speedpoets, edited by Graham Nunn.  Queensland Government Department of Employment and Training.

Review: Patricia Prime

2003 saw the publication of an exciting collection of poetry, speedpoets.  Many of the poets are familiar names on the Australian poetry scene (Robert Lort, Rowan Donovan and Ben Doran to name but three).  Graham Nunn, who edited the anthology, tells us, “It was only a year ago that this all started to happen.”  The appearance of so many new, skilful writers may be attributed to two factors.  Firstly, their appearance on the local scene as performance poets, and secondly, a new found confidence in tackling the exacting apprenticeship of the complex and demanding craft of writing poetry.

Whilst the influence of the Performance Movement is strongly evident in this collection, there is also an indication that these poets have grappled well with the demanding apprenticeship of their chosen literary genre.  What amazes about the success of these poems is their authors’ grasp of the technical demands of poetry; awareness of structure and form, personal experience laid bare, political and social awareness and comment brought to the forefront.

Throughout, the collection offers language that is taut, textured, and tense and which is also unpretentious, as in the prose poems of Ben Doran, “These small scenes are not the anecdotal wonders of the travellers guide writers,” (“Eye”).  Rowan Donovan’s poem “Light Switch” is a sustained piece of writing, in which he advises readers to make contact with others,

How to reach out

and touch that little part

of someone else

that says, “turn me on, light my fuse,

but don’t finger my palm,

lick my wounds.”

The language remains pertinent and challenging in most of these poems, and they frequently reiterate the call to try the unfamiliar, offering intellectually challenging poetics to their readers.  Brentley Frazer offers a selection of prose and mainstream poetry of which the best is “Clasp”, “There is a long hall in which two porcelain geese seek with beak determined an ornamental hell.”

Iago Morgan’s precise language, delicate imagery and structured forms differ from the poetics of the poets already mentioned

                                                Twinkling

                                                she flounders in bubbles of fairy floss

                                                sticking like pollen to my senses.

                                                                        (“For Michelle”)

I felt that Graham Nunn’s adept and agile technical ability suited his subject matter and his dry wit was very welcome, “Hunched over / I smell only the staleness / Of shadows” (“Oh to be Icarus”).  His writing is assured, achieved and ambitious, with a pleasing lack of insularity, as expressed in the poem “Flashback . . .”

They said the killing was for the democracy

But who has a say in that anyway?

And since when was death

A continuing social experiment?

Morality should be reduced to dust . . .

Of the poets I’d not read before I was most impressed with Stefanie Petrik who not only thoroughly understands the function of line breaks, but also displays considerable powers of analysis and insight into her chosen subjects.  “Boundary Street Backwards Hello” epitomises her delightful use of line breaks, words and phrases:

                                    I love the way the light catches on the trees

                                    It swims down – current swirl – vectors towards the

                                    sea

                                    It moves my eyes down, careening

                                    down

                                    down

                                    down

The  movement of Robert Lort’s poems is unpredictable and original.  He uses some wonderfully vivid images, such as “an oily storm of pelted stones” (“Why lonely men drink umbrellas”) and, “the skin wraps around our insulated necrosis” (“ the TUMBREL upturned on my skull”).  And where does he get those titles? He manages to write about himself and the human psyche with riveting accuracy.

Paul Sanderson is a different poet altogether.  He combines a directness of style with an eloquent willingness to tackle difficult, important themes – particularly those of loneliness, violence and struggle.  He tackles the subject of the film “Fight Club” with such enthusiasm it makes me want to watch the film again,

                                    In an underground bar

                                    against the wall these images:

                                    edifices imploding under cinema lighting

                                    video projections of what came too late.

                                    (“I am Jack’s Spleen: ode to Edward Norton”)

Fakie Wilde’s Duck Watcher poems are an effective subversion of the traditionally anthropomorphic nature poem, here empirical observations are undercut by uncertainty:

                                         I’m watching the fat duck

                        Come sprawling from the filthy Spanish grotto.

                           (“Duck Watcher (Spanish Grotto dub mix”)

His images are particularly impressive: “ . . . the gurgling / Of the flowers in the back of its neck” and “Sound of teeth marks. / Flower vomit duck-bite holes.”

Matching the intelligence of the poems in this collection is the force of language and form.  The breadth and precision of vocabulary is staggering.  There’s much play and humour, from the gently ironic to the bitterly sardonic, with many edifying insights in between.  These poets give the details, the scent, the stuff of history being made, but manage also to bring out tenderness as well as violence, love as well as anger.  These are not embattled or didactic views, but a steady look at problematic relationships so complex as sometimes to seem insoluble.  A tempered optimism lies beneath the poems, and they are often grieving but are still resilient.

The book is nicely produced (although I would have welcomed page numbers) and has an interesting cover design of black images on a cream background.