MALA ANTHONY-RANU: 'Twin
Voices'
To read Mala Anthony-Ranu’s poetry is to be struck, initially, by the
poet’s irrepressible humour and exuberance, celebrating a life happy with its lot; a
positive outlook that persists throughout, defining the mood of the collection. Mala's
poems touch on various topics – a reflection on Dali, domestic pursuits, a way of
life left behind in India - but return inevitably to the familiar and recurring themes of
family, and the experience of migration to Australia. Perhaps the title - Twin Voices
- refers to the dual settings of the poems, the Indian background as origin and the
Tasmanian society into which she and her family have settled. What is very evident is the
joy with which the poet plays with words, the possibilities of balance and harmony they
provide: ‘forge poems / that rhyme with / my soul’.
Poetry offers many rewards;
instigates wonder
- A poem is not a secret
- But it is a whisper.
- A poem is not a tent
- But it is a shelter.
- A poem is not a lover
- But can bury deep in the heart.
[from ‘A poem is not an
atom’]
finds utility in the expression
of grief. 'I knit, it suits my lifestyle' speaks of a woman who waits with inexhaustible
patience by her son’s bedside
- My boy, Johnny has not stirred.
- Doctors forecast
- a deep, deep sleep.
- I sit and talk to him
- when there’s no answer,
- knit one, purl one.
offers unexpected
juxtapositions: the unforeseen 'split second friends' as a father propels his young
daughter above his head
- ... a missed heartbeat
- but always his catch
- safe breath away.
- Birds and clouds
- my split second friends
and when used humorously,
bridges cultures. To a child's question, 'Please, why are you / you know, all over?' comes
the response 'Well I'm a freckle all over'. 'A freckle all over' was one of a number of
poems shared with an appreciative audience at Tim Thorne's launch of the collection at the
2008 Tasmanian Poetry Festival where, in recognition of environmental concerns, purchasers
of the collection were offered a complimentary plant 'to reduce the book's carbon
footprint'.
'Twin Voices': ISBN 978-0-646-49810-2
mmranu at gmail dot com
BARBARA DE FRANCESCHI :
'Strands'
Barbara De
Franceschi’s poetry in her second collection Strands (Island Press, 2009) has
developed from the material presented in her first, five years ago. What emerged most
indelibly in Lavender Blood (Seaview Press, 2004) was joyful exuberance in the
discovery and development of a poetic voice. Strands differs in that it opens up
more spaces of enquiry: de Franceschi pares back to settle comfortably into a reflective
assessment of a lifetime’s lessons and achievements.
Strands
is partitioned into four sections, the first largely encompassing flights into childhood.
At times these simply recall past events, at other times they’re more reflective,
perhaps raising regret for opportunities missed, the occasions that might have been
managed better. The contemplative ‘Floral Confessional’ attends to personal
conviction: ‘As a child I confessed to hollyhocks / rather than those wire grills /
eager to hand out penance for fairytale transgressions’, and ‘I confessed to
flowers / blamed no one for my sins’. Personal relationships are touched on too,
particularly those between mother and daughter. And in the final poem of the section -
‘Mother’s Prophecy’ - we get a sense of the poet’s positive
[‘lustful for life’] outlook. Of the filial inheritance of aspects of a
mother’s nature and personality, de Franceschi writes: ‘Hair glinted with henna
/ sharp wit / generosity / I take these things willingly. / The sloppy housekeeping she
can keep / along with the arthritis / bingo nights / horse races.’
‘Mother’s
Prophecy’, with its lines ‘Skin smooth and fulsome / till the day she died at
75’, sets the mood for section two entitled ‘In the Moment’ where absence,
illness and death move in unforeseen perambulations. In ‘Just a Routine
Procedure’, familiarity – ‘… count backwards the number of times / I
have died alone in this hospital’ ushers in the denouement ‘I walk down the
corridor / leave my death for the cleaners again’. ‘Hospital Emergency 2
am’ asks why illness reaches ‘… a pivotal point / in moonlit hours //
disease has no consideration’. The words ‘I thought I saw you’ find
repetition in the poem ‘Imaginings’: in overgrown grass ‘bent to the mower
blades’, in flower beds ‘amongst festival petunias’, in every cloud….
This section of the book encompasses other realities as well, de Franceschi writes of pets
(‘my dog is casual about discipline’), ethnicity and the nuances of the
Australian migrant experience, (‘They live at the edge of paths / in the cracks
between / one culture and another’) along with the simple necessity of living
‘in the moment’:
- I have nothing to consider.
- No breath-taking moment divided
by
- illusion or reprieve.
- Every second counts/ like now
- a chosen occasion when on a
stainless stovetop
- I watch
- the pasta
- boil over.
The third section of the book -
‘Certain Species’ - emphasises the ultimate solitariness of the individual,
whether it be, for instance, the result of torment in the schoolyard (‘Constantine to
Con’), the loneliness of isolation (‘Chink in the Armour’, ‘Athens
Widowed’ – ‘Yesterday I saw him dancing, / twirling an invisible partner /
around the backyard.’ – ‘Doll’s House’) or social dysfunction.
The poem ‘Blank Spaces’ speaks of the lot of a young woman with a baby ‘who
cries as much as she does’, who fails to see the point of the form ‘they insist
she fill in / despite the frequency of visits’, and whose rage and frustration
reaches its climax when
- She scribbles on the back of the
form
- a neon history gone pale –
- defucked / deceived / deserted.
- Pins it on the noticeboard for
all to see.
- Next time she need only point
-
- Hey everybody that’s me
- just another infected ear and
constant puking.
The fourth section of the book,
‘Wanderings’, records travel impressions from both Australia and overseas. Some
of these localities are mentioned in the titles of poems: 'Rest Area Thackaringa Hills',
'Roman Renaissance', 'Mundi Mundi Plain', 'Beneath the Brow of Italian Alps', 'Christmas
on a Sheep Station'. They deal with place while reflecting the fruit of a lifetime's
observation. One could wonder at the self-imposed limitations facing a poet who’s
spent much of her life adrift of the cosmopolitan influences of Australia’s larger
centres, (in 'Semaphore and Growing Pains', de Franceschi - who lives in Broken Hill -
likens her wider experience to being ‘on loan to rented bedrooms by the sea’).
Yet it's not isolation itself that's ultimately limiting. Writers, as Amanda Lohrey
recognises, can live anywhere: ‘It’s their own idiosyncratic interpretive
apparatus that matters’. De Franceschi thrives in relative isolation, draws on her
experiences to write engagingly on diverse topics embracing social change, sexual
boundaries and mores, the body politic and much more, with considered and imaginative attention.
Strands:
Island Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-909771-78-2
ANDREW SANT : 'Speed &
Other Liberties'
Before the
advent of semaphore and morse code, it could take weeks - months - for news of calamitous
events to reach the outside world. But the information revolution has transformed the
world into a global village, the dollarisation of the globe allows swift transfers of
money to all corners of the planet and social networks have expanded to cover far greater
distances. The world, reduced to a 'world without walls' has, in short, shrunk to the
point of giving rise to the notion of ‘six degrees of separation’ whereby we
might feasibly connect with any individual on the planet through personal contacts with
just five other people.
That's not to
suggest it's a one-way street. The phenomenon of slow TV (and similarly, of the slow food
movement) has sought to plant a cautionary brake on the relentless march of technology by
stressing the local (and in particular, the notion of quality) rather than the uniform
offerings of globalised communications and produce. Nevertheless, we continue to
experience change at a mind-numbing rate. "Indeed, as things become more complex so
humans are overwhelmed and unable to deal effectively with constantly changing
requirements," suggests Mike Bolan, commenting on the Tasmanian Times website
[September 15th, 2009].
This is a
truism reflected in Andrew Sant's recent collection Speed & Other Liberties
(Salt Publishing, 2008) which is introduced with a quotation - ‘Contemporary
civilisation differs in one particularly distinctive feature from those which preceded it:
speed’ - from French historian Marc Bloch (1886-1944). Speed throughout the
collection can be inferred from the cosmopolitan reach and span of Sant’s poems,
variously set in Australia, China and Europe and other reaches of the globe and
effectively underscoring a lifetime's professional achievements: the poetry fellowships at
the universities of Leicester, Chichester and Peking, the co-founding of literary journal Island,
and now this the tenth collection of a celebrated career. Andrew Sant is indeed, as the
saying goes, a citizen of the world. It comes as no surprise to find him ensconsed on a
stool in a Hobart poetry venue, or to hear his name linked to judging panels such as the
distinguished (though now defunct) Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize; yet neither was it
unusual to find Sant - before his subsequent recent move to Melbourne - absent from the
reading scene in Tasmania for extended periods of time overseas.
Sant in this
collection experiments variously with tone, flaunts a playfulness with language (‘the
skaters got set, ready and went’) which slips at times from the simply conversational
('fumaroles is the word I'm seeking') to the gravitas of poems dealing with death and
displacement, ('The Morning of the Funeral' and 'Poem for the Refugees'). ‘Crime
fiction’, an elegy for the poet’s mother, is extremely busy - as if only through
a no-nonsense, perhaps mechanical approach is the poet able to effectively deal with loss
and grief. In the struggle to remain in control, Sant adopts a façade in the mode of
Raymond Chandler’s fictional crime detective Philip Marlowe.
- ‘I had to become a tough
dick for this,
- or fake it. Adopt a style,
- just to get by.’
There's a
determinable difference between Sant in the flesh and on the page; the poems here aren't
quite the Sant of conversational mode and earnest expression hammering home a point of
view. The conviction and acute perception migrate successfully to the page, but
there’s another measure in the mix: the clarity afforded from being a step
removed. The compassion of 'Abundance', the collection's final poem, exemplifies
this. The sea captain serves up for his dozen passengers, (his 'windswept watchers'), the
sights of minke whales, a colony of piebald seals, and gannet that jack-knife into the
water in search of a meal. Pared down, the poem - saying no more than is needed but
communicating far more than is said - reveals a heightened environmental sensitivity. This
is perhaps nothing unusual, given Sant’s many years' exposure to the cauldron of
Tasmanian environmental politics.
- It emerges slowly
- he once did have a crew and
lived from fishing.
- That's what the other seabirds,
guillemots,
- petrels, shearwaters, are doing
now, full time,
- large flocks drawn, as the boat
is, to abundance
- and, the well-thumbed bird books
show,
- the love of associating with
those now seen:
- a few house martins, here long
before there were houses
- still breeding in the cliffs-and
the watchful puffins.
- If all this is damaged, it will
stand as a terrible absence.
- There can still be returns
aplenty. The captain, alert eyes
- on the sea, knife-bright, has
lost nothing of his appetite.
-
[from 'Abundance']
Though exhibiting environmental
sensibilities, the poem 'Abundance' nevertheless retains a residual element of detachment.
‘Luxuries on Market Day’ comes with no such restraint. The temptation of bargain
chickens selling in triplicate at the market, draw ‘my eyes like a London fox’s
/ on gut needs. Gratified as any city dweller / with a well-supplied refrigerator.’
What follows is complacent contentment at 'abundant leisure' before an unexpectedly frank
admission of personal complicity. ‘My bargain implicates me in this’.
To my mind, consideration of
the latterly-mentioned poems raises interesting questions about the relationship between
the self and the world. Some argue that all we have is language, that poetry is nothing
but language manipulated to create meaning so how can it possibly describe reality? Yet
I'm reminded of an observation by UK poet and scholar, Peter Riley. 'It can't be true that there is nothing
but language, because if there were nothing but language there would be nothing for
language to do. There are obviously a lot of things in the world that language
needs to do with urgency.' [British & Irish poets, 28th August, 2009).
Any concern for the use of
language, one suspects, will include consideration of the tension between poetic practice
and social engagement; in Speed & Other Liberties, Andrew Sant addresses such
complexities with consummate ease.
Andrew Sant: Speed & Other
Liberties, Salt Publishing 2009. ISBN 978 1 84471 347 9
PAM BROWN : 'True Thoughts'
‘Counterculturalist’
seems as good a term as any to describe Australian poet Pam Brown whose lifetime of
oppositional poetry and politics - the legacy that culminates in her latest collection True
Thoughts (Salt Publishing, 2008) - points to a decidedly individualist nature, to one
whose choice has been the road less travelled. True Thoughts is 72 pages in length,
a hardback collection of twenty-three poems freewheeling through a landscape distinguished
by wide-ranging cultural, political and philosophical references.
Pam Brown has been a practising
poet since the early seventies, was for five years the poetry editor of Overland,
and in latter years the associate editor of John Tranter’s Jacket. Such
exposure guarantees she is well acquainted with the various trends of Australian poetry,
('I have read practically every poetry book recently published in Australia.': P. Brown,
her blog 'the deletions', Oct 2009), with its factions and subcultures. Yet for Brown -
deeply conversant with (but largely blasé about) the reductionism of labels - it’s
mostly about the writing.
- droning on is not
-
my way,
- mine’s more a kind of
-
devolution
- or
maybe,
- simply,
to make art
- through spaces,
- without
notes to myself –
-
none - myself to myself),
- chasing the unknowable,
-
(from 'Death by droning')
Brown's writing – not only
in this collection, but overall - is neither coercive nor shrill. The predominant approach
is for the personal, observant, matter-of-fact; 'essayistic' is the term David McCooey
uses in the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, 2009 to describe her
poetry. Innately political, Brown extends beyond advocacy to reveal a poet very
comfortable both with her ouevre, and herself; intelligence and intensity are on parade
but there’s little effort at salesmanship, the writing remains respectful and
accepting of others’ points of view.
-
he says (in 1940) that he lives
-
‘fatalistically’
-
that politics is useless,
-
& talking politics, worse.
-
he’s right,
-
I drop my fervour.
-
[from the poem ‘No Action’, referring to Samuel B. Beckett]
Utilising the full width of the
page and accompanying white spaces, Brown is in turn generous, astute, inventive,
unaffected, ironic - does the uncapitalised reference to ‘littlejohnnyhoward’
suggest anything so much as ‘diminished’? It’s a poetry of the everyday,
refusing to take itself too seriously yet characterised nonetheless by a je ne sais quoi
perhaps appropriately termed integrity:
- then Samuel B. Beckett
-
forwent
-
the apolitical and became active,
- dangerously, in
- the resistance &, later, in
the maquis
-
against the Nazis.
- not fighting for
‘France’,
-
fighting for his friends’ liberty.
-
- a
person
- any artist or poet
-
could only hope
-
to be as
-
courageous as
-
or, at most, as definite
True Thoughts is a
well-designed and handsome hardcover publication from Salt Publishing, a welcome new work
from a poet whose last major collection, Dear Deliria, was awarded the NSW
Premier’s Prize for Poetry (2004).
Pam Brown : True Thoughts. Salt
Publishing 2008. ISBN 978 1 84471 427 8
LOUISE
WALLER : ‘holding Job’s hand’
Louise
Waller’s poetry collection holding Job’s hand appeared a year ago from
fledgling Queensland publisher light-trap press, operated by Angela Gardner and Kerry
Kilner. Waller asks who can tell about the heart and its fugitive transitions, questions
the nature of our capacity for happiness.
- it’s amazing how large how
fast
- close enough to touch
- happiness is
-
(8)
One might
readily identify with Waller’s premise as concerns the nature of happiness, but
it’s when the Biblical figure of Job is introduced that questions arise. What, if
anything, is the relationship between Job and contemporary Australian poetry? Is Waller
sympathetic to the call of faith in an era when, by all accounts, God is dead? Cannot the
human condition be readily appraised without resort to a biblical context? And what’s
to be drawn from the analogy? Has Waller written a modern-day parable suggesting the human
heart remains unchanged from earliest instances of recorded history? Is it empathy for the
biblical character’s trials that moves her, admiration for his wisdom, patience and
triumph over adversity despite the loss of his wealth and health, his friends Eliphaz,
Bilbad and Zoptor?
- i won’t question much
- i already know how to suffer
life
-
(15)
The thirty
poems in the sequence holding Job’s hand came about via a number of
interconnected yet individual processes that drew on Waller’s concerns with climate
change and the fragile state of the world’s environment; ‘at the same time, I
was investigating profound states of loss, and the idea that hope is often all that seems
to prevent loss overwhelming individuals in certain circumstances, yet I wondered about
how hope endured during times of great loss’. Drawing on Job’s triumph of faith
over adversity helped to alleviate the concerns to which holding Job’s hand is
testimony, as are the various entries on Waller’s personal blog ‘lou-waves’
bemoaning environmental degradation (military exercises, coal port proposals) of central
Queensland’s Shoalwater Bay. ‘I wanted to suggest loss in terms of the
enviroment without being entirely obvious’.
In this regard,
the ‘Book of Job’ - having influenced writers and artists including William
Blake and the playwright and poet Archibald MacLeish - is a compelling choice. Yet when it
comes to concern for the environment, religious texts are likely - just as readily - to be
harmful. Genesis 1:28 [God blessed them, saying: "Be fertile and multiply; fill
the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and
all the living things that move on the earth."] gives rise to the problematic
notion of Christian stewardship of the earth, not to mention its effect on the individual
when Nature - dominated, manipulable - loses its capacity to awe; and when individuals,
conversely, lose their capacity for vulnerability.
like a
garment that is moth-eaten
- the earth a forest you wonder
about
-
- once canaries could predict when
air
- got poisonous
-
- stupidity shrugs
- the war carnage each death
-
- of a species
- in fevered bouts without sleep
-
- you see what was coming has
-
- over time these spoken words
- so much indecisiveness
-
(13)
Ever the
wordsmith toying with possibilities, Waller notes (in private correspondence) the
title’s ambiguity might suggest ‘the actual act of holding a hand, or it could
also imply, perhaps more fatefully, holding the particular hand that is dealt’. holding
Job’s hand is a deft and profound reflection on life; light-trap press are to be
congratulated. Poetry publishing - difficult at the best of times - becomes decidely more
so with collections of the physical dimensions [B5?] of this book, bringing to mind Chris
Mansell’s approach with titles under her PressPress imprint: don’t even try the
bookshops!
being old
and full of days
- what’s in the heart?
- another beat that counts
- minutes
-
-
not
miserably
- i still have my bones intact
- the warmth of another’s
hand
-
- rushing ahead
- filled with whatever pleasures
- are left
-
(30)
- Louise Waller : holding
Job’s hand ISBN 9780980486308
- light-trap press, PO Box 6418,
St Lucia, Qld 4067 www.light-trap.net