In some ways this book is a very personal collection of poetry, an anthology for one. Lifesaving Poems was a notebook that then turned into a popular blog.
Anthony Wilson’s inspiration came from a Seamus Heaney quote questioning how many poems a person can recall responding to over a lifetime.
Answering that question, as this book does for Wilson, is going to make for a very select and subjective collection of poems. What the success of the blog showed though was that this didn’t seem to matter.
Lifesaving Poems presents each of the selected poems that Wilson recalls having an impact on him followed by a page or more of commentary. What I liked about the commentary was that it wasn’t academic analysis. Sure Wilson may have directed the reader to technical proficiency but overall I found the commentary clear, concise, conversational and engaging.
Indeed, while some of the poems did not inspire a response in my own reading, a thoroughly enjoyed all the commentary. Sometimes that commentary caused me to review what I’d read and develop a new understanding.
A side effect of reading Lifesaving Poems was of course being exposed to some UK poets who I hadn’t heard of. I did experience some frustration upon discovering (and getting excited about) new UK poets only to find that their works were only out in short print runs or from small publishers whose operational costs were high and priced the works out of the market for me.
But Lifesaving Poems might just be my favourite poetry book of the year. It’s approach to discussing poetry doing much more for me in terms of developing understanding and taste than the standard approach to reviewing and critiquing poetry.
If you’d like to sample some of the commentary go here. The commentary text is similar if not the same to that in the book, though the formatting is different.
A worthwhile spend for lovers of poetry whether poets or readers. And as a bonus its readily available in Australia through Booktopia.
It’s perhaps a sign of how divorced from the larger Australian culture poetry is, that I missed Philip Hodgins’ rise and impact on the scene.
The accolades don’t seem to gel with my experience: - “one of the major poets of his generation”, “a leading poet in any terms”.
I knew nothing of him until two years ago. And in my work as a relief teacher I have not once come across him being studied in classrooms (a crying shame considering the content and variety of his form).
This is not a criticism of the poet nor of the scene. It is, I think the times we live in and they way that poetry survives as an art form in this country.
While much of Hodgins works can be viewed for free at the Australian Poety Library, First Light gives the reader the chance to hold a curated collection in their hand. Something that’s suprisingly hard to do (there’s only one copy of one collection in the entire South Australian Library system)
I had searched the country for second hand copies of his Selected Poems to no avail. That First Light is produced by an American publisher is also curious for a poet that is held with such high regard.
I am, however, an unabashed fan and although I think we may have had some differences of opinion on some things, he is my favourite Australian male poet. I have read a library copy of New Selected Poems and in comparison First Light does as good a job of showcasing Hodgins’ best work: the skill with which he uses form and free verse, his updating of the realities of farming life in the poetry cannon and his poems on the subject of his own death.
I’ll leave you with links to some select poems contained within this collection:
I think any serious Australian poet should know of Philip Hodgins, particularly any one writing of a rural experience. First Light is a good compact collection that I think would appeal to lovers of more traditional form, rhythm and rhyme as well as free verse.
First Light is available at all good bookstores and online via Booktopia.
Some of the content is duplicated in each volume but they both have different objectives.
The former is a third edition of mainly North American Haijin (the third edition IIRC dropped some important early contributors like Janice Bostok from Australia) and it tends to provide a number of poems from prominent Haijin, enabling the reader to get a real sense of each poets oeuvre. I believe Cor attempted to choose the best examples of the form he could.
Haiku in English broadens the field of poets to include European, UK and Australian Haijin (current and historical) and attempts to reflect the history of the form, showcasing proto-English Haiku at the beginning and highlighting experiments in short poetry that stem from this Japanese form.
Indeed the jacket copy calls it “the first anthology to map the full range of Haiku in the English tradition”. So, as the editors forewarn in their foreword, it’s not a collection of the best of the best in the form. Which is not to say that those haiku selected are deficient in any way.
Where a Haijin may have made an impact or pursued a variation to great enjoyment and success, only selected poems have been chosen to illustrate the achievement. Some poets only have one Haiku listed and it may not be that which is considered best from their body of work, more that it might illustrate an important step in the tradition.
To that end Haiku in English is more about the form and its English history than individual poets or groups of poets.
We begin with Pound’s:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Examine parts of Wallace’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird:
Amoung twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird
and then it’s more or less off into more familiar Haiku territory.
There’s some 800 poems here including those from many top poets still active in the form. The collection is capped off with a comprehensive historical essay by Jim Kacian, which in conjunction with the various introductions collected in The Haiku Anthology, serve to preserve the history of the form and the important achievements of its Haijin.
There is a very real danger that due to a lack of interest from the core of Western poetry tradition (despite works being included from Heaney and Collins) that much could be lost. This collection serves to head off this possibility.
Haiku in English should form part of a core reading cannon in anyone seriously attempting the form. There’s also sufficient variety in the Haiku selected, that as a reader of The Haiku Anthology I don’t feel as though I have paid for the same material.
Haiku in English is currently available in hardback, though a paperback version is slated for release in January.
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I don’t tend to favour an overtly spiritual approach to writing the form and so Bruce Ross’ approach, which I feel does stem somewhat from this vein was initially …well not off putting, but presented a small hurdle (this is my baggage I think). The again, perhaps I am simply focussed on improving my technique and any “fluff” so to speak, how ever eloquent, poses an annoyance ( patience Sean-san).
How to Haiku doesn’t knock of its pedestal, Jane Reichhold’s Writing and Enjoying Haiku - A Hands on Guide, as my number one recommendation for new Haiku writers. I did find it offered additional insight though. So I think that its worth coming to, after you have had some experience and experimented with techniques outlined in Reichhold’s work.
In general I enjoyed Ross’ inclusion of relatively contemporary American Haiku in addition to traditional Japanese examples. I felt that this gave me a sense of where tradition has been continued ( albeit slightly altered through the change from Japanese to English) and where contemporary Haiku poets have begun to experiment or diverge.
I also enjoyed the inclusion of other forms of Japanese Poetry ie Haibun, Tanka, and Renga/Renku.
One of the things that I struggle with in reviewing poetry is the technical language with which to talk/ discuss it. Ross’ explanation/analysis of the poems he presents was aimed at a broad audience (leading some readers to criticise it as boring) which I think acts to both give the reader some pointers on how to talk about Haiku in addition to providing an explanation of the content and techniques. Better to over explain I think.
Like Reichhold I do appreciate Ross’ “Guideline” approach to the writing of Haiku. He presents the tradition, gives you examples of that tradition – contemporary and pre-modern and leaves it up to you. I think this allows for respect of the form without slavish adherence to rules that I think will ultimately restrict it and result in stagnation. His discussion on the difference between the qualities of Wabi and Sabi was also helpful.
In each of the other forms mentioned above I gained something from reading Ross’ work. I have struggled for sometime to attempt Haibun and Ross provided four different approaches and highlighted traditional and contemporary examples. His identification of the divergent traditions of Tanka were similarly illustrative. His explanation of the linking in Renga was perhaps the best I have come across.
So, a worthwhile addition to your library? I think so. Not a beginning point but certainly worth it for those with some experience/exposure to the form under their belt.
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It’s an indictment on our culture I think, that outside of poetry circles, not many would know who he was now. His work is approachable, grounded in rural life Australian Rules Football and towards the end of his life, the difficulties of confronting a terminal illness.
You can view his work at the Australian Poetry Library to get a taste and download a pdf copy at $3 a poem, hunt for one of his collections second hand or from tomorrow you can get you hands on the only collection of his in print, First Light.
If you’re keen, Booktopia have free shipping until midnight tonight (code: FREEBIE)*
* Yes I get affiliate commissions through these links.
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I was pleasantly surprised by the discovery and the fact that the anthology was only released two years ago. Why? Well because in my digital travels there’s very little evidence of serious publication of the Japanese forms, in Australia at least.
The flagship journal A Hundred Gourdes is unpaid and international but other than that there doesn’t appear to be a strong community (perhaps I’m looking in the wrong area) pushing the forms. Most of the educational materials I come across seem to indicate a small flourishing worldwide in the 90’sand after that...
I suspect that most poets overlook the form, misjudge its subtleties. It can be quite easy to construct a Tanka and much like Haiku the form isn’t that hard to pick up. Like Chess though, you can learn the rules but it can take considerable effort to produce something good.
So what we have here (before I bore you with my theories on the underutilisation of the form) is as the title describes, 100 Tanka by 100 poets, one poem each from Australian and New Zealand poets. The construction of the anthology in this fashion has an historical precedent, in Teika’s Ogura Hyakunin Isshu published around 1235 AD. This historical anthology was meant to help aristocrats cultivate culture and was quite well known and popular.
100 Tanka… presents the best of Australian and New Zealand Tanka poets, the works all seem to have prior publication either online or in print and some of them I recognized as entries in the Tanka Splendour awards that were held during the 2000’s. So take a poet and ask them to give you their best published Tanka and you are fairly sure of getting a quality product. With what little education and practice in the form I have, I think 100 Tanka… is a really good example of the diversity and the quality the form can produce.
You don’t need to know the history or the concepts behind Tanka construction to enjoy this collection. These Tanka present observations and emotion in fairly approachable language. I suspect that the only problem modern readers will have is with the speed at which these works can be read. It can be easy to skim over 5 lines get a sense of what is imparted in the text. I advise reading one or two at a time and letting the words sink in.
I’ll list a couple below to give you the idea:
the garden
where he planted poppies
now overrun with weeds
yet every April
she remembers to march
- Janette Hope
walking on the beach
as a blood sun sets
old lovers, hand in hand
the indent from your ring
still marks my finger
- Carmel Summers
polarised
on the holy mountain
all four religions
claim the sunrise-
none own the shadow
- Alun Drysdale
I think 100 Tanka … is an important work for a number of reasons. It’s a great example of the form, as it’s practised (hopefully still) in Australia and New Zealand, it collects works that may have been consigned to a digital death in a far off uncharted corner of the net, or in print journals that have stopped and it’s a guide for those of us that stumble across the form. Saddle stitched and roughly A5 in size with beautiful illustrations by Tasmanian artist and poet Ron C Moss, I have enjoyed carrying it around with me and using it to inform my own practice.
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When people (and not just the students I teach) say they hate poetry, I usually try to get at the root cause. Saying you hate poetry is like saying you hate movies. Poetry is big, even in Australia I could be content in reading just what is published in one year. I usually implore people to find poetry that they like or at least not give up yet.
So Regulator is poetry that I like. Part of the reason is Dodds’ approachable writing (yes I have been listening to the Australian Poetry Podcast), but I think the main reason is that we are of a similar age and have both grown up in rural areas. Though the Riverina is distinctly different from Central Australia, there are certain life experiences that distance from big cities seem to generate. There is a connection with his observation of surroundings and my experience.
The collection is structured in four parts Regulator, Human Awe, There’s No Putting Them Out and Perfectly Normal Sons. The poems under Regulator seem to have a focus on Dodds’ childhood and evoke in me feelings of nostalgia, a glance bank at clear memories of youth. As good example as any is the titular poem Regulator. A remembrance of dangerously adolescent men diving into an irrigation canal. What is it about young men who feel the need to congregate around any water source and bomb into it, whether it’s a canal or a desert waterhole(one of my first published poems evokes similar images). Perhaps something to do with the thrill and the absence of water for most of us not living on the coast.
Under Human Awe Dodds has collected an array of works celebrating human achievement and also awe at the natural environment. These range from poems about the moon landing to the deafening thrum of cicadas. My favourite here was Two Books, which underlined the awe in natural existence.
There’s No Putting Them Out is curious, at this point in the reading I am not too clear about the theme that Dodd’s is organising the poems under here. Not that it matter’s of course. Two poems in this selection made my smile Man at Home and Captive. The former because I realise myself in the poem and the latter because I’m a keeper of stressed felines who love to “bronze” themselves up on the way to the vet.
The final section Perfectly Normal Sons, is largely concerned with sexuality and is wonderfully bookended by the poems Perfectly Normal Sons and Prodigal Son (and his Partner). My favourite here is probably Perfectly Normal Sons, It seems to embody what I have enjoyed most about Dodds’ poems – nostalgia, country upbringing and a touch of humour.
So for me at least Dodd’s works provides clear imagery and presents topics that I have an affinity for. There’s a lack of pretence and a sense of humour that feels comforting and in some ways, subtly Australian to me.
You can now purchase Regulator through Booktopia.
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Airport Lounge Remembrance
after Wilfred Owen’s Send Off
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
they pass us by
in airport lounges, off to foreign hells.Their camouflage no more dispels
the seeking eye,
Click through and you can read it for free.
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Ted Kooser like Billy Collins, another American poet laureate, strikes me as a keen observer of the everyday. Reading Weather Central I am drawn into the culture and rhythm of the American Midwest. Hardships (past and present) faced by rural communities, the rhythm of life. He’s one of those poets who can draw our mind to an everyday event and make it seem momentous or profound.
His conversational tone, his uncomplicated diction and syntax, make him accessible to a broad audience and I’d especially recommend him to starting readers of poetry or those with an interest in extending their experience of free verse that isn’t too confronting in format.
Site
A fenced-in square of sand and yellow grass,
five miles or more from the nearest town
is the site where the County Poor Farm stood
for seventy years, and here the County
permitted the poor to garden, permitted them
use of the County water from a hand-pump,
lent them buckets to carry it spilling
over the grass to the sandy, burning furrows
that drank it away—a kind of Workfare
from 1900. At night, each family slept
…
The American Midwest has some cultural similarities with the rural communities I live in, both in terms of relation to the land and the effect of economic decline. Kooser’s focus on this subject matter strikes a chord with me and I think if you're a fan of someone like Phillip Hodgins (though he was much more of a rhymer) you’ll enjoy Kooser’s work.
Overall I found the tone of the work to be reflective. If you like being drawn into a brief poetic tale you won’t be disappointed.
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One of the most enterprising, unusual and rewarding anthologies of the last year is The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, edited by New Zealand writer Tim Jones and Australian poet PS (Penelope) Cottier.
Read more: SMH
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Here’s the official description of Poems:
Iain Banks the literary novelist and Iain M. Banks the science fiction writer are too well known to need introduction, but Iain Banks the poet has hitherto been almost undetected: a single poem was published in a magazine and three short pieces within the novels. But he took his poetry seriously and worked on it carefully, though he shared the results mainly with friends.
Readers of Iain's novels will find in these poems many aspects of his writing with which they're already familiar: a humane and materialist sensibility, an unflinching stare at the damage people can do to each other, a warm appreciation of the joy they can give to each other, a revel in language, a geologically informed gaze on land and sea, a continued meditation on what it means for us to be mortal embodied minds with a fleeting but consequent existence between abysses of deep time. Ken MacLeod, Iain's long-time friend and collaborator, has collected his poems according to his wishes, and they are published here - most for the first time - alongside a selection of Ken's own poetry.
The Guardian newspaper featured one of Iain’s poems here.
Booktopia has the hardcover available for pre-order. Release date is the 24th of Feb.
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I find them less helpful in helping me choose who I might like to read. I am willing to suggest that there’s a good segment of the community (and I’m not talking about the wider non poetry reading community here either) that are in the same boat.
To write reviews of the calibre of a university paper is too much of a drain on my resources. I’d rather spend time writing poetry than reading enough poetry to be confident in critiquing it.
Note, this is not an argument against reading poetry, more not reading poetry that I have limited interest in or understanding of. I expect to grow as a poet but I want that growth to happen as a result of a concerted effort at writing as well as reading.
What I want to do as a reviewer of poetry is to share good poetry (or poetry I like) with other people who don’t necessarily read it. I think there are potential readers (and writers) or poetry who are lost because the entrance exam is too high (be this real or imagined).
The first modern/contemporary poetry book that I bought came not as the result of a long essay on its merits and comparing it to the rest of the field but from a blog and a link to the poet performing on YouTube.
I want to be able to give the reader of this blog in under 500 words a good sense of the poet’s work and why I think they should read them. My greatest aim would be to grab a non poetry reader and get them reading poetry for life and a stretch goal would be to get them to start writing poetry.
To that end I am interested in suggestions for what you might think makes for a good review of poetry aimed at the non poet.
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Ashley Capes continues to impress me. I have previously reviewed his poetry collection Stepping Over Seasons and have also had the pleasure of reviewing his debut fantasy novel, City of Masks. His ability to straddle such diverse genre spaces would have me jealous if I hadn’t come to know him as such a generous and warm hearted author and poet.
As the title of the book forewarns, old stone is a 45 page collection of Japanese form poetry. Now, some poets and readers might look down their nose at Haiku and Senryu as perhaps childish or unchallenging. Indeed Peter Sansom in Writing Poems, was particularly (and entertainingly) cutting in his summation of the form and the peculiarity of some of the poets who like to specialise in it. Being a writer of Haiku and Senryu myself I have a difference of opinion.
Haiku and Senryu in my experience are similar to a game like chess. It’s easy to learn the rules but can take a lifetime to master or in the case of poetry produce something lasting. If you are still of the opinion that Haiku are just seventeen syllable poems, it might be worth learning a bit more about them. I suggest and introductory text by Jane Reichhold.
The challenge with Haiku, especially Haiku divorced from its cultural roots is to take what is a simple form and produce something startling, something memorable (see my post Translations).
But that’s enough about Haiku and Senryu in general and on to Capes works in particular.
Some of these works I had the pleasure of reading prior to publication, either in other publications or in some correspondence with Ashley. A number of the works appear to be themed or relate to his travel in Italy, but they are not so tied to place that one can’t appreciate them. Indeed we get to be voyeurs and vicarious participants of place and mood at a fraction of the cost of a plane ticket. The power of Haiku is that of the moment. If you are doing it well the reader is getting an image, a sense of a place.
shuffling over old stone
the echo
of tour guides
Senryu are Haiku not bound by certain strictures involving seasonal words(a basic definition), they are often humorous, witty or risqué. One of my favourites is
re runs-
the police chief
is always balding
What I really enjoyed about the collection was the Haibun – a combination of prose poetry observation and a complimentary Haiku. It’s a form that I haven’t attempted and I like the considered observations written by Ashley and his choice of Haiku to accompany them:
Roman Forum (1)
the spot where Caesar’s body was burnt seems to scare our guide. she does not look at the flowers, a sheen of sweat on her face as the sun works its centuries-slow destruction on pillars in the Forum
uneven footing
horns from
the imperial roadup where the Vestal Virgins had their garden, rose beds breathe easy. green pools might once have hidden tears or swallowed sighs. of the many statues, only two have heads and their creamy robes are mute. people rest before them, hands on hips
posing for photos
other tourists
fill the frame
To appreciate Haiku and Haibun it pays to have a little understanding of the restrictions/guidelines that contemporary Haiku poets use. Almost anyone can appreciate and delight in a straight reading of the above but familiarity with the form will add to the experience.
It’s a thoroughly enjoyable collection that is rewarded by subsequent re-readings. old stone can be purchased through independent Adelaide publisher - Ginniderra Press (click here and scroll down). I won this copy.
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Thankfully, much of what Sansom has to say is relevant to an emerging poet today. It’s relevance and applicability no doubt contributed to Bloodaxe Books decision to create it in ebook from in 2011.
Writing Poems is approachable, conversational in tone; a read enjoyable outside the information and opinion it attempts to pass on. How relevant it is to the poet seeking to refine their craft will depend on individual experience. I found the first three chapters full of timely reminders for myself, the later chapters on forms less relevant - the information here is widely available, though Sansom’s observations are entertaining and informative.
Looking back over the table of contents Writing Poems seems to break into two parts. The first half deals with why we write poetry and how we should approach the writing of poetry, the later part focuses on mechanics.
What I take away from the work is a focus on discernment, increasing my own experience through reading and writing - building a sense of knowing what might be good about my own work. Building the capability to recognise whether a poem is being knocked back from publication because it doesn’t fit, or because the poem is lacking.
The information on the technical aspects of both form poetry and free verse are helpful, though I still find Stephen Fry’s Ode Less Travelled the best text I have read for getting iambic pentameter drumming in your ear.
Could a beginner pick this up and enjoy it? Yes I think so, the tone is approachable and the technical details supported by a variety of modern examples. I also think there’s a good deal of value for those, like myself who have had some small success and struggle with refining their work and producing something of more lasting value.
I borrowed my copy from the SA Library but you can purchase both the paperback and ebook through Booktopia.
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I am, as I have stated before, attracted to formalist poetry, to fairly distinct and repetitive rhyme and rhythm. My enjoyment of Collins then, came as a bit of a surprise.
Picnic, Lightning is a collection of everyday musings in poetic form and from what I can ascertain, this is standard for Collins’ kind of poetry. Indeed his poem In the Room of a Thousand Miles presents us with a manifesto. Though perhaps that’s too strong a word:
In the Room of a Thousand Miles
I like writing about where I am,
where I happen to be sitting,
the humidity or the clouds,
the scene outside the window—
a pink tree in bloom,
a neighbor walking his small, nervous dog.
And if I am drinking
a cup of tea at the time
or a small glass of whiskey,
I will find a line to put it on.
My wife hands these poems back to me
with a sigh.
She thinks I ought to be opening up
my aperture to let in
the wild rhododendrons of Ireland,
the sun-blanched stadiums of Rome,
that waterclock in Bruges—
the world beyond my inkwell.
…[read on]
This focus on the everyday, the mundane, the “suburban” as Collins himself calls it, has led some to view his work as a bit bland. For sure, you won’t find rage here or angst. You might find humour, wit and playfulness though and perhaps that puts people off that think poetry should be about important things (as If laughter and lightness aren’t important) or about “plumbing the depths of one’s soul”. Collins is far more contemplative.
Personally I get the same sort of feeling reading Collins that I might reading Japanese forms like Haiku and Tanka, in that they are often very particular observations of the ordinary and yet more than that as well. The diction and syntax is fairly straight forward, enhancing his general appeal and accessibility. The poems tend to seep in under your defences and a poem that first is about returning to the house for a book, walks you gently into a meditation on alternate possibilities/realities.
Readers of speculative fiction might not view the following as all that strange but if you are fairly linear in your thinking, then this poem opens up possibilities:
I Go Back to the House for a Book
I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,
a ghost in his ghost car,
another knot in the string of time,
a good three minutes ahead of me—
a spacing that will now continue
for the rest of my life.
…
I enjoyed Picnic, Lightning for its relatively easy “entrance exam”, almost any lover of good written words could pick Picnic, Lightning up and enjoy it. Many of the poems could have been formatted as prose, as flash fiction, but there is something to be be gained by the arrangement of line breaks, in drawing you eye and pacing your reading. Collins draws your attention to the ordinary and most of the time finds for us the extraordinary. It’s his consistency in delivering this to the reader, I suspect, that grants him success.
Death and pain are big themes in poetry but sometimes we need to be reminded of the extraordinariness of life.
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A prayer for the small things
Oh, say a prayer for the small things
for in all things, small things matter.Oh, say a prayer for love’s gentle touch
for too much is made of passion.Oh, say a prayer for a stranger’s smile
for while here, such joys are fleeting.Oh, say a prayer for an unkindness spared
for where unkindness lives, it festers.Oh say a prayer for a listening ear
for to hear a sorrow, helps heal it.Oh, say a prayer for a considered word
for once heard, words have no master.Oh, say a prayer for the small things
for in all things, their sum’s the larger.
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.
They feature a poet every issue and that poet gets a selection of their work shown and an in depth interview. Then you are treated to a number of other poems, some from new or emerging poets and others from luminaries in the field.
The feature poet in the Alpha Issue is Scott-Patrick Mitchell. Some other names you might recognise are: Mark Tredinnick, Zenobia Frost, Nathan Hondros and Benjamin Dodds.
The Alpha issue features a number of poets (some 30 odd poems) and artwork. I am pleased to find myself in very good company.
Enjoy Writ. Poetry Review
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A Hundred Gourds is a quarterly journal of featuring a number of Japanese poetic forms and the western interpretations of these. You will find Haiku, Renga, Haibun, Tanka and Rengu along with essays.
Please enjoy.
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