y separately published work icon The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap selected work   poetry  
  • Author:agent Martin Johnston http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/johnston-martin
Issue Details: First known date: 1984... 1984 The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap
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Contents

* Contents derived from the Sydney, New South Wales,:Hale and Iremonger , 1984 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
The Typewriter, Considered as a Bee-Trap, (for Roseanne)i"is no doubt less than perfectly adapted", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 7)
Cyclops Song : 1 : Esprit de L'Escalieri"Good manners, sir, are an infernal machine,", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 8)
Cyclops Song : 2 : the Afterimagei"Always the ship's echo drifts over", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 9)
Cyclops Song : 3 : Goya's `Colossus'i"If my verses seem conventional", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 10)
Cyclops Song : 4 : the Homecomingi"Well, what was Odysseus good at? (1) making things (2) lying -", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 11)
Cyclops Song : 5 : Some Versions of Pastorali"He ate my cheese; he tried to steal my sheep.", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 12)
Cyclops Song : 6 : the Recidivisti"But just consider his subsequent career.", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 13)
Aristarchus and the Whalei"Let us, to pass the time as we cycle", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 14)
The Scattering Layeri"Rain walks all night across the greenhouse roof", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 15)
The Secret Wari"No one makes slide rules any more.", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 16)
Bonsaii"All day at the flower show, `valuing ideas less for their truth", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 17)
Windowsi"It won't do, referring this spring day", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 18)
Reading Moby-Dick Backwardsi"Balke's guinea's forged: the sun's Quito doubloon", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 19)
Annulai"Here everyone lives around holes:", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 20-21)
Bolas (Killarney, Clapham)i"Again lies inside the statue the rough lump", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 22)
The Brazen Headi"I made a jar past the ten thousand things", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 23-24)
Duende in Darlinghursti"If out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry, what", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 25)
In Transit : A Sonnet Square, Martin Johnston , sequence poetry (p. 25-38)
Biographyi"About love and hate and boredom they were equally", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 26)
Hecate Countyi"`This faux pas may be on the nose' (SMH crossword)", Martin Johnston , single work poetry (p. 27)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Steps to Parnassus : Martin Johnston’s The Sea-Cucumber Aidan Coleman , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 66 no. 1 2021; (p. 60-76)
'Martin Johnston (1947-1990) left behind a slim oeuvre of remarkable poems, lauded for their wit and erudition. The son of  the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, he spent most of his childhood in Europe, living for almost a decade on the island  the of Hydra as part of an expatriate community of artists, which included the then little-heralded Leonard Cohen. He worked mainly as a critic through the 1970s, and in the '80s wrote subtitles for SBS Television. Johnston's life was also marked by tragedy. His mother's suicide in 1969 was followed by his father's death from tuberculosis the following year, and then his sister Shane's suicide four years later. These events haunt his writing. Johnston, who was an alcoholic for much of his adult life, died at the age of forty-two. During this time, he published an acclaimed experimental novel, Cicada Gambit (1984). He also published a book of modern Greek poetry in translation Ithaka (1973), and three books of poetry: Shadowmass (1971), The Sea-Cucumber (1978) and The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap (1984). An elegant volume of Johnston's selected poems, Beautiful Objects (Ligature), edited and introduced by Nadia Wheatley, marked the thirtieth anniversary of his death in 2020, along with the launch of a memorial website. ' (Introduction)
 
Rereadings V : Martin Johnston: The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap Martin Duwell , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 16 2021;

— Review of The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap Martin Johnston , 1984 selected work poetry

'Regular visitors to this site will know that these “Rereadings” are my excuse to look again at books which have meant a lot to me in the past but which, for one reason or another, I haven’t written about. I have long been wanting to revisit Martin Johnston’s last collection of poems, not because I feel that after thirty years it would be interesting to see whether his reputation has grown, plateaued or declined but because there are a number of very difficult poems in the book – especially those of the large, final sequence, “To the Innate Island” – that I might understand better if I could devote some serious time to them. Entirely coincidentally, 2020 saw the release of Johnston’s selected poems in a volume, Beautiful Objects, edited (with an excellent biographical introduction) by Nadia Wheatley, designed to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Johnston’s death. This volume, together with John Tranter’s Martin Johnston: Selected Poems and Prose, published in 1993, is a sign that readers of Australian poetry might be less prepared, in Johnston’s case, to let his memory slide into oblivion than they are in the case of other poets born after the war.' (Introduction)

In Transit : Migration and Memory in the Writings of Martin Johnston and Dimitris Tsaloumas Julian Tompkin , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 19 no. 1 2019;

'In August 1964 Martin Johnston boarded the Ellinis in the port of Piraeus, destined for Sydney, Australia, bringing to an end his 14-year estrangement from the land of his birth. Johnston, who had lived abroad most of his life in England and Greece, would return as a literal migrant to his own country. It was a theme that would prove fecund and deeply allegorical for the then 17-year-old son of authors George Johnston and Charmian Clift, later manifesting in his poetic works such as In Transit: a sprawling 14-part paean to Johnston’s immutable sense of displacement.

'A little over a decade before, in 1952, Greek poet Dimitris Tsaloumas would complete the same metamorphic journey, fleeing his Dodecanese homeland and arriving in Melbourne, Australia where he would take up the uneasy mantle of Australia’s Hellenic poet in exile. Despite parabolic overtures of assimilation, paradoxical themes of longing and dislocation pockmark Tsaloumas’s vast canon, tethering an uneasy union between his two divergent worlds both ancient and contemporary; familiar and profoundly alien.

'This essay explores the lives and comparative themes of exile in the works of both Johnston and Tsaloumas—writers who both identified as Xenos, a Greek word that translates as both ‘guest’ and ‘stranger’—and investigates the often incorporeal, irredeemable and contradictory natures of nostalgia and belonging.' (Publication abstract)

Cyclops Songs : Contemporary Sonnets B. R. Dionysius , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Five Bells , Spring vol. 17 no. 4 2010; (p. 125-128)
Martin Johnston (1947-1990) Gig Ryan , 1992 single work criticism
— Appears in: Scripsi , vol. 7 no. 3 1992; (p. 229-244) Journal of Poetics Research , March no. 4 2016;
Points of Entry Stephen Edgar , 1986 single work review
— Appears in: Island Magazine , Summer/Autumn no. 25/26 1986; (p. 118-120)

— Review of Outer Charting Hal Colebatch , 1985 selected work poetry ; The Unborn Child Speaks to the Sea Susan Schwartz , 1985 selected work poetry ; Universe Cat Rosemary Nissen-Wade , 1985 selected work poetry ; The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap Martin Johnston , 1984 selected work poetry ; The Refinery Jamie Grant , 1985 selected work poetry ; Selective Affinities : New Poems Geoffrey Dutton , 1985 selected work poetry
Martin Johnston : Typewriter Gambits Michael Heyward , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: Scripsi , August vol. 3 no. 2-3 1985; (p. 223-228)

— Review of The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap Martin Johnston , 1984 selected work poetry
Two Literate Poets : Fulfilment and a Jerky Start Evan Jones , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December-January (1985-1986) no. 77 1985; (p. 41-42)

— Review of The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap Martin Johnston , 1984 selected work poetry
Vanished World Gary Catalano , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 29 June, 1985; (p. 16)

— Review of The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap Martin Johnston , 1984 selected work poetry
Rereadings V : Martin Johnston: The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap Martin Duwell , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 16 2021;

— Review of The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap Martin Johnston , 1984 selected work poetry

'Regular visitors to this site will know that these “Rereadings” are my excuse to look again at books which have meant a lot to me in the past but which, for one reason or another, I haven’t written about. I have long been wanting to revisit Martin Johnston’s last collection of poems, not because I feel that after thirty years it would be interesting to see whether his reputation has grown, plateaued or declined but because there are a number of very difficult poems in the book – especially those of the large, final sequence, “To the Innate Island” – that I might understand better if I could devote some serious time to them. Entirely coincidentally, 2020 saw the release of Johnston’s selected poems in a volume, Beautiful Objects, edited (with an excellent biographical introduction) by Nadia Wheatley, designed to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Johnston’s death. This volume, together with John Tranter’s Martin Johnston: Selected Poems and Prose, published in 1993, is a sign that readers of Australian poetry might be less prepared, in Johnston’s case, to let his memory slide into oblivion than they are in the case of other poets born after the war.' (Introduction)

Cyclops Songs : Contemporary Sonnets B. R. Dionysius , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Five Bells , Spring vol. 17 no. 4 2010; (p. 125-128)
Martin Johnston (1947-1990) Gig Ryan , 1992 single work criticism
— Appears in: Scripsi , vol. 7 no. 3 1992; (p. 229-244) Journal of Poetics Research , March no. 4 2016;
Exiled by Circumstance and Inclination : Martin Johnston 1947-1990 Martin Duwell , 1990 single work criticism
— Appears in: Editions , September no. 8-9 1990; (p. 9-10) Martin Johnston : Selected Poems and Prose 1993; (p. 273-276)
In Transit : Migration and Memory in the Writings of Martin Johnston and Dimitris Tsaloumas Julian Tompkin , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 19 no. 1 2019;

'In August 1964 Martin Johnston boarded the Ellinis in the port of Piraeus, destined for Sydney, Australia, bringing to an end his 14-year estrangement from the land of his birth. Johnston, who had lived abroad most of his life in England and Greece, would return as a literal migrant to his own country. It was a theme that would prove fecund and deeply allegorical for the then 17-year-old son of authors George Johnston and Charmian Clift, later manifesting in his poetic works such as In Transit: a sprawling 14-part paean to Johnston’s immutable sense of displacement.

'A little over a decade before, in 1952, Greek poet Dimitris Tsaloumas would complete the same metamorphic journey, fleeing his Dodecanese homeland and arriving in Melbourne, Australia where he would take up the uneasy mantle of Australia’s Hellenic poet in exile. Despite parabolic overtures of assimilation, paradoxical themes of longing and dislocation pockmark Tsaloumas’s vast canon, tethering an uneasy union between his two divergent worlds both ancient and contemporary; familiar and profoundly alien.

'This essay explores the lives and comparative themes of exile in the works of both Johnston and Tsaloumas—writers who both identified as Xenos, a Greek word that translates as both ‘guest’ and ‘stranger’—and investigates the often incorporeal, irredeemable and contradictory natures of nostalgia and belonging.' (Publication abstract)

Steps to Parnassus : Martin Johnston’s The Sea-Cucumber Aidan Coleman , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 66 no. 1 2021; (p. 60-76)
'Martin Johnston (1947-1990) left behind a slim oeuvre of remarkable poems, lauded for their wit and erudition. The son of  the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, he spent most of his childhood in Europe, living for almost a decade on the island  the of Hydra as part of an expatriate community of artists, which included the then little-heralded Leonard Cohen. He worked mainly as a critic through the 1970s, and in the '80s wrote subtitles for SBS Television. Johnston's life was also marked by tragedy. His mother's suicide in 1969 was followed by his father's death from tuberculosis the following year, and then his sister Shane's suicide four years later. These events haunt his writing. Johnston, who was an alcoholic for much of his adult life, died at the age of forty-two. During this time, he published an acclaimed experimental novel, Cicada Gambit (1984). He also published a book of modern Greek poetry in translation Ithaka (1973), and three books of poetry: Shadowmass (1971), The Sea-Cucumber (1978) and The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap (1984). An elegant volume of Johnston's selected poems, Beautiful Objects (Ligature), edited and introduced by Nadia Wheatley, marked the thirtieth anniversary of his death in 2020, along with the launch of a memorial website. ' (Introduction)
 
Last amended 28 Jun 2004 14:03:35
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