Ted Hughes, Jackson Pollock & The New Poetry – Poetry reading & workshop in Gawler – Other Worlds with Pedro Mairal & friends – Garron Publishing’s chapbook series – Little Windows Press’ chapbook series – Poems for October

Well, October always reminds me of the opening lines of Ted Hughes’ poem: “October is marigold, and yet / A glass half full of wine left out // To the dark heaven all night, by dawn / Has dreamed a premonition // Of ice across its eye …” (“October Dawn”). It’s a poem set in the northern autumn, of course, but it was published in A. Alvarez’s 1962 anthology, The New Poetry, which was my adolescent introduction to the work of Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Thom Gunn and others – including Ian Hamilton, who was an improbable favourite at the time, given his modest output. As Hamilton himself wrote: “Fifty poems in twenty-five years: not much to show for half a lifetime, you might think.” The New Poetry was probably also my introduction to Jackson Pollock, as the cover features his painting Convergence. In Adelaide (and elsewhere, I imagine), October is associated with the flowering of native frangipanis; November, needless to say, is the month of jacarandas. All of this is an aside.

Mid-October was busy poetry-wise. It was great to be involved in a poetry workshop and reading at the Prince Albert Hotel, Gawler, on 15 October. Aidan Coleman and I ran a small workshop on editing poetry in the morning, followed by readings by Aidan, Jelena Dinic, Rachael Mead and I, and an open mic session. The event was supported by Country Health SA, Centacare and the State’s Mental Health Coalition, as part of Mental Health Week. Happily, it was an outdoor event that coincided with the finest spring day we’d had till then. A chapbook was compiled for the reading, featuring the work of local visual artist Henry Stentiford.

On 17 October I emceed Other Worlds: Pedro Mairal and Friends at the Wheatsheaf Hotel, Thebarton, featuring Liz Allan (SA), Jaydeep Sarangi (India) and Jennifer Liston (SA), with acclaimed Argentinian author Pedro Mairal. It was the second event I’ve been involved with at the Wheatsheaf this year, and the result of some very unassuming planning by Matt Hooton and Nick Jose from Adelaide University. It was the evening of another fine spring day. Liz, Jaydeep and Jennifer gave excellent readings (short stories or poetry), and Pedro finished the evening with a prose piece, poem and song written during – and about – his time in Adelaide.

On 22 October, Garron Publishing launched its Spring 2017 series of chapbooks (its fifth series), featuring Jill Jones’ The Quality of Light, Peter Goldsworthy’s Anatomy of a Metaphor, Heather Taylor Johnson’s Thump, David Mortimer’s Act Three, and Cary Hamlyn’s Ultrasound in B-Flat. I’ve been carrying at least one or two of the chapbooks with me since then, as an accompaniment for any impromptu coffee. Once again, it’s an excellent selection of poets and poems and, for those here and interstate, the chapbooks are available from Sharon and Gary via the Garron Publishing website.

On 25 October, Alison Flett and Jill Jones gave an excellent poetry reading at Halifax Café. It was a perfect pairing: Alison and Jill, as Little Windows Press, will launch their second annual series of chapbooks at The Howling Owl, Adelaide, on 14 November (further details). In keeping with Little Windows’ intention that “[e]ach series has at least one South Australian poet, one interstate poet and one poet from a country other than Australia”, the 2017 series will feature chapbooks by Adam Aitken (NSW), Ali Cobby Eckermann (SA), Jen Hadfield (UK) and Kathryn Hummel (SA).

In terms of my reading, October included some of JM Coetzee’s early work, novellas by Denis Johnson, Jack Underwood’s debut book of poems Happiness (Faber & Faber, 2015) and Bonny Cassidy’s recent book of poems Chatelaine (Giramondo, 2017), among other things. There was also the inaugural Rogue State event on 31 October, but more on that at a future time.

Some recommended ‘October’ reading:

• Michael Dransfield “October elegy for litt”: “used to get through / three five six / books a day…”
• Jill Jones “Solitary October”: “Dawn is still cold, though leaves / are beginning to stretch towards the house…”
• Thomas Shapcott “October fugue”: “Stars the Bucket dipped to catch / darkness…”

The Best American Poetry 2017 – John Ashbery’s indispensable poems – Notes on Shastra Deo’s The Agonist & Sarah Holland-Batt’s The Hazards – Poetry reading at Halifax Café

I began September reading the newly released The Best American Poetry 2017, edited by Natasha Trethewey. The annual anthology – like our own The Best Australian Poems – is an efficient way to stay abreast of certain currents in American poetry. The 2017 anthology is more overtly political than other recent books in the series, though its preoccupations predate the current Presidency, underscoring the deep-seatedness of the United States’ cultural rifts. The anthology includes John Ashbery’s poem ‘Commotion of the Birds’ – originally published in Harper’s, along with three other poems by Ashbery and a commentary from poet Ben Lerner. Ashbery was, of course, the guest editor of the series’ inaugural anthology in 1988. It was sad news, then, to hear of his death on 3 September.

I’ve found Ashbery’s work at times impervious and unsatisfying, yet I’ve remained a consistent reader of it right up to his most recent books. For anyone new to Ashbery’s poetry, Al Filries’ list of 64 ‘indispensable’ Ashbery poems (published in Jacket2 in 2013, therefore omitting poems from 2015’s Breezeway and 2016’s Commotion of the Birds) is a good starting point – many of the poems can be found on the Poetry Foundation website. While uncharacteristic of Ashbery’s work, ‘The Painter’ is one of the few sestinas that bears repeat readings. And there’s something worthwhile about listening to the canonical ‘Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror’ in the poet’s own voice.

In terms of my September reading, I enjoyed reading Shastra Deo’s debut collection of poems The Agonist (UQP, 2017). One notable characteristic of the collection is the repetition of simple, elemental words across multiple poems – e.g. ‘body’, ‘blood’, ‘skin’, ‘mouth’, ‘tongue’, ‘teeth’, ‘throat’, ‘thirst’, ‘hunger’, ‘wound’, ‘scar’, ‘flesh’, ‘blood’, ‘bone’, ‘sweat’, ‘dust’. The use and repetition of these words is unlikely to be incidental as it’s not a book of imprecisions, as is evident elsewhere in the collection: for example, fish are referred to precisely – e.g. ‘black drum’, ‘mackerel’, ‘mullet’, ‘flounder’, ‘white trout’, ‘minnow’, ‘brook trout’, ‘cod’, ‘Alaska blackfish’, ‘silver shiners’, ‘rock greenling’, and ‘bream’. The collection is also characterised by its use of ‘simple’ terms for human anatomy: ‘hands’, ‘feet’, ‘fingers’, ‘toes’, ‘fist’, ‘kneecap’, ‘ribcage’, ‘chest’, ‘lungs’, ‘ankles’, ‘belly’, ‘elbows’, ‘knees’, ‘wrist’, ‘collarbone’, ‘spine’, ‘gut’, ‘pelvis’, ‘kidneys’, ‘liver’, ‘skull’, ‘waist’, ‘thumb’, ‘cheek’, ‘jaw’, ‘shoulder’, ‘eyelids’, ‘knuckles’, and so on – in contrast to the prevalence of precise anatomical terms – e.g. ‘melanin’, ‘synapse’, ‘gyrus’, ‘fibroblast cells’, ‘serum’, ‘metastasis’, ‘arrhythmia’, ‘dorsal and ventral cavities, ‘epithelia’, ‘ganglia’, ‘medulla oblongata’, ‘trachea’, ‘vena cava’, ‘deltoid’, ‘iliac crest’, ‘transversalis’, ‘humerus’, ‘glenoid cavity’. So, there’s an interesting tension between general terms and precise or formal terms throughout, and it presents an engaging way of reading into the book’s key themes.

In keeping with its use of anatomical terms, the book also includes drawings from Gray’s Anatomy. The body is conceivable as the stage or threshold (or, perhaps, altar stone) of the poems, either relationally or biologically – ‘agonist’ meaning ‘protagonist’ (the ‘I’ of the poems, perhaps), and being an anatomical term for a muscle that directly acts on part of the body. There’s something almost self-referential to the lines: ‘You may be forgiven / for thinking that love / is a butcher’s ritual’ (‘Chine’, the poem’s title, refers either to a joint of meat or an act of cutting). The repetition of the simple, elemental terms, and the use of the anatomical terms, binds the poems even at the level of the individual words, giving the collection a strong sense of coherence. The collection also coheres around its use of religious terminology – e.g. ‘desecrate’, ‘baptism’, ‘absolution’, ‘litany’, ‘crucifixion’, ‘benediction’, ‘penitence’ and ‘tenebrae’ (a number of which occur in the sestina ‘Bad Ritual’) – and its references to forms of divination. The collection includes several sequences of poems, including ‘Scout Tests and How to Pass Them’ and ‘Tarotology’, and a number of found poems/centos drawn from The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry. It’s a visceral and (at times) ominous read, and a memorable and accomplished debut. Australian Book Review has published a more thorough review of The Agonist, and I expect it will go on to garner further high praise.

The effect created by the use and repetition of particular words in The Agonist is reminiscent of the references to colour throughout Sarah Holland-Batt’s The Hazards (UQP, 2015). Of the 55 poems in The Hazards, all but three (‘Medusa’, ‘In the Mauerpark’ and ‘Ensign’) specifically refer to a colour – for example, the opening lines of ‘Of Germany’: ‘Of a green bicycle with a brown basket / and a slim pack of menthol Vogues / in a Munich café in June, of a black motorcycle, / or riding a black motorcycle in the countryside / to a palace with mirrored rooms …’ And the point is not just the number of references to colours, but that the colours are referred to in the simplest terms: ‘yellow’, ‘red’, ‘pink’, ‘green’, ‘orange’, ‘black’, ‘blue’, ‘white’, ‘grey’, ‘silver’, ‘gold’, ‘indigo’, ‘purple’, ‘brown’, and ‘olive’ (which is used just once) – resisting the impulse to broaden the poems’ vocabulary by substituting, say, ‘red’ with the more decorative ‘crimson’, ‘ruby’ or ‘scarlet’. The Hazards has been widely (and very favourably) reviewed, so I’m sure one reviewer or other has noted the extensive references to colour – though not to my knowledge. The strategy used by both Sarah and Shastra underscores (is underscored by?) a fundamental compact between the poet and reader that the ‘simple’ or ‘ordinary’ word is enough, and there’s something bold and inviting about this – particularly in contrast to a prevailing cultural and theoretical distrust of language.

The September poetry reading at the Halifax Café, Adelaide, was an excellent event, featuring Ken Bolton, Cath Kenneally and Banjo James. It was interesting to note a change of tone in some of Ken’s most recent work. In terms of poetry events in October, I’ll be emceeing Other Worlds: Pedro Mairal and Friends at The Wheatsheaf Hotel, Thebarton, on Tuesday, 17 October (further details). Pedro is an acclaimed Argentinian novelist, poet, travel writer and screen writer. It’s a free event that will also feature readings by special guests Jennifer Liston, Liz Allan and Jaydeep Sarangi. Also, Garron Publishing is set to launch its fifth series of chapbooks with a poetry reading at the Halifax Café on Sunday, 22 October (further details). The poets featured in the new series are Peter Goldsworthy, Jill Jones, Heather Taylor Johnson, David Mortimer and Cary Hamlyn.