Cirrus@Austlit

(Publication abstract)

'J.S. Harry was a member of the poetic generation that grew up in the shadow of World War II and did so much to change the poetic landscape as they tried to make sense of the postwar world. Murray was born in 1938, Tranter in 1943, Adamson in 1944 and Robert Gray in 1945. J.S. Harry was born in 1939. Although she made less noise than some of her contemporaries, she created an impact from the beginning of her career. Her first book, The Deer Under the Skin, was published in 1971, as part of an important UQP series under the direction of Roger McDonald, and was immediately praised. Also unlike some of her contemporaries, she knew how to do it from the start: whatever difficulty individual poems might have caused her—she was a careful and meticulous craftsperson—she never had to struggle to develop a style.' (Publication abstract)

'Recent books from Martin Langford have addressed specific themes: Ground explored the evolution of Australian spaces, while Eardrum focused on music. The Boy from the War Veterans' Home, however, represents a return to the miscellaneous sources from which collections are normally compiled. The title poem is about the difficult life of his father, but other pieces have been prompted by material as various as air dancers, lampreys and midges. Overall, however the collection is still pervaded by Langford's characteristic concerns: dismay at the ubiquity of triumphalist narratives - not least in our art-forms - and at the fragility of the spaces in which the subject is invited to step beyond them - together with an abiding fascination with the earth's brilliance and indifference. As well as the main body of poems, there are sections on the ambiguous bounty of story, on the writing life, and on the natural world - and a further supplement of Minims, his brief poems about music.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Martin Langford launched  The Leaving by Brian Purcell, Flying Island Books 2021 at a COVID impacted Poets Picnic at Markwell on 19 December 2021 '

'During the past 80 years Australian poetry has developed some distinctive characteristics. In the next 80, however, will it survive our passion for narratives of enlargement?'  (Introduction)

'In 2017 Alan Wearne quite rightly decided that the work of Robert Harris deserved to be more widely available than through a scattering of individual volumes, and crowd-sourced funding for a selected—which may be an example of Australian poets taking a bad situation into their own hands, but which should never have been necessary if the rest of the country was even remotely aware of the achievements of its writers. Judith Beveridge came on board as editor, and the result is this very handsome and user-friendly edition.'  (Introduction)

'Few things have puzzled us more, in recent times, than out relationships with our environments: not just rural and "natural» environments but built ones as well. Increasingly, it all seems like the one bewilderment: perplexity about how to see the green world is inseparable from anxiety over how to imagine the constructed one, As recently as 1978, Les Murray was able to write, "our culture is still in its Boetian phase, and any distinctiveness we possess is still firmly anchored in the bush" (179). The fact that poets like Peter Porter, engaged in a dialogue with Murray about this that stressed alternative - "Attic" — sources of authority: "the permanently upright city where speech is nature" (23), felt that they had to pursue such things overseas, only confirmed the weight of Murray's argument. The key thing, however, was that we inhabited a polarity, and that what one saw when one looked at either country or city depended on which viewpoint one looked from.' (Introduction) 
 

'Two generations ago, the proponents of free and metrical verse were locked in battle. Now, without fanfare—and with no pretension to being the only way of doing it—free verse seems to be everywhere. This has not happened by chance. In the process, it has developed some powerful disciplines, many of which still seem to be poorly understood.'' (Introduction)

'Like many poets, Martin Langford has long been intrigued by the genre of aphorism. The neat snakes collected here have been compiled over many decades. An alternative way of articulating what might otherwise be explored in poems, they nevertheless retain the poem’s elegance, and its characteristic tension between emotion and idea. Neat Snakes is a very different addition to Australian writing.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Misreadingsand othering aside – did Π.Ο. actually read any of the poems, or did he just know they were wrong? – there are important issues raised by Π.Ο.’s review. It may be worth saying something about the most important – regarding the level of understanding that the reader brings to the poem. Poetry’s role has changed over the last century or two. Most of our stories are now told in other formats – novels, films, TV. Most of our declarations of desire or loss are now sung for us as pop songs (though not all: there are still great love poems). Most of our declarations of loyalty and tales of patriotism have, thankfully, receded into a past of bad newspaper verse, and earnest recitals. But poetry has continued to do some things better, perhaps, than any other art-form: to find clear ways of saying what is otherwise only partially understood, to weigh those articulations emotionally, and, sometimes, to make them sing. It works a frontier: not just of our understandings, but of our responses to them: a complex edge of meanings and the weight of meanings. We think Π.Ο. has completely missed the innovation, the distinctiveness and the radicalism of contemporary verse.' (Introduction)