to readers?
I have asked other poets to read this poem with me by, say, alternating stanzas, so that there is a sense of different characters and voices speaking. The performance aspect is then more obvious. It works on the page too, thankfully.
I think the variety of voices and the way that the pieces eventually coalesce means it works on different levels at once. Its background is always the poem to which it is talking, the original Stevens’ poem, so that adds a constant other dimension.
Could you share a stanza or small section of this poem?
This is the whole of ninth stanza:
We are the dim assembly
Gathered on this wire—
A gravity of blackbirds
How would you describe the contribution this stanza or small section makes to the poem?
The particular outlook in each stanza helps build a feeling that the bird’s world is superior (at least, the blackbird thinks so), whether the tone is solemn or playful. I wanted this short stanza, in context, to suggest that, while the blackbird is actually something before which we should stand in awe, maybe these creatures are just taking themselves a bit too seriously in the poem—It’s a bet each way.
Would you describe your poetry primarily as narrative, thematic, character portrait, or how would you describe your poetry?
There is always a narrative, however faint. I think there are two other main aspects, though.
I focus on creating a narrating character that belongs distinctly to the poem rather than being identifiably, and predictably, myself. Each poem should have its own voice. It means offering a view of a subject that is particular to this narrator and the reader needs to determine that view afresh as the poem proceeds. ‘Who is speaking?’ is a key question that affects the experience of the poem, even when the narrator is not a forceful presence.
Apart from that, the poetry is usually a work that relies on one idea, but something novel. That can be through a twist or an unexpected combination of elements, perhaps even something a little surreal—Marilyn Monroe treated as if she were a property ripe for sub-division; an account of politely quiet sex in a public library; a speech by the minister for the weather; luminous fruit being used as streetlights, etc.—while others are more straightforward celebrations of life and love.
Do you read your poetry aloud to people? If so, how would you describe the size and response of your listening audiences?
All poetry needs to be read aloud. You don’t really know a poem properly until you have heard it, tasted it, and shaped it with the energy of your body by reading it out and, preferably, to an audience rather than in isolation. Draft, edit, read aloud, rewrite, read aloud—you keep discovering things in the poem, and they may not appear on your radar straight away. Line breaks may need to change, a line or two be dropped or moved to change the pace, an emphasis shifted, a word altered, and so on, in order to make the poem work better.
Poetry that is to be read aloud for an audience needs to be chosen for the moment, thinking about such things as acoustics, the mood of the place, how you feel, who read before you, etc. I usually have a list ready that is about half as long again as I know I will have time for, and then I make a final selection at the venue, maybe even adjusting that as I go if one kind of poem is or isn’t working well.
The size of the audiences has varied a lot depending on venue and occasion, from 20 or so to more than a 1000, from small rooms to writing festivals in marquees and theatres.
Do you write groups of poems to form collections? If so, how were the poems connected in your most recent collection?
Most of my poems are not written as a connected group, but I like the idea of the discipline behind such that aproach. I have done it a few times, for poems about the body, or country town living, or with other thematic links. I didn’t do this in my last published collection but I did for the next one, which is all about weddings.
Author website: I don’t have a personal site (yet) but some details are at: http://friendlystreetpoets.org.au/?page_id=307
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