Cirrus@Austlit

'This article explores the dialogue between two poets: DC Chambial, who lives in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh and myself — Cameron Hindrum — living on the island state of Australia, Tasmania. This dialogue has been occurring broadly over the last couple of years, across which we have been swapping poems, responses to each other’s poems, and snippets of our lives and histories. For the specific purposes of this chapter, I have focused on the emergence of the poetic muse in each of us, and how — in different cultures, at different times, on different continents — the impulse of poetry has driven us both to explore our environments, our histories and the parameters of our knowledge of the world — or at least, our respective local areas within it. When asked about the constant of his island home (St Lucia) in his work, Derek Walcott replied that “What we can do as poets in terms of our honesty is simply to write within the immediate perimeter of not more than twenty miles really.” (Holland-Batt, 2021, 196) Consequently, in what follows I will be navigating the intersection of history, inspiration, context and creativity in providing a concise illustration of two poets in their place and time, as contrasting as they are, utilising poetic craft to examine respective environs that could not be more distinct from one another. To focalise this navigation further, I draw on two specific individual influences that have emerged: the work of William Wordsworth, and that of Philip Larkin. The contrasting poetics of these two giants of the canon provide illuminating and provocative punctuation for the aesthetic conversation between two poets on different sides of the planet, and their reflections on the craft of poetry.' 

(Introduction)