Helen Hagemann Interviewed on Radio

VISION AUSTRALIA RADIO INTERVIEW - 23rd October 2009

Since my visit to the Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne in May and also because I am published in Melbourne by the Australian Poetry Centre, it appears that I have an affinity with this fair city. I have been interviewed on Vision Australia Radio. The program called "Hear This!" has now gone to air in Melbourne (with internet streaming). The interview centres around my images, influences & the challenges I face in the future as a poet. So, I'm using this space to sincerely thank Michael Heyward, Regina McDonald and the gang at Vision Australia Radio for their time & effort and for especially highlighting "poetry". Vision Australia Radio brings the news, articles, literature and topical items to vision impaired people. You can listen to the interview here on HEAR THIS!

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Poem for the Day - Percheron Horses & Carriage

Percheron Horses & Carriage

In Melbourne you move between two sidewalks
as the wind lashes the leaves from trees.

It's time to look at the city beyond its people,
people who will never change their looks. You've

waited for a friend who didn't come & now with
deceptive tenderness you watch two white horses,

nodding at the curb. Feather-plumes float like
breath. You unfurl fingers beneath a horse’s snout.

The coachman stirs. There are city streets to cross,
a handful of reins to snake from a dickey box.

There are lanterns for light, glass for warmth,
a Victorian carriage in gilded trim, top hat and

coattails, a blush of red inside for Cinderella
in ball gown, a Prince fawning beside.

Now autumn crowns gold into leaves, & the carriage
moves on in soft footprints, without clip-clop

on cobblestones, or a sinking into snow. Sitting
across & beside each other, we enter this horse-

drawn world, slowly progressing, as if we might
look back on another time freshly made for this.

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Poem for the Day - Fitzroy High School

Fitzroy High School

Overload Poetry Festival

The day after your arrival
is a high school reading.
We agree as poets it’s been a long time
between classes. Our eyes are pressed in
outward glances at closed doors,
Headmaster's office, a walk in the past.
Fear means we’ve survived school days,
a hijacked front seat, the less kind
at assembly, sports-day in F-team.
Yet here, school bags and lunch boxes
are full of tomorrow. It’s spring and everyone
is a new leaseholder in this estate. Waves
of green-grey-cobalt assuage otherwise old red brick.
In the front office, a ceramic bowl, toilet paper,
flowers, lighthearted verse; an assemblage
of nature prints as if this is an animal ready
to breakthrough from the past.

In the corridor there is friendly chatter,
boys swaying in sync, jovial song,
a guitar thrumming the air with every step.
Now we enter the sphere of year 8’s writing
prose, Year 10’s, pens on the Beats. Thank you −
Mr. Ginsberg − they hear your Howl.
An applause comes after our spill of words.
We wrestle the page in an attempt to hold them
in fierce syllables; gather enough faith
when James from Overload has them
in a rhythm of fountain pens. We uphill
shoulders, expiring breath from a ribcage
of doubt. ‘Is the struggle over to keep awake?’
‘Is poetry boring?’ Hands diminish in the count.
We pack up and go.
Unanswered questions remain,
At least, we concur, poetry has imprinted two hours
on young writers’ minds.

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OVERLOAD POETRY FESTIVAL 2009 REVIEW

2009 OVERLOAD POETRY FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS

I had never been to the festival before and I was charmed by the friendliness of Melbourne poets. They kiss & cuddle! Or was that after the beers? Nevertheless, the festival gigs that I attended were exhilarating and the poets more so. My first poetry call was the Northcote Social Club on Wednesday night, 9th September. The Slam Heat got off to a great start, MC'd by a lively and well-spoken Ninja in a Black T-shirt Crazy Elf (bulging muscles & all). During the night (All-Stars included), I was entertained by new and seasoned performers. I especially liked Gabby Everall's performance with her firstly whipping off a silver lame jacket, and then taking the risk to speak about the body & its invasion. Author of Dona Juanita - and the love of boys, Gabby performed a similar medley of words from that dark undercurrent of female experience that often brings women to poetry. Geoff Lemon was also a standout poet, delivering a well-paced, funny, entertaining, oft serious troupe of modern day harangues. A duel act at the end of the slam was also a highlight. The winner Steve, seated next to me, said he was broke and so welcomed his prize of $10. When it came to the best performances on the night in the All-Stars line-up, I think Lewis Scott and Maxine Clarke shone in their individual, inimitable style. They made me listen and hunger for more of their cultural rhythm & soul. My contemporary Ali Cobby Eckermann was by far the most uplifting performance of the night. I wholeheartedly concur with Koraly Dimitriadis's review Overland Overloaded, that we are so ignorant of Australia's Stolen Generation and the latest Intervention imposed on our indigenous brothers & sisters. And yes, when I listen to Ali Cobby Eckermann’s poetry I want to punch "The Minister's" lights out, but at the same time I am pleased that she is informing us of her personal struggles within her beautiful, heart-wrenching, poetic elegies.

Next stop: Fitzroy High School. Poets Lewis Scott, Kimberley Mann, Warren Burt and myself entertained years' 8's and 10's. Year 8's are writing narrative and year 10's are studying the Beats, especially Ginsberg's Howl. Some students strained to listen, while others contorted with boredom. However, thanks to James Waller's intermittent rescues, like getting the student to click pens, and then asking them up to read, it all went fairly smoothly in the end. The highlight for me was that several students spoke to us at the end of the session, and away from the pressure of their peers confessed that they had enjoyed the poetry. One young man is going to be invited to next year's Overload after reading his poem to the class with confidence and enthusiasm.

City Library, Flinders Lane, Melbourne was next. I awaited in anticipation for more stories from Ali Cobby Eckermann in the session Stolen Voices. Chaired by Kevin Brophy (Uni of Melb), I gained more insight into the massacres of aboriginal people. Ali confessed that in her travels now as a teacher of aboriginal children she is also learning more of the sad histories and stories of her people. Dr Tony Birch - Writer, Curator and Lecturer, Creative Writing at The University of Melbourne gave an informative talk on his experiences working with indigenous poets and students. Lewis Scott - Jazz Poet and performer from Wellington, New Zealand again performed his cultural enlightenment wherein he remarks, 'In my father's house are many mansions. If it was not so, I would have told you.' As an interpretation, I would say Lewis delivers a twenty minute monologue that is meant to have a unifying effect, wherein he tells us as human beings we are all one and the same, we have parents, a birth mother who delivers us into a cruel world. And once we are on that path it is for us to walk that path alone, to discover the self in the larger world, experiencing the sins and the revelations. How we deal with that world and the self is very much up to us.

Launch of the New Poets Series 2009 at the Dan O’Connell was the "pièce de résistance". Kimberley Mann, Ali Cobby Eckermann and myself launched our new poetry books. Ron Pretty our mentor, poet and editor spoke highly of each poet, first with a short biography which also included our back cover reviewer's comments. We read for 12 minutes to great applause from an audience of around sixty people. Teresa Bell, Director of the Australian Poetry Centre, spoke about the publishing opportunity now undertaken by the Centre. She also congratulated each poet as unexpected high sales of our books had been achieved with Ali Cobby Eckermann selling out!

I want to sincerley thank James Waller & the team of Overload for putting on such a wonderful festival. I wish I had taken the time to go to all events. I want especially to thank the Melbourne poets, and invited poets who I met for the first time, for truly being my contemporaries. Thank you: Andrew from ACT, Benjamin Theolonius Sanders,(sorry I missed your reading!), Johnny, Steve Smart, Denice Smart, Susan Fealy, Ann de Hugard, Michael Reynolds, Luis Gonzalez Serrano, Lewis Scott and Warren Burt.

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2009 WA SPRING POETRY FESTIVAL LAUNCH 28th August

Launch Event at the WA SPRING POETRY FESTIVAL 2009: Friday, 28th August

Soon-to-be, and recently published poets, including Graham Nunn (QLD), Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Gary Di Piazzi, Vivienne Glance & Helen Hagemann will read from their new collections at the launch. Special mentions by invited speakers, including Roland Leach will introduce each poet and talk about their latest successes & how WA poets are reaching further than their own shores for publication.

Distinguished guests include Professor Philip Mead - Chair of Australian Literature at UWA who will launch the festival, as well as other well-known poets Annamaria Weldon, Deanne Leber, & Kevin Gillam.

Venue: State Library of WA

Day/Time: Friday, 28th August: 4.50pm - 7.00pm

Grand Master: Peter Jeffery

WA Poets Inc. President

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Poem for the Day - Street Puppet

Street Puppet

In the middle of Swanston Street
in wires of rain, cross-walk lights,
a puppet skips over puddles.
In a cache of strings, a jiggled turn, a rise of torso.
The wooden man is small, barefoot, slightly
hidden under quivering shadows. The puppeteer
assures him there is no danger, as he guides
his puppet through the sidewalk crush
lifting his blue tattoos to the sky.

On the pavement, two living beings
tap out the rhythm of the dance;
the puppet in ragged pants, too short for winter,
the man alone, working the soles of his feet.
The streets are filled with emotion, shoppers
grazing the silent puppet,
as if he is one more obstacle to pass.
There is no enthusiasm for tiny legs
barely touching the ground.
No applause for the man who brings the circus
right up to the people.

Why, in the middle of a crowd,
doesn’t he lift weights?
Why doesn’t he rotate the sky
with Juggling Clubs or Knives?
Why doesn’t he pass a hat
when no one gives anything?

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Poem for the Day - The Drone of a Single Bee

The Drone of a Single Bee

A single bee collects all morning,
a sense for the endless storing of honey.
She knows the way in, the way out.
Her drone busier, softer
than the swarm of home.
Her legs brush against stamens,
forsythia crammed with sweetness.
Her saddle-bags are strapped
and yellow against the light.
She knows she cannot stay, already there
too long; the hive a world humming away.
She knows this winter there's an
absence of rain, fewer blossoms.
The honeycomb full of consequence & distance,
a queen's desire, eggs ready to hatch.
The cold wind might come
whisk her away, white clover
and pollen drying her tired, aching legs
curled against their hunger.

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Poem for the Day - a haiku

Tibetan temple
a worn rattan mat welcomes
the bleeding sandals

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Poem for the Day - The Intruder

The Intruder


The heads of the flowers are purple. Even the scattered wood pile is aromatic. Shrubs explode into green splinters and the air is super-heated. Dwellingup in January, and you sense by noon a tactile touchdown on floral sheets. Your compassionate friend has given you her house, a page of notes: the way the light falls, how the heat works its way through the house. I've made up the front room, please eat all the food! In the table centre purple flowers pout from their stems. You add a hasty smile to all that you touch: Italian coffee, wine, a complimentary shower gel. There's a washing machine, and no telephone! No mobile reach in this town where wheels jog along the ground. A cargo of timber spilling somewhere you imagine for a new Yunderup school. And there on the table a map spread across your palms: inland roads to Lane Poole, Hotham Valley railway; a history caught up in the text of a town, tree walks, the Bibbulum track, Nanga Mill, Yarragil. You think about the next seven days, watering the lawn, the timber-mill across the street; logs lazy as sleepers stacked for dreams. The chance of meeting a companion in the house! You'd rather choose a passage of flowers, the quietest of rooms, a glass of wine, even your nocturnal notebook & pen. You roll up the blinds, put the hi-fi on, lay topless on the bed. There's a rhythm of shuffling at your feet, a thick, black lizard trailing the dust from his skin. He sways side to side as if in adoration, then slips out. Soon to be located in the sun on the porch. Rounding off his gaze, his task finished, he ambles back to that little plot of earth where his life is contained, where there is a garden going on, and no one is singing.

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Supermarket in Ohio - Poem for the Day

Supermarket in Ohio

What are you thinking tonight, Mr. Ashbery, because I can see you walking the aisles away from pressing thoughts of words and kin? Are you by chance on holidays back in Dreamland where you felt comfortable in? Positioned near the oranges, zucchinis, avocados for colour & flair. There's more to see when you shop for images. Walt Whitman left the streets of New York to be near the melons, wives & babies with cheeks ripe as cherries & tomatoes. Ginsberg found time to follow Walt around, imagining himself the store detective in the corridors of cans. The refrigerator ladened with pork chops sparked more warmth for Ginsberg's poem, than any other I've ever known. Supermarkets can be boring for women, except when they see poets having a love affair with grocery boys. The cashiers, friendly in green, love to chew over them too. They'll tell you about their town; bamboo glade, rope at the creek. Some days the fog smoking the river upstream, sounds of bumble-bees, men pulling oars, the woodland smelling of pine; daddy out fishing. Not like you fishing for rhyme. It's not that I'm having fun, but the pastries and cream are ready to poke holes in.

I first found you in Dreamland, Mr. Ashbery, imagining your world. You didn't worry about the finish line, you let words drift like the wind does. It was definitely a hothouse, all glass and steam. A veritable market garden of green. Culinary herbs, hybrid forms later prepped for peasant dishes like paella, gumbo & pizza. All the colour and flavours mixed together so that we could cook up some prose.

You didn't stay there, did you in the supermarket? You left town, two wheels turning round. I followed your bicycle to Dreamland, felt the draft of hummingbirds coming on, the sun a bright mineral round. Dragonflies formed a dome in the air, and all the rotted docks that were rained on while Whitman was there, you slid on, and you not wanting to leave those distant hills, except for the cold sun going down. What a trip you had with every adjective and noun. The exercise left like a bicycle, the wheels tick, tick, ticking.

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Poem for the Day - Concert

Concert
for Emmylou Harris

The stars are on the stage tonight. I'm spun out by her sound, the melody entrusting you with its strength; clear, crystal. I love how she tattoos the air with her presence. Her blonde hair getting whiter with years. It floats exquisitely like her voice. Her guitar held as a woman might hold a newborn. The child in me - dancing, humming a song within a nearby "hush!" Her sad story of a soldier dad, telling me its poignant song. Why did I think she meant Jesus? The listen deeper than before. Emmylou, you are better live on stage; someone worth waiting for. Now you pass through our town and I don't want this night to end. It's iron hot in the stadium, and something makes me look up. All your songs drifting into each other. We're walking down a powdery road, the blue line of sky unfolding ahead. I stumble into the first tune. You change my version of Red Dirt Girl to Sweet Old World. I ask for favourites, Boulder to Birmingham, and Heartbreak Hill. She beats out a deluge of rhythm and soul. I'm lost in the breath of her lyrics, the soft rise and fall of her range. This Tennessee girl and I, travelling, walking down a road into graceful tunes of steel. Clouds darken and rise, and we disappear into the valley where city lights quiver as different stars; rain falling, reflecting yellow lines ahead. Just the two of us forming 'o's' on our shimmering lips.

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Evangelyne & Other Poems by Helen Hagemann

New Collection by Helen Hagemann
My new collection is now available. You can purchase from the Australian Poetry Centre or visit my website on the left.

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Poem for the Day - Evangelyne

Evangelyne

In the days coming to your door
from school, you practising Mozart & Liszt,
I wanted to climb inside your songbook.
Your fingers searched a Viennese waltz
− a melody I longed to play.
Evangelyne, you made lullabies of flight, lifting me
as a heron stretched from a lake.
In the practice of scales, I flew with blue wrens
atwitter in the shadows of leaves.

Where are you now, Evangelyne,
so many winters gone from home?
Are you still selling apples in your store,
playing Schubert, Brahms?
I have a daughter who plays,
her voice, mellow between breaths.
The steely notes of her guitar bringing lonesome sounds
of highways & a red suitcase to my door.

Like you, she left home to find meadows of stillness.
At the airport, my voice silent as prayer;
her small belongings clumping along
on a carousel to Carlton.

Evangelyne, I wish you good tidings, fields of clouds,
blessings from an old churchyard. Remember
how we rocked in the bosom of Abraham?
Remember the Minister's whistling teeth,
the mischief of our throats?
− all that's silenced now.

When my daughter returns, she opens a window
through a fretwork of strings.
When I listen to Mozart, to Liszt,
you open that old songbook,
& the youth we stumbled in.


(Inspired by Emmylou Harris)

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Poem for the Day Percy Wright's Carousel, circa 1932

Percy Wright’s Carousel, circa 1932

The horses are green and scarred. We are gazing at Percy Wright's carousel seventy-odd years from its turning. Voices travel on radio waves, and we hear the volley of summer, think of women mingling at the water's edge, a lifeguard above our heads in a little yellow cap. We do not miss our town, as we walk along the jetty, climbing grass dunes scattered with firs. Carnival shouts, sounds of tent pegs, a horizon of mirrors. Horses with clumps of flaxen hair are strapped to a pole.

Leanne says, 'This is a great aperture for making art.'

'In Paris,' I say, Eugène Atget photographed a dying era as artifact: an organ grinder, satyrs, a brass carousel with bulls and decorative cups.'

We move on through myth, into the canvas of street fairs and sideshows, the freaks of carnival. This is their home, their location. Only they do not move, but when we pass they smile as the organ begins. In the background, the operator is lighting a cigarette, and his smoke merges into a distant factory's plume that disappears into tiny clouds above us. Young women languid on the carousel in silk-wraps and bathers clutch horses; some link arms as if on a Sunday stroll. We watch them laughing, placed there together, as if they are the rare smiles of our mothers and grandmothers arranged in sepia.

Out in the air, the pulse of trombones; the wind percussing through the scaffold of horse. The silky women slip like soap from saddles, rythmically lifting and lowering their buttocks around the gallopers. We laugh at their antics.

Leanne says, 'Soon they will raise their skirts above their knees and kick out a Charleston.'

1932, the day shifting like a seagull on Percy Wright's Carousel, a foreshore of miniature cars, hot dogs, Hoop-la, and fairy-floss. An aroma of hot tea and the smell of sawdust trail through the courtyard, and the women are still smiling. Their faces float past, and the music begins again.

I do want to be beside the seaside. Oh, I do want to be beside the sea.

The trees swoosh by, the grass beneath our feet, as we circuit a shooting gallery, dart-board, ice-cream van, a man juggling carnival toys. We sway, our heads cocked back, looking up at the sky, clanging our garish horses until the paint peels. The trumpets and cymbals falling soft as a mist on a bald mountain, carnival's razzle-dazzle diminished in the denuded light.

The women swing arms over a distant hill, and as we raise the tent-flap, the clouds couple at dusk; our bodies as shadows, silhouetted before us.

I say to Leanne, 'What did you enjoy the most?'

'Letting go of the red and green balloon,' she says, 'and how the rippled shoreline left holes at our feet.'

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Poem for the Day - Camping WA

Camping WA

When the days seemed longer,
the road wider, we headed south,
panel van & surfcat hitched.

You knew where the road led, through acres
of Tuarts, valleys that searched the sky.

Ahead were thick forests in sleepy canvas,
first pee at Margaret River, before a coast road
to Walpole, smell of dieback as thick as the
leafy glare that fluttered through windows.

The kids' heads doing a backward pounding
into upholstery. Their hands scattering toys,
knuckles clenched for last punch.

White markers beside the road, large green
signs smuggling you in; to a right gravel turn,
Caravan & Camping five more ks,
- beware trucks crossing.

The language then: of leaving a city for solid
mountains, echoed laughter across the bay,
pelicans collapsed on a jetty,
fertile song encircling campsite.

The boss quickly chopping malley roots,
for billy tea, chops on a steel plate,
the peaceful coil of smoke.

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Poem for the Day - Kewpie Doll

Kewpie Doll

Little doll, good luck charm, fairy wings,
rustles her blue taffeta skirt in the wind.
She is part of carnivalé, as old as Ray Lawler's
play, Summer of the 17th Doll.
Flocks of morning light glaze her pink head
with only one dent, having been held too many times.
Her faded lipstick pouts an "O" as the mouths of girls,
words forming seduction in their heads.
She has lost her wand, her diamond ring,
but not her kiss-curl, her good luck heart.
At the windowpane she raises her suppliant wings
& reaching for the stars, taps
her tiny blue shoes against glass.
Fairy wings dispersing dust, as if she is back there
above the gaze of girls, lolling in the wind,
taking in the glitter of carnivalé,
the rustle of lemon & pink Kewpie dolls
luminous & young.

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Robert Adamson & Mark Tredinnick at PIWF

Perth Writers Festival - Sunday 1st March 2009: 5.00 - 6.00pm @ the Dolphin Theatre UWA.
Poetica

Robert Adamson and Mark Tredinnick will consider themes that shape their poetry and share some of their recent writing. Chair: Johanna Featherstone.
Robert Adamson's books, including Inside Out grace the shelves of my poetry library. I have all but two, however, his latest collection The Golden Bird includes poetry from those collections. I am yet to discover Tredinnick's work, but Adamson, I believe, along with Anthony Lawrence, are the best poets writing today. Both poets write of a life lived. This gives me the reader insight into their personal world, relaying an immediacy of experience, knowledge, and a poeticism (form & feeling) that convey a sense of "place/lifestyle" deep into one's consciousness. I know Adamson's world. I grew up on the Central Coast in Ettalong, Broken Bay, and therefore my interest in his work is not only associative, nostalgic & also inspirational, but allows me once again to enter the Hawkesbury - to enter into its dark recesses, as well as its unique beauty. I thoroughly recommend his large & beautiful book -poetry & photography Juno Gemmes- The Language of Oysters.

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VARUNA NEW POETS 2008-2009

2008 VARUNA New Poets to launch their first collections during the 2009 Sydney Writers Festival
As part of SWF 2009, Varuna Writers Centre has invited the Varuna Longlines Poets to their regional festival 17-19 May. The four poets, Helen Hagemann, Andrew Slattery, Ali Cobby Eckermann & Kimberley Mann will have their books launched in the newly renovated Gearins Hotel in Katoomba. Readings and book signing, plus sales of books & panel discussions will take place in the first part of the Festival week. Helen will be launching Evangelyne & Other Poems, Andrew: Canyon, Ali: Little Bit Long Time & Kimberley: Awake During Anaesthetic. Varuna Writers House

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Poem for the Day - Oysters

Oysters

Oysters are the barnacles at land's edge.
Tangled together, we prise them from rock,
gather their gritty caves, as if leaving the reef
wrecked with tiny-white burrs of empty skulls.
Now the sea is touching our tongues,
our minds not listening to each other
as we slide the muscle between teeth;
taste the oyster, if only in one gulp.
We work all morning, the tide inching its high
watermark, renewing a chipped & mottled look.
We bend & stiffen in the gathering,
amble back to the quadrangle for ice.
Olive trees shading our walk, to our own
private view of a café island;
the wind gathering in our hair,
pushing us forward to cutlery & tablecloth,
cane chair, eyes swallowing an ocean.

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Creative Writing at the Fremantle Arts Centre

Writing at the Centre – Fremantle Arts Centre

Poetry classes are run by Shane McCauley alternative Fridays to the Prose class. The class concentrates on the form, enabling new, emerging, or published poets to enhance their poetic writing skills, knowledge and technique.

Prose classes are run by Helen Hagemann who guides writers through a broad range of literary techniques and forms, including prose poetry, creative non-fiction, memoir and life writing. The class generally looks at the short story form which enables writers to learn the basics of style, narrative structure, characterization, plot, dialogue, exploring life experience, editing, etc. and how to employ these through writing exercises.

Why not come along, join in the fun, each Friday from 10.00am to noon. We encourage writers of all ages, $20.00 OOTA member; $15 Conc OOTA, $25 non-member. Have lunch under the trees with the Out of The Asylum writers in the gothic atmosphere of the Fremantle Arts Centre, where even Edgar Allan Poe would feel comfortable. For a .pdf class brochure contact Helen -hagemannDOThelenATgmailDOTcom or to join the class as an OOTA writer contact Jo Clarke ootawritersATgmailDOTcom.

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Poem for the Day - Christmas Parade

Christmas Parade

On the train my children are held
toward the sunlit window. They sway in
silence to a landscape not yet filled with
Fat Cat or Humphrey B-Bear; my son wishing
for Star Wars men & Yoda to appear.
We pass factories of ochre roofs, car yards
like gods of steel. Shops and cafés string
past in reminisce of tangy fish & garlic,
movie days of Thai food, coffee & cake.
My son interrogates me with blue eyes, his cool mouth
almost pouting, 'Are we there yet?'
At the parade, we are comfortable in second row
when a clown in red nose, striped suit, paces a single wheel
back & forth like children do in order to pee. My daughter
studies the end of the street, talks up her dancing school,
the sequin castle, Santa & Rudolph without the team.
My children love all this mayhem & noise,
even if the sun burns, even if the wind meddles.
As a family you cannot share their shade as it
threads its coolness over mums & babies in prams,
toddlers shy of motorcycles & whistlestops.
You must admit, you love the sun on the tambourines,
the beat of colour, bagpipe & sporran, a big pipe band.
It's infectious fun when the marching girls come;
a unity of spangles, each lightly twirling a baton
like ropes of hair. We let go of each other,
fantails & bon-bons caught mid-air like awkward balls
from cricketers in the score of one.
'Where is Santa?' my children need to know. No sooner
Cadillacs appear, residents waving amoré. There's a netted
boudoi, courtiers, princesses in gold lamé,
a crowned Christmas Queen holding her sceptre.
In the final car, high in his sleigh, acrobats in front,
the jolly man in red works his hands into canvas,
digs deep for the thrust of toys.
Parcels & balloons float down,
the crowd & my two children
ecstatic in the sweet rain of applause.

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Helen Hagemann's Poetics - The Female Voice

Identity and the Female Poet

Like the old catchphrase, 'what comes first the chicken or the egg?' - poetry also has this dilemma for the female poet. To establish her identity in her work it is a case of what comes first, language or voice? In terms of language she must work within the confines of a male-loaded language, e.g. chairman, mankind, brotherhood, freshman, etc. These distinctive features are predominately sexist. Dwight Bolinger explains that if you compare 'bachelor' with the terms spinster & old maid, 'bachelor' has positive connotations. Old maid has the metaphorical meaning of shriveled and unwanted. Thorne & Henley write: 'Language helps enact and transmit every type of inequality, including that between the sexes: it is part of the "micropolitical structure"...that helps maintain the larger political economic structure. At its most "trivial" level, the vocabulary provided by our culture limits severely the kinds of experience we can express for ourselves.' Lyn Hejinian states, 'There is no such word as "nipplelike", yet mastoid attracts nipplelike, temporal, bone, ear and behind. The definition for "nipple" brings, protuberance, breast, udder, the female, milk, discharge, mouthpiece and nursing bottle - and not mastoid, not temporal, nor time, bone, ear, space, or world, etc. It is relevant that the exchanges are incompletely reciprocal.'

These incompletely reciprocal features of language, therefore, are embedded in the subconscious mind. Jung wrote on the collective unconscious aka a priori: 'It is a storehouse of memory traces inherited from all previous generations...these memories...represent universal inherited tendencies to think and to perceive in certain ways.'

What comes then for the female poet when she writes? What comes from the wellspring of her collective unconscious? TRADITION comes. A form that requires erudition comes. Poetic sensibility and technique come. The stricture of grammar comes. CONFORMITY comes.
The poet writes from silence, and the female poet conjures language/ speech from a consciousness of the past. The search for identity and her female voice, that is to be so recognisably female in her poetry amongst power-loaded male language, is to go against tradition - UNCENSORED. The search for this female voice vis-à-vis identity is to privilege a type of language that is uniquely a poetic, female voice. For the female to find her own unique voice it is necessary to subvert the androcentric language in her work; in other words, to work the imagination against all known traditions of the centre - "god", "man" and "patriarchy" - those self-appointed keepers of the gate. The struggle for the female artist is to decide which path she will take, and in there she will find her identity and voice.

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Poem for the Day

The Last Tree Standing

Earthbound, the last tree stands.
You look up, a fleeting shadow crosses your path.
This tree is one of life's tragedies, quietly
tempering itself to be alone. What else can it do,
but drip leaves, wait for shattering rain,
watch its forebears roll past? A rumbling sound
disturbing root and twig. Double lorries
trussed with logs, a girth as wide as a stone
Hercules might roll. Relocation, destruction.
The space will bear out: untidy hills, poor drainage, salt.
'They don't tell us everything,' a contractor says,
painting a house in the street. A new house
spacious, alum roof, cream brick, concrete.
What have we become "cutting timber",
to mound wood chips, to hone tabletops
for the rich to panic birds?
Still, the one tree stands, mocks us with its
artistry, noble shade; its boiled sap
hearing the woodcutter's saw. Thinking
of an old land of wallaby, bilby, bandicoot,
a cooler time with every bird singing.

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Poem for the Day

The Paradox of Green

On the Destruction of Old Growth Trees, Dwellingup

When the day is twice as hot as the last day of winter, when a visit
to the country opens its secrets, 'doubt' like a downward curve touches
your shoulder. Suddenly you realise they're still raping the land.
Trucks criss-crossing the forest you used to know.
They bend to the task of filling up trays;
lorries hauling away a history of shade. And in the forests:
empty pathways, divided lots of tearaway soil,
bulldozer and saw ragging edges of old Jarrahs -
old growth without sanctuary, without song.
Seeing through it all, seeing the waft of endless
butterflies, you know the birds have fled.
Near the Murray, there's nothing so forlorn
as the empty soundless call of wind
through pines. Small pines, neat pines, no nothing
conifers that hold no wallaby nor owl.
You wonder if that one tree by the roadside,
graceful in its largesse of leaves,
still shares a sentiment with these foreign -
re-assignments filling up the hills.
On the road, the camera is the only thing that
regards this scene. And as you enter picnic
grounds, a gatekeeper informs you the road is rough
at the 2 mile-peg, and mutely anticipates
you will enjoy what is left
of a valley green.

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Robert Adamson

The Hawkesbury River


One of my favourite rivers is the Hawkesbury.
This pic was taken from the punt that crosses over the river at Wiseman's Ferry.

 

Robert Adamson
Australia - International Poetry Web

A Visitation

All night, wild fire burned in the tree tops
on the other side of the river. Now it's morning.
Smoking embers from the angophoras
are landing on the near shore
as a yellow-footed rock wallaby limps, dazed,
from the scrub, its fur matted.
Its tail barely able to support its weight.
Although wounded, it seems miraculous:
the soft yellow of its feet, the hard, sharp black
of its claws. It's the first yellow footer
I've seen for more than forty years...

Extracted from The Golden Bird - Robert Adamson, published by Black Inc.

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From a Feminist Perspective

This cartoon is totally irreverent, but nevertheless from a feminist perspective (& not just the woman in the pic), it's such a hilarious, subversive juxtaposition re "woman as sexual object".

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Poem for the Day

South-West Woods
                                    Tea Tree Cottage, Dwellingup

i
This year, like an inkling for shade
we head to Dwellingup: its wrinkled forest of leaves,
tree walks, birds writing songs of reminisce.
You have memories of the south, the holiday un/packing,
radio songs and kids in the back seat; camping
on the Blackwood river, loaded up with a promised
movement of bathers, scoop nets, rubber dinghy.
To this day, you do not know how 'holiday' - ever,
became a change of pace, a dialectics
of investment, rural containment,
erratic dreamlife, upheaval.

ii
Now these ghosts are long gone and this cottage,
as gift, coaxes us to its tenure of rest,
its pink myrtle, lilac borders,
timber verandah with an open sky
slithering down its starlight.

iii
Relaxed & seeking the flurry of bird & bush,
we trek the green valley dizzy with splendour.
We catch the season, evergreen: kangaroo paw
spider orchids, morning iris. Butterflies
twisting fugues of light; the Murray river rising
each time to meet rope and swimmer. We take in
the beauty of grass and ridge, a little summer heat
- wanting to be singed by this aroma of wilderness;
as if in its namesake Tea Tree Cottage
will promise us composure,
an early morning rise of watercolours,
of summer, a forest rolling past.
Six days of cabin life - we deserve it!
No high-tech, technivision, telephone.
Only a quintessential archway of cool air
infiltrating.

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