Sydney City Poet

Co-Signed, K

During my first year living in Ann Arbor, I was inspired by a group of poets in the year above me who, as the WCWPCCS (the Washtenaw County Women’s Poetry Collective and Casserole Society), published a chapbook of collaborative poems. Though others made appearances in it (including male poets) the primary collaborators were Amy Berkowitz, Beth Divis, Emma Gorenberg, Kellen Grady, Elisa McCool and Jessica Young. Their first chapbook was called The Feeling is Mutual. Having not written collaboratively for a few years at that stage (and then only on theatrical and operatic works) I was inspired by the ways in which the group mind opened out so many possibilities.

This was further highlighted in my first workshop in Ann Arbor, in which we discussed one of Elisa McCool’s poems. She used the phrase “the third mind” (which she in turn told us she had found from Anne Waldman—though it has been used by many people) and reading that made something click for me. Bringing together two things, a third thing emerges that is the thread linking the two. To collaborate with another is to create a third mind: because anyone who has really let themselves enter this alchemical process knows that what emerges is a creative neither collaborator could have made alone.

While still in Michigan I participated in a few collaboration sessions, and always found them incredibly rejuvenating; since getting back I’ve pulled out a notebook with relative frequency when sitting with other people to see what happens. Not knowing what will happen is among the most exciting parts of the game: something appears, sometimes quite lumpishly, word by word or line by line or in any other increments that seem to work—and suddenly there it is.

As a writer, I live in my own head a lot of the time. I’m not the only person I know who fits that description. When in social situations I am usually jolly, but I often creep away from events early to recharge quietly at home. I chase the subjects I want to write about obsessively, and that often involves being alone with the page. I don’t mind these things: I like that time spent in thought. But I’ve discovered that writing with someone else can also be a form of rejuvenation: because the discoveries in those conversational poems are often so surprising.

Tomorrow (Sunday 27 May) I’m giving a reading at the Brett Whiteley Studio (2 Raper Street, Surry Hills; the reading is at 2pm—there is no charge) with friends and fellow poets Michelle Cahill and Toby Fitch. For this reading I wanted to think about the fact that this monthly reading series takes place in a gallery—and a gallery that was once the working space of one of Australia’s most iconic artists. At the moment Whiteley’s massive work “Alchemy” is on display: what better subject for collaboration? It’s all alchemy.

As poets we have all responded to Whiteley’s art in different ways—in our ways collaborating with the artist himself—but one element of the reading that I’m looking forward to is reading a couple of collaborative poems written with Toby Fitch as we pored over Whiteley’s work. As a reading this is something of an experiment—both nerve-wracking and exciting. As ever, I’m glad to have found myself in such a state: doing something new to me that I hope proves as refreshing to an audience as it has been for myself as a writer.

Alchemy Reading
Brett Whiteley Studio
2 Raper Street, Surry Hills 

2pm, no charge

Writerly Ancestry, or Influence and Anxiety

I love to argue with the literary critic Harold Bloom: my copy of his The Western Canon, for instance, is incredibly dog-eared, edge-worn and marked up. Especially the lists at the back, his extensive proposal for a canon of Western literature. I bring up Harold Bloom because he’s the one that introduced that phrase, with his book of that title, The Anxiety of Influence. As poets, we are almost honour-bound to reject the generation immediately above us, seeking out other models. I argue with this too: like all poets, I have groups and poets who attract me, and those to whom I feel an inexplicable aversion—but mostly I welcome the sheer variety of poetic forebears, and when feeling lost about what it is I’m doing, where I’m going, I’ll return to someone I haven’t read in years, or else I’ll push onward to someone I’ve never read, or never read intensively, before. I’d like to think that the “when” of these poets’ careers doesn’t come into the equation.

This is on my mind because this week I’m going to be in conversation with poet and podcaster Fiona Wright at the NSW Writers’ Centre as part of their “Talking Writing” series, considering the career of Judith Wright. A colossal figure in Australian poetry, I remember discovering her work in the Norton Anthology of Poetry as a teenager and thinking that, after all, it was possible to be Australian and to be a poet. As time has gone on, I’ve been interested, too, in the way Wright uses and addresses the landscape in her work, and have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about her use of form. Of particular interest to me in this area are the poems she called “ghazals.” In fact, these poems only glancingly resemble the ghazal, but what fascinates me was that she was looking to this different poetic tradition years before others. The ghazal had a moment in vogue in the Romantic era—amongst the German poets, including Goethe—and was then overlooked by poets outside the traditions of Arabic, Persian and Urdu poetries until very recently. Though I rarely publish “formal” poems, I have actually written quite a lot of poems that either adhere to or play on traditional forms, and Wright’s approach to the ghazal is one of the most interesting adaptions I have found. There are poets who have become gatekeepers for the form in recent years—no doubt worried about the way in which a longstanding tradition in Middle Eastern verse has been so quickly taken up and broken down by the Western poet—would most likely be horrified by Wright’s incredibly free interpretation of the form. Nonetheless, the poems are gorgeous and suggest ways to play upon poetic traditions closer to home.

Reading so much poetry, I often find it difficult to assess the impact any one poet has had on the way I myself think about poetry—but it’s a real pleasure to have a reason to revisit Wright’s work and to ask myself questions about the ways in which her example has suggested avenues for my own work, directly or indirectly. I’m looking forward to hearing Fiona’s thoughts on the subject, too: as two young female poets, separated by a small number of years, I’m interested to know how she came to Wright’s work (in the classroom? in anthologies?) and where she slots Wright in when it comes to her own personal canon or anxiety of influence. When I sit down to write, what I think nearly always becomes clearer as I keep at it; likewise, in conversation more facets of my own understanding come out as they are pressed against the knowledge and intuitions of another.

This conversation is a free event for members of the NSW Writers’ Centre. For non-members admission is $20—or you could just think about joining the centre, and enjoying more events in the future.

Talking Writing: Judith Wright and Poetry in Australia

Thursday 8 March, 6:30-8:30

NSW Writers’ Centre

Garry Owen House, Callan Park, Balmain Rd, Rozelle

On Translation, Poet Translators and the Creation of New Work

Poet, Editor and Translator Michael Hulse

A number of years ago I ran into an acquaintance in the library (he worked there; I merely frequented the place) and he asked what I’d been reading lately. I mentioned that I had recently begun reading a lot of Polish poetry. His response was that he didn’t really respond to the work of Cseslaw Milosz. This event has stood out for me for a long time because it wasn’t Milosz I was reading at the time, nor was it Szymborska, the other Nobelist—I had stumbled across the work of Adam Zagajewski and Zbigniew Herbert. 

This was before the larger selections of their work were commonly found in Australian bookshops, so the university library was my connection to their work. Nonetheless, his reply wasn’t surprising: because when it comes to writers in other languages, we really do tend to know only one or two names. Nonetheless, translators are working away on the books of many, many more authors—and many of these authors are just as deserving of attention. I wonder if sometimes we have a bit of a “one and done” attitude with non-Anglophone literatures. There is, after all, so much to read—if we know the work of Milosz, we know something of Polish literature in the second half of the twentieth century. (With the recent death of Szymborska—a sad event that at least had the happy consequence of bringing attention to her poetry again—Zagajewski will now be the prime living representative of Polish poetry for the outside world; Piotr Sommer will no doubt be next up.) Similarly, if readers know the work of Syrian poet Adonis or Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish they know something of recent Arabic-language poetry. I too am guilty of this, no matter how much I constantly try to address my own ignorance.

And it’s a lot to ask of any reader that they delve further: the world of so-called “world literature” is enormous, and often only translations of the biggest names are readily available. Only a couple of hundred books in translation are published in the United States every year, and no doubt only a fraction of these are published in Australia.

In a poem in his recent book Southern Barbarians, the poet John Mateer declares that “translators are angels.” I too subscribe to this opinion: translation is perhaps the ultimate labour of love. One translator I know translated a contemporary novel and for his efforts received only $500. Merely retyping a novel would surely cost more at any decent hourly rate; rendering the work in a different language would take much, much longer… Another friend translated Estonian poetry: among readers there doesn’t seem to be a high demand for this, and I doubt he’ll ever profit much from his efforts. But literary translators—especially of poetry—are rarely in it for the money. And though a few translators names are known—William Weaver, for instance, the translator of Italian authors Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino among others is well known—being a translator is often akin to being invisible. Yes, your name goes on the book as well, but the average reader pays little attention to it. The flipside is that many successful translators are also creators of their own work, yet it is their translations that reach a wider audience. Khaled Mattawa, an American poet of Libyan birth, and my former teacher, is now Adonis’s translator: he recently toured the United States with Adonis, and the pair gave bilingual readings. I was privileged to attend one of these readings in Michigan a year and a half ago. But Mattawa is also a poet of considerable power: I believe his recent book Tocqueville deserves serious attention. The book has received some of that attention in the United States, but coming from a small independent publisher, it remains unknown in Australia.

All this is on my mind because Michael Hulse is in town, and will be reading and talking at UTS tomorrow night. Hulse has a formidable record as a translator: best known for his translations of three of W. G. Sebald’s works (The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn and Vertigo) Hulse has done much, much more through his career—and has a lot of work ahead of him. He has translated authors from a range of periods, and is one of the foremost translators of German literature. Whether it’s a rendering of Goethe, Rilke or Elfriede Jelinek, you are in good hands when it comes to Hulse. And like many translators he is also a writer: he has published a number of books of poetry, the most recent being The Secret History in 2009, which followed on from Empires and Holy Lands: Poems 1976-2000. We know poetry won’t sell in the same numbers as, for instance, a Penguin Classics edition of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, but his poetry is well worth reading.

Beyond that, Hulse is an accomplished editor and anthologist. He edits The Warwick Review at present, and acted as the co-editor of Bloodaxe’s The New Poetry and, most recently, The 20th Century in Poetry. I’m looking forward to hearing him read and discuss his work tomorrow night; the event is free and open to the public, so please join us.

Michael Hulse Reading and In Conversation

UTS Building 3 (Bon Marche), Level Two, Room 221/2

Entrance on Harris Street, Ultimo

Tuesday 28 February 6:30-8pm

Poets + Picnic

I am delighted to be included in the line up for this year’s Poets’ Picnic run by Woollhara Municipal Council and the Woollhara Library, taking place this coming Tuesday evening, 21 February. I’d heard about this annual event from a number of people, and was honoured to be invited to contribute to the reading, taking place at twilight in the Blackburn Gardens. It’s a free event, and sure to be delightful. (Here’s hoping for good weather…)

Please join me, alongside Kit Brookman, Tricia Dearborn, Carol Jenkins, Vivian Smith and Alan Wearne reading poems loosely allied with this years’ theme, “Talking About My Generation.” There’s live jazz at 5:30, and the picnic kicks off at 6pm. This year it’s being hosted by Simon Marnie of ABC Radio.

Poets’ Picnic

Blackburn Gardens (next to the Double Bay Central Library)
New South Head Rd,
Double Bay

Tuesday, 21 February, 6pm

Ice in Time for Christmas

Image: Frank Hurley’s “A radiant Turret lit by the midsummer midnight sun”

__________________________

The ice was all between

The ice was here, the ice was there
The ice was all around

                                            - Coleridge, from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Though it’s summer here, I’m preparing for ice: this Tuesday (20^th December) at 6pm writer Rebecca Giggs and I are giving a free reading at the State Library for their weekly Tuesday in the Galleries program. The current exhibition celebrates Antarctic exploration, including maps from before the European discovery of the landmass, as well as objects such as Captain James Cook’s telescope.

Join us in the ice fields.

In the galleries
State Library of New South Wales
Macquarie St, Sydney

Poetry at Sappho’s: Tuesday 13 December

On Tuesday 13^th December (that’s tomorrow!) I will be reading at Sappho’s Bookstore in Glebe with a troika of lovely, talented ladies—Pip Smith, Felicity Plunkett and Fiona Wright. The reading is free, and I’ll have copies of Fire Season available there as well. As always at Sappho’s, there’s an open mic too.

I spent some of this afternoon pulling out poems and deciding what to read, and decided it might be nice to highlight some of the work that doesn’t address art or the Colorado River—somehow, even though both of these have been constantly on my mind, and on the nib of my pen, a whole lot of other poems have also kept conjuring themselves.

Tuesday 13^th December, 7pm

Sappho’s Bookstore

51 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe, Sydney 2037

Upcoming: Woollahra Local Writers’ Word Festival

The above image show New South Head Road over a century ago, in 1908. Want to compare the view this weekend?

Things seem to be getting busy in the life of this City Poet; and while last Saturday I had the pleasure of hearing someone else read my words at the inaugural “Acting on Ink” performance at the State Library of NSW (alongside wonderful poems by Robert Adamson, Jennifer Maiden, Cate Kennedy and Mark Tredennick), this coming Saturday I’ll be reading and speaking myself when I appear in conversation with Johanna Featherstone (of Red Room Company fame) at the Woollahra Local Writers’ Word Festival. An excuse to spend the whole day in Woollahra? And the opportunity to speak with people whom I might otherwise never meet? I think this sounds like fun.

The festival itself is small: there are only a few guests. Besides Johanna and myself, the novelist Adriana Koulias will be speaking about her journey as a writer, while Irina Dunn of the Australian Writers’ Network and Andy Palmer from Allen and Unwin will be leading the audience into the nuts and bolts of publishing. However the real focus is on celebrating the shortlisted and winning writers in this year’s Woollahra Writers’ Competition. This seems fitting for a local festival, and I’m glad to be a part of it.

If you live nearby and would like to join us for the day, apparently it’s best to book ahead: the event is from 10 until 4 this Saturday 26^th November at Woollahra Council, 536 New South Head Road, Double Bay. To find out more you can contact library@woollahra.nsw.gov.au

Event Management for Poets, or Finding Balance

I am in the process of organising the first real “event”—a reading—for my role as the Sydney City Poet. To be held at 6pm in the evening on 10 November in Wendy Whiteley’s garden in Lavender Bay, the reading will feature the first of the six poems I am writing in my official capacity, alongside short readings by Robert Adamson, Judith Beveridge, Martin Harrison and Fiona Wright. With these poets involved I’m sure it will be terrific… Please keep your fingers crossed for the thunderstorms to hold off. 

As a result of this impending event, I have of course been working on the poem I am producing for the reading—a response to Brett Whiteley’s painting Balcony 2, currently on display at the Art Gallery of NSW—but I have also been busy thinking about logistics.

I am, I have discovered, quite capable of organising things: in June 2010 I had the wonderful experience of being the Associate Director of the RAWI Arab American Writers’ Conference in Michigan, working with poet, mentor and friend Khaled Mattawa. It helped that, in my role, I never once thought of saying “No” when anything was asked of me: there’s something wonderful about just getting on with it all.

I do find, however, that I don’t always find the best ways to balance my workload when I’m both organising other people and writing: the two tasks require such different parts of the self, and while people know me as quite outgoing, this is something I have learned to be. My writing self definitely bends toward the quieter homebody.

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