Let’s face it, this is a remarkable form: the blog. A vague shape, supposedly not timeless at all. The very disposable nature of this medium is a challenge. What’s written here is saved like the internet is saved. Everything’s floating around somewhere but just the fact of that “somewhere” makes everything quickly feel pretty evanescent if not downright worthless. So it’s an opportunity to write right into the rim of your time. I think.
        Eileen Myles, signing off in a final post on the US Poetry Foundation's blog Harriet

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From the US this week comes an interesting discussion between two very different poets :
Dale Smith & CA Conrad discuss Ed Dorn, AIDS, and community that holds us together & holds us to it  Click HERE to read it.

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A veering discourse on contemporary lyric poetry (and digressions) in Australia.

Add to the discussion via the comments box at the foot of the exceptionally long post.
Or begin another conversation - again, via the comments box. Please sign your comment.



Currently, there’s a re-emergence of the lyric as a central form in Australian poetry, led by several young, mostly women graduates and students of creative writing courses.
Is this trend a reaction against the innovations of postmodernism and the resultant north American, but globally influential, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry movement that had its heyday over 20 years ago?

Perhaps instead of say, the Beats, and, here in Australia, John Tranter’s fabricated ‘generation of 68', or New York school or Language poetry, post graduate and undergraduate poetry writing students and beginners are reading Romantic and Victorian poetry again? Certainly a lot of pre-1950s poetry seems to be emulated by the younger generation here. Abounding as it is, not all of it lifts off. Kris Hemensley called these poets "exponents of a fastidiously constructed and polished lyricism current now in new Australian poetry." It’s certainly not in-the-tradition of a lyricism of personal expression informed by opiates or other mind-alterers questing after extending or reaching the limits of imagination. Perhaps it’s hard to pursue mind derangement when you’re preoccupied with completing a Doctorate in Creative Writing (although that in itself could drive you nuts) or aiming to win a major prize for your first publication (another new occurrence of the last few years in NSW).

Here are the judges’ comments on the $30,000 Kenneth Slessor prize for poetry in the 2009 New South Wales premier's literary awards:

XYZ’s book…. “is a wonderful example of the power of the lyric to
slow time down to intense, expanded moments of seeing and feeling.In measured poems of decorum and grace, XYZ weighs beauty against terror, art against the unspeakable, love against death. The exquisite music of these poems comes from a perfect mastery of form that is never content merely to deploy traditional templates like the sonnet or the sestina, but converts them into something that is contemporary, arresting and XYZ’s own.”

Oops, that sounds almost postmodern but also sounds, in part, like these old definitions from contemporary US poet Ron Padgett’s Handbook of Poetic Forms:
1) [lyrics] are shorter than dramatic or epic poems;
2) they tend to express the personal feelings of one speaker, often the poet;
3) they give you the feeling that they could be sung

The judges continue -
“Death and its violent disruptions are taken up in different ways, most movingly in dot dot dot - a sequence about Goya, the master of the abominable and grotesque. In a reinvented sonnet form and in stanzas effortlessly rhymed, love and loyalty are held in tenuous balance with horror and death. The poems dot dot dot reveal a capacity for sustained exploration of the subject and a delicate, thrilling fusion of intuition and intellect. XYZ wears his/her learning lightly, gracefully: Galen (Wikipedia - a Greek physician & philosopher AD129 - but you knew that didn’t you?), Donne, Shakespeare, Kristeva, Primo Levi, Althusser – all cohabit harmoniously in a language and form that is intricate and sinuous.”

That sounds postmodern too! look out!

“Besides the sombre meditations on art, death and love, there are also familial portraits of profoundly moving elegiac note.”

Now that’s lyrical.

“There are also moments of lightness: dot dot dot depicts an erotic moment reminiscent of Donne, and dot dot dot offers a train of fleeting avian transcriptions, revealing a mind as alert to innocent pleasures as it is to the sombre shades of history. In total effect, the book has a wonderfully coherent feel to it, as inexpressible truths are intuited or glimpsed rather than overtly stated.”

Gawd, these comments taken altogether make the book of poems sound like a libretto for a C19th Italian opera ! But no, it’s earlier - the 18th century - it’s ‘Mozartian’ as well -

XYZ…” possesses a rare Mozartian grace and range: witty and light, erotic and playful, sombre, meditative and elegiac. XYZ’s mastery of form is exquisite and exemplary; XYZ has devoured and assimilated the canonical writing of the past, and is able to turn inherited forms into something uniquely his/her own. XYZ has set very high standards in her/his debut collection, not just for him/herself, but for Australian poetry.”

Well, no, not exactly, not for this Australian poet. I think I’ll determine my standards differently.

My contemporaries had no further need to embrace romantic lyricism (having read enough early to C19th English poetry compulsorily at school, let alone at university) as we woke wide awake to the 20th century and as some of us kicked on into the 21st. And, frankly, I find it disappointing that this new lyrical poetry is championed and lauded so uncritically in Australia.

The October edition of the ‘Australian Literary Review’ has a long one and a half tabloid-size page, club-sandwich review of four recent first collections by Australian women poets and it reads like an academic marker’s commentary. It’s a kind of straight estimation rather than a critical appraisal and makes no real enquiry as it asserts its authoritative position (the reviewer might have said ‘authoritative voice’ here but I just cannot use the word ‘voice’, ever. That’s worth another short blogpost in itself). Here, I mean no personal offence to the reviewer who I’ve known for well over twenty years, but I maintain my criticism. No questions about the current re-emergence of lyricism are asked at all. It’s like one of those reviews of a novel that tells you the story and little else. Basically, the poetry is described in ordinary literary terminology and then approved (or, in one case disapproved and publicly edited by the reviewer) descriptively. Three of the titles here are, among other positive quality-superlatives, "impressive, fine, ambitious, finely crafted, highly accomplished with meticulously considered lines, tonal power, sustained rhythms" etc etc etc. Although, to give due, a remark on the book that has just won the Forward Prize in the UK (another blogpost could be on first collections published by the trusty, fusty old conservative Faber & Faber) goes : if you "prefer poetry with more manifestly clear content … may seem to disappear too readily up its own subjectivity."

Ultimately, the reviewer concludes that these four first books indicate that "Australian poetry is in capable hands" and that she hopes to be "around in the next couple of decades to witness where these fine practitioners may have taken their vision, their voices, their gifts."

Phew! - and here I am still looking for diversity and the uncertain experiment called a ‘poem’ that might be produced by a few shaky hands.

Questions to ask might be :

How much does the concept of the new Aussie lyric have to do with formalism?
How different is this new Aussie lyric from the earlier notion of lyric as an instrument of personal expression?
Is the new Aussie lyric consciously engaged in thought and its processes in language ?
Is this re-emergence of the lyrical a trend against/an escape from recent movements and influences in poetry?
Could the new lyrical engage with notions of authenticity (originality/faking), appropriation (copying) involving the persona of the poet ?

I’ll end my mini-rant by recommending a ‘new-lyrical’ book that is different from the ‘new Aussie lyric’ in that it is not formally constrained and deliberately diverges from ‘old’ lyricism - Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely. It’s a disjunctive poetic prose meditation that incorporates photographs, elaborate footnotes, plenty of white space and covers everything from mortality, race relations, terrorism, TV, grief, the pharmaceutical business, forgiveness, loneliness, police brutality, violence in Hollywood movies, and a broad spectrum of literary figures from Hegel to Derrida to Coetzee to Emily Dickinson and many more.

"It’s a 155-page lyric, whose speaker is a sort of collaged nobody/everybody first person, speaking in a language which is somehow informational, limpid, despairing, and consoling all at once, it seriously challenges all three definitions of “lyric” offered by Ron Padgett." - Maggie Nelson, Women, The New York School and Other True Abstractions.



It might be good to set this book, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric on a poetry writing course reading list.

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Paul said...
Wow! That is one of the first pieces about Australian Poetry that I've read on the internet that made sense, said something and sounded like a human talking. Personally I think 90% of what passes for writing about poetry is actually just advertising (like most the blurbs you have quoted) but this isn't. I am too unschooled to know if agree or not but I definitely learned something. Thankyou.

5:13 PM


PB said...
Hello Paul,

No I don't think the ALR review is like 'blurb writing' - it's far too measured.

I received this suggested question on the backchannel -

"I wondered if an extra question could be added (which you imply up front), about the gendering of this new eruption."

So I'm adding it here.

Pam

10:51 AM

PB said...
There is a review of Felicity Plunkett's 'Vanishing Point' in today's Sydney Morning Herald's 'Spectrum' that contradicts the the rather admonishing ALR response to her book. (It can't be found online). The 'Spectrum' review revives a question I left out of my original post - to quote a sentence from the Herald review - 'All of the sequences in the book are intensely original and often comic.' Often COMIC - I wonder why there is never any wit, anything funny or (dreaded term) humorous in the poems of other new lyricists ?

Questions questions questions.

Pam

11:34 AM


Laurie Duggan said...
Well I don't know that there's anything wrong about reading Romantic and Victorian poetry but the problem with a lot of these people is that they seem to completely ignore the unconventional and outright weird elements in a lot of the poetry and just come away with a kind of boring lowest common denominator poetic. I think I would rather seal myself inside a septic tank and listen to Barry Manilow records than read a lot of the stuff that wins prizes these days.

9:31 PM


Louise said...
Hi Pam, thanks for posting this.

I'm not too sure how I feel about what motivates judges for these major awards.

I do know that one state based award for a first book, has, as one of its judges,the person who teaches many of the entrants, and many of these same entrants have also been successful and won or been shortlisted over a period of years.

One could, or should, perhaps cry foul, but everyone appears to know this and goes along with it. Not to discredit the small few winners or the shortlisted entrants who were not students of the judge, or even to discredit the work produced by those who were - but that situation surely smudges somewhat the idea of a fair and honest appraisal for the work of all entrants.

It does make the awarded entrants appear to be great advertisements for further course enrollments and thus, continues the political and poetic place making, or empire building or whatever.

The issue is not always about what is this book, or what is this poetry like, it is more often about who is the judge, or who are the judges and what will they/he/she like. It is an informed Lucky dip I think.

The old/new/ or new/old formalism, and the new lyric are currently (seem to be) in favour with some publishers, so that is a consideration. Are poets writing for an award,or writing for a particular publisher?
Don't know about young graduates, but, it can get in a poets way, that kind of thinking.

I know there are many poets who don't believe in awards because of this, but nearly every poet believes in getting published.

It is hard to be completely altruistic in a personal art - probably even harder if you are a student, and your course marker will fail or dislike you straying from the their carefully structured path.

Re the gender bias that seems to favour so many women in awards, can't say what that is about, but do you think it is political? Or are women (older and younger women) just getting better at playing the game?

I'd love to believe that awards matter, but I don't think they matter as much as they should. I wouldn't give one back though, that is, if I ever made enough pals to get one in the first place, or if I was ever writing the right stuff at the right time for the right judge, phew...life is way too short.

cheers,
Louise

12:03 AM


derek said...
i've even found myself using the cliche 'finely crafted' to describe a writer's work, usually in some form of media-release. one such release even involved a poet featured in the ALR review.

but i'm not so comfortable with it, really. i like fineness; i like craft. but i also like low-fi mess & surprise.

9:01 AM


michaelf said...
one problem with crafting is that once the poem has reached a certain state of craftedness it convinces the poet that its good - when they might have been better off putting their energy into a new poem .. theres also the question of whats being achieved .. if its verisimilitude, i think thats a mistake

10:17 AM


michaelf said...
& can someone give laurie a grant? i cant wait for the septic manilow poems

10:27 AM


duncan hose said...
there was a craft fair at the Melb. exhibition building on the weekend, where finely crafted poems would be right on the $

12:33 PM


duncan hose said...
ribbons, doilies, fimo

12:35 PM


Anonymous said...
I've heard said they are known as "The Ladies of the Lyric" ...

2:57 PM


Sarah said...
Hi Pam,
A very interesting post, and as one of those ‘new Aussie lyric’ poets, I thought it would be good to respond to your questions with some questions of my own.

I’m still not sure what you mean by “the concept of the new Aussie lyric”, given that the works of the cluster of younger female poets I think you’re talking about (hazzarding a guess, I’d suspect you might mean poets like Petra White, Elizabeth Campbell, LK Holt, Emma Jones, Kate Middleton, Judith Bishop, etc) don’t seem to have much in common to me beyond the fact that they are writing in the vastly varied field of lyric poetry and that they are all younger and female. I won’t speak on anyone else’s behalf, as I’m uncomfortable with the idea that this is a ‘movement’ in any sense, but I will say that I’m yet to read a convincing argument about what yokes these poets together in terms of the content of their work. It bothers me to be grouped on gender grounds (unless the work is about gender issues, which mine manifestly isn’t). I have always thought Elizabeth Bishop was right when she said in an angry letter to Lowell that she would rather be the fourteenth best American poet than the best ‘female poet’.

But I’m also curious about your contention that a “new Aussie lyric” that has emerged – when exactly did the lyric mode in Australian poetry disappear? What about Robert Adamson, Robert Gray, Anthony Lawrence, Les Murray, Kevin Hart, David Brooks, Judith Beveridge, etc? What would you posit as the defining characteristics of this ‘new’ movement? And why does it have to be Australian? For instance, a poet like Judith Bishop seems to me to have more in common with Jorie Graham (and at times even European poets like Celan) than with other female Australian lyric poets; likewise, I know that in my own work I am responding largely to the work of the American poets I grew up reading rather than the generation of ’68 which I read relatively late (and enjoyed) but who have had little tangible influence (reactionary or otherwise) on my own poetics.

Personally, I think the definition of the lyric poem as “an instrument of personal expression” seems a bit outmoded; for me, the interest in the lyric lies in its often uncanny address and its origins in music. Indeed, as far as I am concerned, the defining characteristic of the lyric is its apostrophe, and therefore its potential to elide time and history with the intimacy of its address. It is possible and likely that the other poets grouped together here would respond differently to all of these questions about the lyric mode and why they write lyric poetry. Having read all of the above poets, I must say that I don’t quite see how they fit together as a grouping. It’d be great to continue this discussion with some close analysis of particular poems so that some of the haziness that inevitably enters when talking about ‘movements’ dissipates. Thanks for the post.

3:17 PM


Bronwyn said...
Pam, terrific post - though I must admit I don't have a clue what you mean by the 'new aussie lyric' - is it related to that new-fangled dance step, the aussie smooth? A new version of the aussie crawl? Like you I have a lot of respect for the recent ALR reviewer but I did find the her focus on prosody to be very limited in scope. Surely something more interesting can be said than good use of the letter 'u' and anxiety over the letter 's'. It can be interesting in a discussion on craft (ooh, that dreaded word) but I'd rather read (as I'm sure the wider audience would too) about the 'dashing ideas' that were only cursorily pointed to before returning to assonance. I am also disappointed that recent reviews in the ALR (does two make a trend?) have been grouping female poets (or should I say poetesses?) for no other reason than, well, they are female. Perhaps this would be interesting if they had something interesting to say about it, but alas. Having said that, I don't know where the idea comes from that it's the poetesses who are winning the prizes, but according to the list in front of me it's the (sorry to be redundant, 'male') poets who are more often getting the gong. But who cares? To Louise (who is clearly talking about me and the Shapcott prize), I'd like to assure you that any publisher who is contracted to publish a book from a prize will have an editor on the panel - to think otherwise is naïve. Do you think you "could, or should, perhaps cry foul" to Allen & Unwin for having an editor on the Vogel panel? The fact that a handful of my students have won the prize and gone on to have their work further recognised in reviews and national prizes shows there is a wider recognition and appreciation of their work. As an editor I like my authors' books to win prizes because I know it's important to give poetry a profile so that publishers (those left) and readers (those left) don't forget about it entirely. Australia is overwhelmed with prizes, but I don't knock it as I think winning one (or more) can give a writer a boost and cash for more writing time. Finally, Laurie, I'd rather read Mangroves and The Passenger (which between them won the Age gold medal & the QLD premier's prize and was shortlisted for the Slessor and others) than sit in a septic tank - but hey I seem to be out of step with the bloggers here.

3:28 PM


Kate said...
Thanks Pam, & great discussion, here's a quick lash at a few answers to your list of 5 questions. Not thinking of any contemporary Oz poets in particular, but more, the fields you dig—:

I agree with Laurie. Reading poems from all kinds of histories and times is definitely not the issue. But the sublimation of ‘radical’ into ‘canonical’ (e.g., ignoring all the weirdness of the Rom and Vic eras: think of Dickinson and EB Browning) can produce poems that strain towards a kind of historically-sedative acceptability. In such works, ‘representation’ applies equally to museum-piece versions of literary eras, and to a (fake) transparency between world and voice (or reality and vision, to riff on some of those judging comments). Michael hints at this with the word ‘verisimilitude’.

& ditto, for formalism. To my mind, some highly-buffed lyricisms end up throwing out the active and radical potentials of form. Instead, they generate very careful objects, highly controlled objects, where ‘form’ goes little further than ‘surface aesthetic’. Form as a tidy-all. Of course, the most exciting poems are ALL about form. Poetry is form in motion. But not repressive or knee-jerk formalism... rather, open form, excitable formalism, in which all elements in the poem (the writer, world, language, ideas) can remain active at all times, and stay open to new connections. Lyrical voice, then, can be open to being ‘messed up’ or interrupted by anything in the field of experience. This was a basic gain for poetry after the late 1960s (and a good one). Nothing to do with theory, by the way.

I guess if you’re not interested in what ‘the person’ might be, or could become, then you won’t have any interest in questioning ‘personal expression’.

People still get cranky when asked to explore the relationship between words, ideas and things. Some writers will never see a poem AS a thing, or as an object of art, subject to the currents of social and economic value. Frankly I find such textured readings exhilarating, not scary or academic. Why? Because they give poetry more options. And many more players. If a poem can be lots of different things, then I’m interested. Scratch a polished lyric and you might just glimpse a single model of the ‘Self-Same Sacred Poetic’ underneath.

On gender and lyricism... Perhaps some writers have revolution-fatigue: the loud message in popular culture is that ‘feminism is over’. One of the best aspects of feminist thinking is the challenge it presents to ideas of ‘the person’, personal expression, the making of identities. For everybody. If ‘culture’ hands you the key to radical person-ism in one hand, and then takes it away (e.g.: your poem looks too radical and messy! no prize for you!), then it’s quite possible people will begin to reject a politics of difference and departure, in favour of an art of sameness and arrival. Enter: the good ol’ polished lyric, hammered out under the eyes of the mentor, who is interested (consciously or not) in legitimating their own lineage. The model of powerful mentor and multiple acolytes has been reproduced dozens and dozens of times in poetical history. Why not discuss why?

For the record, I don’t mind a nice doily.

Best wishes
Kate Fagan

3:52 PM


Jill Jones said...
Thinking about engaging with authenticity - While I was in Newcastle at Critical Animals, talking about ‘experimental poetry’, someone raised the issue of sincerity (as opposed to authenticity, can’t remember). I think that I tried to make a distinction between sincerities, if you will. I was thinking of George Oppen and his kind of sincerity, one that was open to the social and political, as having a social consciousness, as opposed to a ‘trust me as I express my true feelings’ kind of approach to sincerity.

Oppen talked about Objectivist poetics as "a test of truth" or "a test of sincerity" (was it him or Zukofsky – sorry, away from those partic sources). But Oppen did his own appropriating. I just taught his ‘Armies of the Plain’ this morning (to Eng undergrads, not CW students) – all those quotes from the Warren Commission.

Zukofsky wrote that sincerity is the expression, posture or intent behind a poetics attuned to the "accuracy of detail" or that that "writing occurs which is the detail, not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with things as they exist". So, I take it he is talking about the ‘now’.

I like these lines from Kathleen Fraser: ‘this / lyric error forever this / something embarrassingly clear, this / language we come up against’ (‘continuous/ indefinable’).

I have no problem with reading or referring back to the tradition however - as someone said, it's always before you. Hey, nothing could be messier than Sappho. It’s fragments all the way down – ‘lyric error forever’.

Thanks for the beginning of a big discuss, Pam.

4:39 PM


Louise said...
Thanks for your indulgence here Pam -
Bronwyn, yes I was talking about the Shapcott prize in one part of my post, as you have recognised and noted in your post.

I have no issue with a publisher or an editor representing the publisher being on an award judging panel, but I don't think it is at all naive to expect that same person is not also a tutor, teacher or mentor of an entrant.

I don't think your mention of Allen & Unwin re the Vogel is relevant to my point at all. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I've also been supportive of many Shapcott winners, having reviewed two of them myself - Jaya's and Nathan's, and organising for a review of Sarah's for foam:e and being supportive of my friend Angela's win.

However, I am not shifted from the sentiment expressed in my post above, which may be of no comfort to you, but is my own opinion and I will have it, as you will have your own.

cheers,
Louise

5:15 PM


Petra White said...
Pam,
I commend you for critically examining Australia's prize-giving and reviewing culture, which certainly needs examination. But what do the comments of some judges have to do with the books themselves? The commentary of this post appears to be examining the poets through the quoted judges' and editor's comments, rather than through the work itself. Holt, for one, is wildly experimental; she happens also to be masterful with form, but she certainly isn't precious or dainty or 'Mozartian' about it.

6:15 PM


Bronwyn said...
Louise, you are of course welcome to your opinion but nevertheless you are wrong. Accusations in a public forum of 'foul play' with government funds is a serious charge. You seem to be fixated on me but I assume you also, in principle, have problems with the other judges whose students have entered the competition. I'm not sure of the legalities of it, but perhaps you could apply to freedom of information to read my correspondence with the judging panel? I keep it all. I suspect if you did you would be highly surprised by what you would find. As anyone who's had any involvement with selection panels knows, the reality is often quite different from outside perceptions and assumptions. And as anyone who's had any experience with these things has, I have been publicly and privately thanked, as well as blamed, for things I didn't do. I have supported writers/mss who didn't get up; and I have not supported writers/mss that have. It would be nice to be able to have full disclosure but there are of course built-in confidentiality clauses – unfortunately I (and others) just have to wear it. I don't complain - that's the price of being involved. As I said opinions are fine, but facts are better. Feel free to email me if you'd like to continue this conversation - I would love to change your disturbing and unflattering view of me and my conduct. But perhaps that's not possible.

Sorry Pam to use your forum to address this – thanks for your patience.

9:07 PM


Laurie Duggan said...
Perhaps we should leave judging panels aside. It's a poisoned chalice that one. I think it's inevitable that in a smallish country with a smallish literary scene the question of conflict of interest keeps coming up (I guess it's even worse in New Zealand). I once judged an award that was won by one of my friends, but I honestly felt that it was the best MS at the time (and I had to convince the other judge of this).

As for the other comments in this stream: The need for 'newness' often has people repackaging what they do to fit the bill. The New This, The New That &c. It's just like pop music. It comes down to wanting to make space for yourself and your friends, and to convince yourself that what you do is worth the effort. I think almost everyone gets hit by newness fatigue at some point or other though this doesn't necessarily mean that they go off and join the Philip Larkin Appreciation Society. There'll always be people younger and smarter than you who will sometimes make you feel a bit of a retard. Then again there are always people who seem to want to reinvent the wheel (or pretend the wheel never happened - like they do over here in the UK). C'est la vie.

9:57 PM


Petra said...
Oh dear, I'm going to have to lie down for the next five years. Newness Fatigue has suddenly obliterated me! Bed! Where is my hundred-year old Larkinesque Bed!

7:19 AM


Anonymous said...
"I think it's inevitable that in a smallish country with a smallish literary scene the question of conflict of interest keeps coming up"

In that case, perhaps we could think of a better way of distributing tens of thousands of dollars of the tax payers money?

8:07 AM


Anonymous said...
Yes, forget poets. Let's give it all those tens of thousands of dollars to tennis players. But I wonder if they'd notice it among the millions?

8:27 AM


Anonymous said...
I'm not saying it shouldn't be given to poets, I am saying we could think of a way of distributing it to poets that doesn't involve the risks of conflict of interest. That doesn't involve it being distributed among people all of the same socio-economic and educational background. $30,000 is a lot of money, there are a lot of projects that could fund.

8:39 AM


Anonymous said...
" I once judged an award that was won by one of my friends, but I honestly felt that it was the best MS at the time (and I had to convince the other judge of this)."

No one is doubting what you honestly felt - but let's be frank- you're opinion of what's good and great has been frozen in time from when you were kicking around at Monash (or wherever it was) all those years back. The greatest poets were then as they are your greatest mates - Wearne, Scott, Forbes, Johnston et al.
Nothing new there?

Surely a judge should excuse themselves from comment when discussing a friend's (or a family member's) work.

Then again - we all know how this shit works ; )

8:45 AM


Anonymous said...
Yes I'm with you on this. Leave prize money that's an almost-liveable wage for a year to novelists, screenwriters and historians. Stimulus to poets should be done in $900 handouts, means-tested, of course. And it should be decided by bureaucrats - no one who actually reads poems should be allowed anywhere near the coffers.

8:52 AM


Paul said...
That is exactly the kind of cynical comment that leaves me more than willing to retire from the debate. I look forward to someone who doesn't come from the educated upper-middle class and who doesn't represent a kind of poetry written for the educated upper-middle class winning a prize. (If there has been any in the last few years, please point them out to me. I will be eager to buy all of their books.)
We are supposedly among the most intelligent and creative people in the country and these are the only two alternatives we can come up with, a system that is clearly open to abuse or cynical defeatism couched in the most sarcastic tone.

9:04 AM


Kate said...
Sam Wagan Watson's 'Smoke Encrypted Whispers' is a must read... & a much-awarded book... Sam won both the NSW Premier's and Book of the Year (tho' the SMH barely mentioned it when reviewing that particular year's awards).

In answering you, Paul, I realise I'm playing that absurd 'roll-call' game that always seems to break out during these kinds of discussions. Remember Pam's interesting and generous questions about poems, all those posts ago? Seems another chance for dialogue is about to be flamed away.

"Questions to ask might be:

1. How much does the concept of the new Aussie lyric have to do with formalism?
2. How different is this new Aussie lyric from the earlier notion of lyric as an instrument of personal expression?
3. Is the new Aussie lyric consciously engaged in thought and its processes in language ?
4. Is this re-emergence of the lyrical a trend against/an escape from recent movements and influences in poetry?
5. Could the new lyrical engage with notions of authenticity (originality/faking), appropriation (copying) involving the persona of the poet?"

Best wishes
Kate F.

10:41 AM


Jill Jones said...
There appears to some odd generalisations pinging around here. Some, but not all, poetry prizes are government funded (mainly state). Most grants are state and federal-funded- but not all. Those that aren’t government-funded don’t need any justification - if they are using private monies, they’ll run whatever process they like, thank you very much. There are always better ways to do things, and there are worse.

As for judging or deciding about any kind of award or grant-giving process, in the end, it’s people judging people. I’ve seen decisions one would not have predicted (as Bronwyn notes), ones which were obvious winners whether they were close to one or not (as Laurie notes), and I’ve seen some questionable ones, either ‘mates’ rewarded or grudges or positions general or specific worked out, in other words, the decisions that fit within the kinds of conspiracy theories we all default to when we disagree with decisions made by judges and panels. In my old job I heard every conspiracy theory under the sun, and some of those from people commenting on this post; in a good many cases they’ve been quite wrong about the so-called conspiracy, and sometimes not. It’s a small country, most people know or know of each other, and all the above happen. Problem is, unless you were in the room, you don’t know which of the above applies.

Nonetheless, I think (presume) Pam’s initial post was merely using judge’s comments on prizes as an example of the concerns she’s expressing. She also referred to reviews, for instance. Then there’s the whole anthologising business, which seems to have exploded recently. Another area ripe for conspiracy theories but also, seriously, a debate could be had about how that operates within the literary, esp poetry culture, both for the represented, the non-represented and the editors. I say this as being in all three camps, currently, as I am sure is the case for many others.

11:16 AM


Jill Jones said...
Kate's right, we lost sight of Pam's questions, me as well, so forgetting my last post, I’d just like to agree with Kate’s comment in favour of “open form, excitable formalism, in which all elements in the poem (the writer, world, language, ideas) can remain active at all times, and stay open to new connections.”

It’s this open-ness I am interested in, whether I go back into the traditions (often neatened so as not to frighten the horses) or read work now. So, not a poem in a beautiful cage, or the enclosure of some kind of singular vision, but some ‘thing’ much more flexible, interruptions in the field of vision, dare I say some thing interesting. However, does that sound a bit lame.

I really like things because … why. So, my question, what then of beauty? Thelonius Monk has a piece called ‘Ugly Beauty’ (in waltz time, on ‘Underground’) so it’s in that context I ask, not so much that ‘beauty is truth’ or timeless; it is changeable, even manipulative. Can the object, the form be beautiful, or be making beauty. Maybe the modern version is intensity. Are we embarrassed by intensity?

1:36 PM


michaelf said...
hi petra

are you being serious in using the term 'wildly experimental'? can you elaborate? i hope what you say is true, but it seems to me more something to aspire to: not something actually reached by anyone, though pioh and lionel fogarty go closest. (after the jerilderie letter ..)

though i guess we probably mean quite different things about experimental .. ? & wildly is, i suppose, relative

sincerely

1:38 PM


Petra said...
Interesting - that being experimental itself is a state to aspire to. I had not thought of it that way. To me it is simply a practice, or an approach: a means to an end (poem).
I mean that Holt is adventurous and sometimes radical, both with language and form, and not demurely conservative or humourless, as was implied. I used the term defensively, in this case.

2:32 PM


Jill Jones said...
However, I do have to say something on this:

"Enter: the good ol’ polished lyric, hammered out under the eyes of the mentor, who is interested (consciously or not) in legitimating their own lineage. The model of powerful mentor and multiple acolytes has been reproduced dozens and dozens of times in poetical history. Why not discuss why?"

I know that people make some kind of assumption that mentors/teachers/supervisors create clones or similars. I'm sure it happens, and just as sure it doesn't. As a supervisor, I begin with what the student is doing, and I mean doing, making, their process as well as their final piece of work. A number of the people I am supervising are, in fact, my colleagues in another life, ie. they have been published and have their own way of working, and pursue their own influences. I put material in their way, but it's not my stuff, not even necessarily my direct influences, just things that offer new ideas they may find useful in their own making. The idea of acolytes sounds kind of creepy. But is this what is happening in the ideas under discussion? Really?

4:07 PM


Kate said...
Hey Jill, that was more a response to Louise's point about students potentially feeling a need to alter work to suit the opinions or style of a marker (& this is possibly more endemic at undergrad levels, rather than in the supervisions you mention..?). Again, this was Pam's opening point. In many ways it's early days for 'poetry' in creative writing programs. The field is still small (in contrast, say, to the US or Canada or the UK), which means individual teaching styles still have a big impact on work being made. I guess these are all elements in the mix of what nourishes and 'legitimates' certain kinds of poems and writing cultures. The programs are interesting: sometimes they really support poets to practice, who might not get the gig (or the rent-money, or time or space) in other arenas. For what it's worth, I think a (much-argued) distinction between 'academic' and 'non-academic' poetry is becoming quite blurry.

Anyway, that's well & truly enough from me. Thanks Pam for hosting this discussion & everyone for the ideas.

Best wishes
Kate

4:59 PM


michaelf said...
hi petra - thanks for responding - tho i guess i wasnt clear - i was suggesting we might aspire to wildly experimental from an experimental base.

sarah - i think there are correspondences in the poems of yours & others in the alr - the use of the sonnet, the 4 line stanza, for example. also - the use of the figure of a boy (or boys in campbells case)

paul - i think u might be judging peoples class backgrounds a bit too quickly .. robert adamson has won a lot of prizes - & his background is a matter of public knowledge: his exciting memoir 'inside out'

10:15 AM



I suppose this post will seem defensive and tediously repetitive of my original rant but I think, as Kate Fagan says, most of the questions I put about the current interest in lyrical poetry weren’t, in the main, addressed.

First up, Jill is correct - “Nonetheless, I think (presume) Pam’s initial post was merely using judge’s comments on prizes as an example of the concerns she’s expressing.”

My intention in quoting the judges’ comments was not to examine how prizes are awarded but to look at the kind of sanction a prize and the accompanying purple praise have given to a young woman’s first book of lyrical poems that is part of what I consider is a re-emergence of lyric poetry writing.

The digression into the topic of prize giving (and its attendant murk) is altogether another question, except with regard to pie-eyed judges favouring re-emerging lyric poetry should it become a fashionable or influential fad or movement (that being, so far, hypothetical). Yet, of course, who could object to a discussion of prize-giving in general.

Sarah said “Personally, I think the definition of the lyric poem as “an instrument of personal expression” seems a bit outmoded; for me, the interest in the lyric lies in its often uncanny address and its origins in music.”
I said so too : here’s the bit from my original post :
“…these old definitions from contemporary US poet Ron Padgett’s Handbook of Poetic Forms:

1) [lyrics] are shorter than dramatic or epic poems;
2) they tend to express the personal feelings of one speaker, often the poet;

3) they give you the feeling that they could be sung”


But I would also say that Sarah’s tenet of the lyric’s ‘origins in music’ is just as outmoded as ‘the instrument of personal expression’

That’s why I recommended Claudia Rankine’s book.

Of course, I know that forms of lyrical poetry have not ‘disappeared’. Apart from the conventional lyric-influenced poets Sarah lists, there is a kind of hybrid lyric that interrupts the lyric tradition (Kate’s post gets onto this and so does her own poetry), but there is a plethora of traditional lyric at this moment in Australian poetry writing and that’s what’s getting quite a bit of attention (via, to be repetitive) reviews, awards and the publication of first collections.
(and, to Petra, that is the point of my looking at the phenomenon via the judges comments and the review, not the actual books )

Laurie, in relation to ‘newness’, I said ‘new Aussie lyric’ as a shorthand. Of course it isn’t ‘new’ but, as I’ve just said, there IS a re-emergence of lyric writing here in Australia. Perhaps I should have called it ‘a new wave of lyrical poetry’ or something like that. Can’t get away from ‘new’.

It would be interesting to hear from lyric poets about why they think they are using the form and whether they do see what they write as being a reaction or response to past movements (canonical or otherwise).

I think it is important to consider gender. Gender involves everyone. It is an undeniable operative in the political/social world.

Although there are lyric traces and elements in my own poetry (of course), I often experience the lyric as a short poem as formally inadequate and for me, there are also connotations in traditional lyric that are too private and unconnected with or disengaged from a socioculture at large.

Elizabeth C said...
This thread may have exhausted itself, but I feel compelled to comment because so few people seemed to mention the basic lack of fairness in the original post. That post made some pretty big generalizations about some specific if unnamed people (I seem to be one), and made some serious, if implied charges.

Firstly, that all the lyric poetry under comment is similar – it’s not. It’s annoying being lumped in with people who have analogous genitals, a date of birth within about the same decade as one’s own, but whose work may be utterly different in style, intent and quality. Yes ‘gender is an undeniable operative in the social/political world.’ So it’s always disappointing to see how some older women are so hostile towards the next generation of women in their field.

Secondly, that all of we young women lyricists are or were ‘creative writing students,’ I dinna. I never. I aint. Neither is LK Holt, the subject of the K Slessor judges report.

In Blast earlier this year I commented on a current strain of Australian lyricism which seems to me high on images and light on ideas, attempting beauty or atmosphere more than thought. I backed this up with a close, careful reading and quoting of two specific books, not reviews of the books, or judges’ reports on them. As a young critic (or should I say, as a good critic) I wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise.

The issue here seems to be ‘what’s getting quite a bit of attention (via, to be repetitive) reviews, awards and the publication of first collections. . . . that is the point of my looking at the phenomenon via the judges comments and the review, not the actual books ) ‘

Look out girls, it’s the gatekeepers! It’s not ok to condemn poetry because of the ‘attention’ it gets.

I am concerned too by the use of words like ‘conventional’ and ‘traditional’ here. By now ‘experimental’ poetry is a genre too, with its own conventions. Sorry guys, we’re all in this together – nobody writes without a tradition. I’m bemused to see in Michael’s comments, the unreflecting belief that the very word ‘experimental’ is inherently positive: ‘something to aspire to’.

Experimental method involves repeating an identical process over and over and over in order to achieve the same result every time, and prove the hypothesis, doesn’t it? And what was the hypothesis again? Something to do with a power and politics inherent in language, and a personal and social consciousness which is formed out of this language? Yep . . . I think I got that. And now I’m going to write some lyric poems.

4:06 PM


PB said...
EC: Firstly, that all the lyric poetry under comment is similar – it’s not. It’s annoying being lumped in with people who have analogous genitals, a date of birth within about the same decade as one’s own, but whose work may be utterly different in style, intent and quality. Yes ‘gender is an undeniable operative in the social/political world.’ So it’s always disappointing to see how some older women are so hostile towards the next generation of women in their field.

Elizabeth, I never said nor implied that “all the lyric poetry under comment is similar”. I am genuinely interested in finding out why there is a return to the FORM of lyric poetry in Australia at the moment. It’s a pity that no one writing in the form has addressed any of my original questions (apart from reacting against gender as an issue & that question originated on the backchannel). Why do you think there is a re-emergence of lyric?

I am absolutely NOT “hostile towards the next generation of women” poets and I have to say that I find that remark not only offensive but also ridiculous. And, sadly, unthinking.
(Perhaps it’s driven by anger?)

EC:Secondly, that all of we young women lyricists are or were ‘creative writing students,’ I dinna. I never. I aint. Neither is LK Holt, the subject of the K Slessor judges report.

You have misread my original post. To nitpick, closely, I wrote ‘mostly women graduates and students of creative writing courses.’ Please note “mostly”. ‘…post graduate and undergraduate poetry writing students and beginners…’ Please note “and beginners”.

But I do think writing courses have an influential hand in here somewhere if they have any effect at all. Impossible not to, given that some (please note - “some” not “all”) lyrical poets are also teachers of writing.

The technique of ‘close reading’ that has been proposed in a couple of responses isn’t actually being applied to my blogpost.

EC:In Blast earlier this year I commented on a current strain of Australian lyricism which seems to me high on images and light on ideas, attempting beauty or atmosphere more than thought. I backed this up with a close, careful reading and quoting of two specific books, not reviews of the books, or judges’ reports on them. As a young critic (or should I say, as a good critic) I wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise.

I gather your purpose there was different (yours a critical article?) from mine here (mine a mini-rant ). Can you give me the url or further info on finding your piece in Blast. I’d like to read it.

EC:The issue here seems to be ‘what’s getting quite a bit of attention (via, to be repetitive) reviews, awards and the publication of first collections. . . . that is the point of my looking at the phenomenon via the judges comments and the review, not the actual books ) ‘

Well it WAS the ALR review that finally prompted me to comment on a phenomenon I’ve been observing through reading the plethora of publication of recent lyric poetry for some time now.
And I found that particular set of judges’ comments risible, so I couldn’t resist blogging them.

EC:Look out girls, it’s the gatekeepers! It’s not ok to condemn poetry because of the ‘attention’ it gets.

Again, you’ve misread that - questioning isn’t ‘condemning’. And I’m not sure how noticing the quantity of lyric poetry being published and reviewed has anything to with ‘gatekeeping’. What do you mean ? Is there something to protect?.Is it up to me to do so? I’m perplexed by that one.

EC… And now I’m going to write some lyric poems.

Elizabeth, can you tell me why ? And how do you see those lyric poems in regard to other recent poetries and its various movements ? Is there a context? Do you think about these things? Obviously if you’ve written about ‘a current strain of Australian lyricism’ you can probably provide a few answers. I’ll be interested to read your article in Blast.

Thanks for commenting.

Pam

5:27 PM


Sarah said...
Hi Pam,

In reply to your reply elsewhere on the site (I thought it would be best to respond in the one place), I thought I should make it clear that I'm not suggesting "the lyric's origins in music" is or should be a tenet - it's rather a fact, and something that interested me (as a classical pianist) when I first read poetry. I had intended in my post to be very careful to point out that I wasn't suggesting other poets would or should share my particular interest in the lyric form, and I certainly wasn't making a statement of my poetics when I pointed out where the lyric came from.

If I were to outline my own poetics (and I'll be very careful here to say that this is not a tenet intended for anyone else), I would say that I find lyric temporality – which I see as an effect of the lyric apostrophe - the most haunting and complex effect of the lyric poem, and the effect I am most interested in bringing to the foreground of my own poems.

In writing my first book, I was interested primarily in the congruities I see between the lyric poem and the operatic aria, both of which are written for a single voice, have a similar performative dimension, and are always enacted in the endlessly recurring present. A good lyric poem to me achieves a kind of compelling uncanniness, a sense that a voice is speaking always at the brink of nothingness; of being cut off by time and by silence.

This may be something that you don't find particularly interesting as a reader or something that you aren't interested in pursuing in your own work, which, of course, is absolutely fine. As I've said, I suspect that my definition of the lyric differs radically from the other lyric poets who have commented here or who are implied in the first post, which is also fine. But I'm also not a conservative reader who is only capable of appreciating a certain strand of lyric poetry; I think all forms (experimental, lyric, narrative, epic, or otherwise) have merit (or potentially have merit), and each poet should be judged via his/her execution of, engagement with, and furthering of the form which they write in, against, etc. I would hope, likewise, that poets writing in other forms and with other aims could approach my own work similarly. I take your point above that this wasn’t intended to be a critical appraisal, but I do think if the conversation is going to progress towards defining or rejecting the idea of a coherent ‘wave’ of lyricism, then it is important to move towards engagement with the work itself.

Michael – I agree, there are two sonnets in the ALR – but surely sonnets and four-line stanzas aren’t the sole province of lyric poets?

9:01 PM


js said...
Hi Pam,

Fascinating discussion on lyric poetry and its discontents.

Having commissioned the ALR review discussed on this thread, I want to address specifically an issue that Bronwyn and Sarah have raised, and that others have mentioned: namely, the concern that the poets in the review were grouped solely on the basis of gender.

Bronwyn says she is ‘disappointed’ that two ‘recent’ poetry reviews in the ALR have been grouped on the basis of gender, and that this is enough to raise the specter of a worrying “trend”. Firstly, to clarify: the reviews referred to appeared more than a full 18 months apart (March 08 – October 09). Two reviews, 18 months apart. In a monthly. The answer, then, to her rhetorical question - “does two make a trend?” - is an unequivocal “no”.

I would suggest that Bronwyn (and Sarah) can ‘keep the safety on’ regarding the issue of gender and any perceived indication of a reversion on my behalf to the days when “poetess” was part of the critical lexicon. This really is a red herring. Granted, it’s a particularly alluring one, because it allows the juicy, well-rehearsed default position of indignation, partially inherited from the likes of Elizabeth Bishop (paraphrased by Sarah, though of course writing in vastly different circumstances); indeed, it is shadowboxing of a kind that many critics deploy to-a-fault whenever the faintest whiff of a pet peeve comes up. And so it misses.

I can assure them there was nothing insidious in the selection criteria of either review - certainly none of the kind to which Elizabeth Bishop felt compelled to respond. The grouping in this case was a choice of the type that's often made in lit mag/newspaper publishing, always hopefully productive and critically interesting, in part pragmatic, and yes, like all such acts, sometimes (perhaps always) reductive.

Like Bishop before them, Bronwyn and Sarah understandably resent being labeled ‘female poets’ rather than ‘poets per se’ (which isn’t even remotely what’s happening here). No doubt they wrestled with the issue of granting permission for their inclusion in the recent, all-female anthology, Motherlode: Australian Women’s Poetry 1986-2008, and are evidently familiar with the problematic validity of identity politics, and with the various concomitant arguments from pragmatism. If not, or if such grace is to be extended to oneself but not to others, then which is it? Having the cake, or eating it?

This aside, I’d argue that the nature of this ‘grouping’ went beyond pragmatism, toward something simply like reasonably accurate representation (i.e. representation of first poetry books in the 12 months prior to the commissioning of the piece).

That is, the grouping was based partly on the observation (made not only by me, of course, but in consultation with the reviewer) that a disproportionately large number of notable ‘first collections’ published in Aus over the last 12 months have been written by females. So...? One might easily imagine different circumstances in which a group review of debuts included both genders, or solely comprised males. If anything, the two ‘all-women’ poetry reviews of the last 18 months that so ‘disappoint’ are perhaps indicative of an actual trend (gasp!)– if not a ‘movement’ (another red herring in fact, for the term is not applied by either Pam or Judith to the poets mentioned, precisely) - and may well accurately represent the gender distribution of debuts during this period.

The vital discussion regarding the lyric poem and its discontents is absorbing enough without also shooting in the dark after hoary old imagined ghosts who hiss ‘poetess’. The particular faultline in contemporary western poetry highlighted in this thread is thoroughly engaging to say the least. I’m particularly interested in the issues Kate raises, such as that regarding the mentor-acolyte cycle (having recently seen some of the English versions), and relish even more her brilliant discussion of form in her first comment.

Stimulating, as always Pam.
Jaya

9:04 PM


Anonymous said...
EC: "It’s annoying being lumped in with people who have analogous genitals, a date of birth within about the same decade as one’s own, but whose work may be utterly different in style, intent and quality. Yes ‘gender is an undeniable operative in the social/political world.’ So it’s always disappointing to see how some older women are so hostile towards the next generation of women in their field."

Of course, the other possibility is that the "new Aussie lyric" is simply as boring as batshit ... it could simply be a case of exasperation, rather than gatekeeping. I mean, fuck, there's plenty of gates out there ... which one do you wanna go through?

9:36 PM


PB said...
Hi Sarah,

Thanks for that synopsis of your own poetics. I didn't know that you were a classical pianist (I don't pay as much attention to bios as I do to poems and I probably should) and, actually, that does give me a clearer idea of your interest in the 'apostrophe'in lyric - as something like the importance of the single note and what it does in composition.

Pam

10:00 PM


Peter Minter said...
Elizabeth, I don't think you're being very fair on Pam, who asked some pretty straightforward questions on contemporary lyric/form.

Do you really think it is about you, personally?

If so, what characteristics of your work do you think make or make not the lyric, as you see it?

10:24 PM

Peter Minter said...
Elizabeth, when you write "Experimental method involves repeating an identical process over and over and over in order to achieve the same result every time, and prove the hypothesis, doesn’t it?", I think your discourse could be enhanced by a greater degree of precision. Could you please be clearer about which mode of experimentation you are referring to, lets say, from the romantics to the present...

You might also consider identifying your subject in the following: "And what was the hypothesis again? Something to do with a power and politics inherent in language, and a personal and social consciousness which is formed out of this language? Yep . . . I think I got that." It might be said that the relation between power, politics and language to which you refer has it origins in classical rhetoric. To what exactly are you refering when you write "hypothesis"?

:-)

Pete

10:34 PM
Peter Minter said...
Sarah,

I'm interested in your genuine engagement with Pam's questions.

Can I ask, what do you mean by "the most haunting and complex effect of the lyric poem", especially "haunting" and "complex"?

Also, what is meant by "singular voice" in your statement about "operatic aria", and its 'performative dimension"?

I am also unsure about what you mean when you describe an "endlessly recurring present", "a kind of compelling uncanniness"

Someone mentioned something about time dilation before (I am too scared to scroll back out of this friggin tiny box I'm typing in in case, uncannily, I lose my place)

I'm fine on nothingness, time and silence!

Anyway, at your leisure.

Pete

11:02 PM


Sarah said...
Jaya, I’m not entirely sure why I have been singled out and named in your discussion of the ALR reviews, which I haven’t mentioned in either of my posts. Please take care not to conflate Bronwyn’s and my views. My issue was with Pam’s suggestion that there is a resurgence in the lyric led by, as she says, ‘mostly women’ poets. I am curious why she believes there is a ‘resurgence’ (my contention being that it’s always been here and that I’m not sure what differentiates this ‘new wave’) and why there seems to be a persisting need more generally to refer to gender when we are talking about female poets, but never with male poets (and it’s not just the ALR reviews – see Maria Takolander’s ‘Generation of ‘08’ in the ABR, for example). Can you imagine a review pointing out that there’s a new wave of male lyric poets? Of course not. Why? Because unless the work is about masculinity or gender, it’s irrelevant.

But if you would like my view – and call me ‘peevish’ if you will – taking pains to point out that we are female poets isn’t really adding much to the reviews in any of the cases. The fact that there are a number of young and talented female poets publishing first books seems to me perfectly normal (or it should be in a ‘post-feminism’ world), and to continue on with such taxonomy when we’re all agreed that gender is a “red herring” bizarre and pointless. I've got no problem with four female poets being reviewed at the same time, particularly if, as you say, it reflects what is being published, but I don't think there's any need to make the point that they are all women - surely there's always another through-line that could unite or divide the books that has to do with the content of the poetry and not the gender of its authors.

1:34 AM


Bronwyn said...
Elizabeth, I'm interested to read your article - (uncannily) I've been thinking the same thing lately, and I had it down on my list of things to write/think about. Sounds like I can cross it off since you've already tackled it.

I do want to respond to Pam's question as to why poets (and readers) might be interested in the lyric, but first to Jaya. My post was written in haste at work and I no doubt overstated my position (re ALR). Sorry about that. My question, though, asking if 'two makes a trend' was meant to be rhetorical - the answer is of course it doesn't. Though the same thing is being done elsewhere. I'd also like to add that, unlike Sarah, I have no problem being (or being called) a 'female poet' or whatever-kind-of poet you might think fitting. I agree, use of the adjective doesn't mean the same thing as it did in Bishop's day, though I do think good old Anonymous's 'I've heard said they are known as "The Ladies of the Lyric"' (above) has overtones of Hawthorne's "damned mob of scribbling women" - though Anon's is too pretty by far and too alliterative for my ear. But it's dismissive tone is clear to all, which is why it was posted anonymously. Anyway, I have no problem having my work included in an anthology about mothers (or fathers, for that matter). So no problem there.

The only thing that remains is my objection to your use of 'poetess' in your review (of 18 mos ago - where has time gone?) but I told you this at the time. I think the word sounds fusty. And has connotations I don't think you intended. But it sounds like you're less enamoured with this word now, and I'm pleased to hear it.

2:45 AM
Jill Jones said...
A quick point on gender. I agree with Sarah that, in general, gender is invoked when talking about women but not men. Thus, I agree with the first sentence of these comments of hers: "
Can you imagine a review pointing out that there’s a new wave of male lyric poets? Of course not. Why? Because unless the work is about masculinity or gender, it’s irrelevant.

But I disagree, for the same reason, with the last point. Gender is always relevant, and maybe it would be good to imagine a review of a new wave of male lyric, whatever, poets. Why not? Pam said in her second long blog post that, "I think it is important to consider gender. Gender involves everyone. It is an undeniable operative in the political/social world." Gender isn't 'about' things, it's constitutive and as Pam says, operative. Surely, it's good to look at how it operates, both in how we write, all of us as gendered beings, and how our writing is received, promoted, etc. We can always disagree with how we see it operating, of course.

9:49 AM


Louise said...
Jill, I've be thinking about one of your earlier posts which included the phrase,..."unless you were in the room"... (gotta be a poem there) and found that it resonates with the big room of the blog, which rather than restricting how many good folk can fit the space, allows an endless space that everyone can be in together, either at the same time,in real time, or in selected visits over a flowing time frame.

This is one of the things I find most appealing about blogs, and stimulating blog discussions.

bravo Pam and this 'room' is proving to be one very interesting place, in socio/political terms and other...

10:16 AM


Sarah said...
Jill, I agree – if the reviews were saying something about gender as it relates to the poems (how feminity/masculinity/gender figures in the work) or even, if it were relevant, to the social/political conditions of the poets’ upbringing (if the review focussed, as they sometimes do, on biography), then that would make perfect sense to me. I’ve always been an avid reader of literary biography, and in that context, gender analysis seems not only appropriate but necessary. Likewise, if someone reviewed my book focussing on gender as it figures in my poems, I’d have no problem with that at all. I’m not suggesting that reviewers can’t talk about gender – to the contrary. My point is, I suppose, that none of the reviews I’ve read have done much more than point out that there are a number of young women publishing new books, which does seem to me just a case of saying it for no other reason than it’s true. Ultimately, if the reviews were, as you say, making an argument about "how we write, all of us as gendered beings, and how our writing is received and promoted", then that would be fine by me.

I’m far more interested in Pam’s contention that there is something at work in these poets’ use of and interest in the lyric mode that might suggest a broader movement, and if that proves to be the case (looking at the work first, irrespective of gender), then there may be something interesting, additionally, to say about gender.

10:21 AM


Sarah said...
Hi Pete,

Thanks for your questions. In answer to your first – about uncanniness and hauntedness – I’ll use an example. When Keats, in one of the strangest and most uncanny Romantic lyrics, “This Living Hand,” writes of his hand, “See, here it is – / I hold it towards you”, I would argue that we, as readers, enter strange territory peculiar to the lyric. We must at once embrace, as Jonathan Culler says, “a purely fictional time” in which we can believe that the hand is really present and perpetually held toward us, yet we must also be sensitive to the uncanniness of being addressed by an absent, centuries-dead Keats in what is ostensibly face-to-face language. The poem’s source of power and melancholy (or ‘hauntedness’) is both what William Waters calls the ‘now of reading’ – the lyric’s immediacy, and its ability to call up an apostrophic present for the reader, where Keats’s hand is being extended toward us – and also the real-world passage of time. The poem is uncanny precisely because of Keats’s death. It proffers us both the living hand that wrote it, and a dead hand that can never reach us.

In this same way, I would argue, all lyric poetry has at its heart two temporalities: the ‘endlessly recurring present’ of the poem and of its apostrophe, and the sense that that voice is often counterposed in interesting ways against real-world time and history (think Sappho writing “Someone, I tell you, will remember us / even in another time”). The address in the lyric poem can be, when it is working well, a kind of spell against real time, but it always abuts silence and a return to real time, and it’s that dual temporality which seems to me one of the most complex and interesting textual effects of the lyric.

This has always struck me as a musical effect; just as we read Keats’s poem and inhabit, briefly, a suspended, eternally present ‘lyric now’ (what an awful phrase!), so do we briefly inhabit some animating presence of Bach, or (as with opera, written for the single voice), Puccini or Mozart and so forth. The lyric poem is a kind of sheet music: enter anywhere, any time and the animating presence is waiting there for you, but it is always on the verge of silence and, figuratively, of death.

11:17 AM


Elizabeth C said...
Thanks to Sarah and Bronwyn for your thoughtful posts.

PB: I am absolutely NOT “hostile towards the next generation of women” poets and I have to say that I find that remark not only offensive but also ridiculous. And, sadly, unthinking.
(Perhaps it’s driven by anger?)

Well, we could dispute back and forth about this, but it’s probably silly to speculate about others’ motives: the implications of tone speak for themselves.

Why do I write 'lyric' poems?
Not something I would usually volunteer to describe, but since you ask:

I don’t think anyone who can comprehensively explain why they write, should write, as I’d expect their work to be pretty dull: good poetry relies on the unacknowledged. But I can explain some of the things my poems do. I can certainly only speak for myself: as I said before, I don’t think the young women lyricists at issue in this discussion have very much in common. This is why I haven’t responded to the questions about the ‘new Aussie lyric’: I’m not sure it exists, and if it does, I doubt I’m part of it.

I have never used the word ‘lyric’ to describe my own work, though I do accept the word as relevant. But my lyric doesn’t fit Ron Padgett’s definition very neatly. My poems are not epics, but frequently stretch to long sequences. I haven’t ever, so far, used ‘traditional’ forms such the sonnet, villanelle, sestina, metric rhyme, haiku (preserve us!) or even the ubiquitous pantoum. I do use the first person, but about as frequently, the second, and often the third. These pronouns often shift within the one poem. My lyric is polyvocal, shifting and intertextual, in that it often uses what I think of as a quotational diction: a kind of deeply felt simulacrum. Less than expressing my feelings, I am interested in dramatising consciousness: thinking about received ideas and false consciousness. And also in dramatising the ecstatic – whether that be ecstatic love, guilt, doubt or thought. I feel very strongly that consciousness is pervaded and permeated by text – this comes through in the poems, and more. . . . What can I say? A reading of my published work should make all this clear to any but the most ideologically prejudging reader.

Michael: ‘the use of the figure of a boy (or boys in campbells case)’ What can this mean? Are we talking about the same Campbell?

Peter: I think I have been entirely fair. I hesitated to comment on all this, but it is personal when someone uses your work to suggest that you are part of a movement, and implies that the ‘attention’ the work has received is not deserved. I write strongly critical reviews and essays, but I would never engage in a public ‘mini-rant’. My comments on experiment, however, were somewhat facetious, and were drawing a parallel to scientific experiment, in which is result is only valid when repeatable.

Pam and Bronwyn, I would be most pleased to send you a copy of Blast 9, containing my essay on new trends in the lyric, if you want to email us your address at blastpoetry@gmail.com.

Anyone else who is interested – you can order and subscribe at: http://www.blastpoetry.com/

I probably won’t be responding again to this discussion.

1:15 PM


Estuardo said...
I fear that I may be entering this discussion just as it is drawing to a close, so these rather ill-planned comments might be arriving too late.

Particularly, I am concerned by the way in which many of us are so ready to jump upon, and question the motives of, ‘emerging lyrical writers’ (as if they were a kind of virus, or a rare type of fungi), without actually questioning our own assumptions about what constitutes a lyric, and what a lyrical poetic practice can involve. I should point out here, too, that of all the writers who have contributed to this excellent discussion, those who we might say are more overtly ‘experimental’ (eg. Minter, Farrell, Fagan) have most significantly impacted upon my own poetic practice. They also count amongst my favourite contemporary poets. So I am in no sense beholden to the lyric, or a flag-bearer of a ‘conservative poetics’.

Nevertheless, I think it a grave shortcoming in our critical discourse that we continue to insist on separating lyrical poetry from experimental verse, thereby ignoring the tremendous potential for experimentation to be found in the lyric mode. Experimentation is not a genre or an idea to be attained; it is a practice. Sarah, for example, has brilliantly outlined how her lyrical work has been an exploration of relationships between spoken and musical languages, and of the voice as both an oral and a written manifestation. The lyric, like the sound-collage, like the installation piece, can be a sound-text or a sound-image all at once.

Perhaps, if we are to bring notions of experimentalism closer to our understanding of the lyric, someone needs to look [even closer] at Kinsella: a poet who uses a variety of forms, including the lyric, as part of a larger process of experimentation and activism.

So to respond to the first of Kate’s questions (and: may these questions be the basis of another conference?), we might say that the new Aussie lyric has lots to do with a particular kind of formalism – namely, the heritage of the poem in musical performance. But to turn to Lionel Fogarty’s work, or to Señor Wagan Watson’s, and suggest that – because of the way both poets integrate oral, repetitive structures from their own traditional artistic heritages – they are therefore engaged in a conservative poetics which privileges the primacy of a rational, knowing subject, is, to be frank, absurd.

Thinking about the fourth question proposed by Kate, and about Pam’s own comments about this apparent ‘trend’ towards lyric poetry, I’d like to make the somewhat facile observation that these movements are only movements because we name them as such. For while it is indeed important to be aware of judges’ critical discourses and persuasions, we should also be careful that we don’t end up looking just where we want to look.

As an example, consider the results of the 2008 Overland/Judith Wright Prize. The winner of the prize, as well as a number of the runners up and commended poets, are friends with each other as well as with the judge. Furthermore, they are all engaged in a poetic practice which is heavily informed by contemporary and avant-garde North American poetry. In turn, the judge commended the ways in which the poets wilfully oscillated between apparently random elements of perception, creating a playful or witty sense of the surreal, or of the fragmented, or of an “Ashbery-esque enigma”. I don’t mean to criticise any of these poets, or the judge, in any way. I thought the winning poem was outstanding – one of my favourite of 2009 so far – and the other commended entries were also excellent. I am simply trying to make the point that here, amongst friends who are familiar with and support each others’ work, there is also another, different ‘trend’ emerging.

So, rather than assuming that it is the form which determines the practice, let’s talk more about our practices as they acquire various forms.

Sincerely,
Stuart Cooke

4:53PM

PB said...
LAZY TERM - NEW AUSSIE LYRIC

In my original post I used the term ‘new Aussie lyric’ so that I did not have to continue typing ‘a re-emergence of the lyric as a central form in Australian poetry’ perhaps I should have acronymised instead - RELCFAP ? Had I known there would be such a broad and active response I might have been more careful with the terms.

RELIEF! - I AM NOT ALONE

For some time in 2007 and 08, I had been noticing definite strands of lyrical writing in new poetry by younger women and I had been wondering what this trend might come to mean and had discussed this briefly with a few poet friends, in general social discourse. Then I read, in his note about a recent poetry award won by Judith Bishop, on Kris Hemensley’s blog on Sunday 10th August 2008 :

with Bishop..[ ].. Campbell & White, three exponents of a fastidiously constructed & polished lyricism current now in new Australian poetry (Lucy Holt undoubtedly another).

I was happy to see that someone else, Kris, had noticed what he called ‘the current’.

G..G..G..GENDER

Of course, in relation to gender, there are many poets of all ages, both male and female, who bear (& reproduce) the literary inheritance of traditional lyricism. But, I still think there IS a ‘current’ of lyricism that is being written here by new poets - younger women, specifically.

HyBRiDiTy

I take ‘hybridity’ to mean a kind of mixture - for instance - a discursive lyrical poem with eccentric lineation and political content, or a short lyrical poem that breaks from tradition by using colloquial elements or lines appropriated from a news report, a magazine, a comic (imagining examples is endless) . I suppose this could be called a ‘postmodern lyric’ but I like the organic sense that ‘hybrid lyricism’ connotes. (Mina Loy might have said ‘mongrel lyric’)

PERSONALLY

None of my comments have been meant personally. I am interested in the occurrence of ‘the current’.

Personally, I do not REJECT the lyric. Lyricism is a poetic problem for me. (Have you read ‘A liar tries lyric’ in the chapter called ‘Linguistic Unease’ in Denise Riley’s ‘The Words of Selves’? - or the chapter ‘Lyric Selves’ - both examinations of the lyric ‘I’).

However, I know that I prefer to read contemporary poetry that disrupts, or is at least written at a self-conscious slant to, well-worn rules.

Recently I memorised a Keats sonnet in my personal project of memorising a poem a month. It’s hard to memorise a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poem.

I am certain that most of what I am saying here is obvious to most of you. I hope I’ve clarified my own position a little. Apologies for longueurs. Please feel free to use ‘the deletions’ for mini or major ranting at any time.

Pam

4:59 PM


michaelf said...
elizabeth .. i didnt mean aspire to the experimental, but the wildly experimental, a term introduced by petra as a positive one

your poem 'ithaka' refers to 'bright boys' - i wasnt making any point about this other than the coincidence of a similar image in all 3 poets in alr

sarah - i didnt mean that these correspondences implied the lyrical .. merely that perhaps some basic formal elements were one place to start if we were to compare the poems / poets (as opposed to describing them as being the same without reference to anything)

i have been described as an experimental poet and a new lyrical poet. it was argued in blue dog that i was a language poet & therefore not a new lyrical poet.

the lyric aspect for me relates to the music that i enjoy and employ. i dont think of lyric or experimental as having absolute definitions but as meaning different things at different times and places. any (australian) tradition of these or other terms is constituted by the critic making the claim.

5:23 PM


PB said...
p.s

for work on the position of women IN the lyric poem there's Cynthia Hogue's essay on Harryette Mullen in 'We Who Love To Be Astonished' (Univ of Alabama Press, 2002) (and other essays here that consider lyricism).
Also Jeanne Heuving's interview with Rachel Blau du Plessis in 'innovative women poets' (University of Iowa Press, 2006) and in Rachel B du P's own books on poetics "The Pink Guitar & 'Blue Studios'.
Also, variously, 'Leaving Lines of Gender' by Ann Vickery (for the position of women IN not only lyrical poetry but mainly in Language writing)

6:18 PM


kickknees said...
dear wild flowers,

lyric is anagram of cyril, and cyril is a dog who is old and deaf and arthritic and whose genealogy is closer to that of a seal than other dogs. this information, whilst surely of great significance, provides little guidance since no one knows quite how to locate the significance, or how to recognise it with any certainty.

my sister told me about an astrological spiritualist she heard give a talk. he spoke about his astral meditations as a youth, and how he traveled to a place that no one had ever been before. in this place he discovered the source of all love and was sure that this meant he had reached enlightenment. in the end it turned out otherwise, but i asked my sister how the man had known, in the first place, that he was traveling in places that others had also been? was there a path, or some kind of signage? and then, secondly, how did he know he was in a place that no one had ever been before? was there a total lack of signage? my sister paused for a while and then said: i don't think this a very relevant question.

and then last week i went to the launch of jerome rothenberg and jeffrey c. robinson's new poems for the millenium anthology, volume three, which focuses on "romanticism". it's a radical re-vision of how to arrange a bunch of flowers. even cyril could work out the significant question this begs: how do we best re-arrange our own native (wild)flowers? or do some flowers just not go together under any circumstances?

the postcard is on its way,
regards from the city of brotherly (and let's hope, sisterly) love,
shut up and kiss me,
kickknees.

4:14 AM


tired critic said...
The problem partly lies with the term 'lyric' itself, and the tendency of contemporary poets to believe and apply taxonomic critical terms at all stages of their writing practice. A ‘lyric’ form needn't exclude experimentation (whatever experimentation means anymore); nor does an 'experimental' form necessarily exclude a didactic, fixed set of immovable assumptions about the world, language and self (a charge often laid at the door of lyric), even if these fixed assumptions are opposed to (generalised) ‘traditional’ ones. Experimentalism, narrowly defined and valued as an end in itself, creates new orthodoxies.

But what is potentially of more interest and relevance than the somewhat general tag of 'new lyricism' to the poets that were conjured (but not named) in this post, is the fact that they are of a generation who assimilated both 'traditional' and 'experimental' poetics simultaneously at the most orthodox level: the study of literature at university. This is partly a guess, as I know the background of only some of the poets in question. But if I'm right, then the tired binary of traditional vs experimental that forms the foundation of most critical discourse on poetry doesn't stand up anymore. Such discourse came out of a time when there truly was a theoretical and canonical conservatism in universities that was countered by outside insurgent poetic movements, all of which are now enshrined and celebrated in the academy. There has been a levelling of old oppositions in the teaching and reading of poetry in recent years and I think that the poetry you're talking here has partly come out of this shift. Hence the irritated bemusement of the younger poets responding here, as they encounter the tenacity of the old distinctions, which I think they truly just don't see.

Also, I find the choice of poets in your post interesting, as they seem to fit any definition of lyricism only very loosely, and much less neatly than many long-standing poets. I don't quite see why this lyric poetry is 'new' any more than I see why it's straightforwardly 'lyric'. Holland-Batt has written of the way her work relates to apostrophe and music and polyvocality, and I think these things are delightfully apparent to any of her readers who are engaging with the work, rather than just with a review of that work that has irked them. Similarly with the Jones book, which from memory contains only a handful of poems written from the perspective of a lyric 'I' and even then in such a way as to foreground the contingency and instability of the self (not your usual lyric agenda). Her poems that are 'lyrics' are more often than not lyric talking back to lyric in a critical way (though who cares if they weren't?) and most aren't lyrics at all but are capsule narratives or decentred dramatic monologues (at least one poem combines this dramatic/narrative approach with a somewhat 'experimental' approach to form as a terza rima canto disintegrates and multiple voices emerge). A more interesting comparison of Jones and Holland-Batt then would not be their so-called 'new lyricism' but the way they reconfigure extra-lyric traditions of performance and address and subjectivity, and how they draw on musical and dramatic forms to emphasise process in subjectivity, rather than a unified self. A comparative analysis of the kind I've outlined here, which would engage with these poets' actual work, rather than simply with their reception and with poetry politics, would also show just how different these poets are, as well as highlight some interesting common ground.

Also: which of these poets have actually studied creative writing (one of your criticisms). It seems to me that many haven't?

One more thing: it's as unjust to automatically dismiss poets on the basis of their publishers/prizes/reviews as it is to automatically commend them for these things. The work is always the thing. Criticism should be based on poems. It's difficult (as Paley said of Gibbon) to refute a sneer.

5:23 AM


tired critic said...
Hi Pam, sorry not to be clearer, I thought it was evident from the references in my comment that I was referring to your initial post (though I've found many of the ensuing comments interesting and have drawn on Sarah Holland-Batt's descriptions of her own work in my last response). I'm sorry also that you've interpreted my comments as 'anonymous flak' when I've made every effort to have them relate in an objective way to the specific content of your initial post and the ethical-critical questions it raises. Thanks for the reading pointer, I'm familiar with the work of Altieri. What I would prefer though is an engagement with the questions I've raised vis a vis your initial dismissal of what you've called new lyricism or resurgent lyricism, and a clearer idea of what you actually think lyric poetry is. Because if it's poetry committed to 'self-expression', then these poets really don't fit the bill, and I suspect your quarrel is less with these poets than it is with a particular ALR review and what it represents to you of the prize culture and the larger poetic culture you find yourself in (and which you have characterised just now as a kind of 'dearth'). Perhaps I'm taking your self-confessed 'mini-rant' too seriously, but I do think there's an ethical dimension to blogging in which opinions, however spur-of-the-moment, should be researched and considered before being put in the public domain. Certainly you shouldn't be questioning the worth of a group of young poets in any blanket way unless you're very familiar with the content of their books, and none of your posts have indicated any such familiarity, and have focused only on their reception and on hazy designations of what is 'lyric' generally. As someone who works on Commonwealth poetries in a British context I'm theoretically interested in the ways in which 'experimental' communities forge their own closed systems that are then rigorously defended against an over-determined 'other', in much the same way as 'traditional' gatekeepers of the 'canon' safeguarded the sanctity of their own closed system for so long. I don't mean to imply that you do this exactly, but I was interested for example in your blanket dismissal of Faber debuts (have you read the recent Faber debut by British-Indian poet Daljit Nagra, for example, which has really playful forms and hybrid vernaculars you might find interesting). I suppose I tend to think 'postmodernism' is less of a linear trajectory based on selected experimental movements that invalidate all others (which would make it a new kind of authoritative discourse), but is an opening out of the playing field, in which a sonnet isn't inadmissable in and of itself but now has no particular privilege in relation to a hip-hop-inflected performance poem, or a poem composed entirely of found phrases. And, in a world crammed full of bland anecdotal lyric poems, which I think are perfectly valid but which I personally find boring, I would question the designation of these very different and quite self-conscious and hybrid poets as harbingers of a new and socially disengaged lyric movement.

Oh, and I thought there was an implicit criticism of 'creative writing' in your opening statement that 'there’s a re-emergence of the lyric as a central form in Australian poetry, led by several young, mostly women graduates and students of creative writing courses', considering the opinion of that re-emergence that you then go on to give (though I think it's established in comments above that most of the poets above didn't study creative writing?). Sorry if I'm wrong on this. Thanks anyhow, for opening up this debate, it's been really illuminating.

11:19 AM


PB said...
Yes I deleted myself.

This discussion has been incredibly valuable and seems to show that this kind of discourse is much needed. A forum where we can make comments openly rather than simply to our friends before we retreat to living in our own heads comforted by probable agreement.

I felt like withdrawing from this ‘forum’ when ‘tired critic’, whoever he/she is, ended a post with Criticism should be based on poems. It's difficult (as Paley said of Gibbon) to refute a sneer. I disagree - criticism can be based on any aspect of poetics. And I don’t think my asking questions via the prompting of a review and a panel’s comments amounts to a “sneer”. So I felt then probably as weary as ‘tired critic’ of this entire discourse.

I don’t know who studies creative writing. I think creative writing is ONE of the sources of emerging poetries including a surge of lyricism. (otherwise why study or teach it). I’ve said this here before , I also included ‘beginners’ alongside ‘students’ in my first post. Of course, reading outside institutional curricula is another method of finding current trends.

Also, I find the choice of poets in your post interesting : Originally, I did not want to name any poets because I wanted to ask questions about these and the many more younger lyrical poets emerging in Australian poetry in general rather than the few in the ALR review & the award panel’s commentary.

I agree that Sarah, who bravely piped up here, nailed some aspects of the lyric with her exemplification of her own poetry’s use of apostrophe and music and polyvocality.

I’ve already said, ever so briefly, that I am aware of the hybrid, mongrel, experimental lyric. I’m interested in that. I am most interested though in the position of ‘woman’ IN lyric.

a levelling of old oppositions in the teaching I don’t think this current discussion has anything to do with old versus new or new versus old inside or outside the academy.

what it represents to you of the prize culture No - that’s another discussion entirely. It’s a digression for others on this blog. I don’t want to and haven’t participated in that. As I’ve already said, I find the judges’ comments poorly reasoned or confused, and, in my opinion, risible, funny. They are a useful illustration though.

they reconfigure extra-lyric traditions of performance and address and subjectivity - Yes and my further reading tip was in my deleted post - Charles Altieri writes on this in an essay on Mei-Mei Berssunbrugge’s ‘Empathy’

And a note - I realise that my references are mostly US/UK but that’s due to the dearth of critical writing in poetics in Australia.

I apologise for writing ‘anonymous flak’ - I wish that contributors to this discussion would sign their posts. Why hide ?

Pam,


1:08 PM


PB said...
My last comment crossed in the ether with your post, whoever you are, 'tired critic'.

I'll answer this bit :
Perhaps I'm taking your self-confessed 'mini-rant' too seriously, but I do think there's an ethical dimension to blogging in which opinions, however spur-of-the-moment, should be researched and considered before being put in the public domain. Certainly you shouldn't be questioning the worth of a group of young poets in any blanket way unless you're very familiar with the content of their books, and none of your posts have indicated any such familiarity, and have focused only on their reception and on hazy designations of what is 'lyric' generally.

I have read the books and other poems of everyone who has posted here except, perhaps, the three anonymous participants. I have read practically every poetry book recently published in Australia. Doesn't that permit me to notice and then address a recent phenomenon in a blanket way, and to use whatever 'hazy designations' I choose. I'm not an academic, nor a literary critic.

The ethical dimension of this blog is inherent in the blog. I did some 'research'. In this instance it was to read a review and a set of panel comments. I 'considered' that 'research' - i.e. I underlined points in the newspaper, made a few notes, had a few chuckles, and decided not to name names, then I thought of a few questions that I believe had not been asked anywhere else - in recent Australian magazines, blogs, or at festivals or conferences.

and this bit: I would question the designation of these very different and quite self-conscious and hybrid poets as harbingers of a new and socially disengaged lyric movement.
So would I. No-one "designated" any particular poet as that. The question is about the 'lyric poem' in relation to/or its position in the unavoidable context of the socio-cultural.

I do believe one of the ethical requirements of discussion (on a blog or anywhere) is to declare your identity.


Pam,