Australian critic and editor, Martin Duwell has read and published a variety of Australian talent over the years.  In this interview he discusses poetics, historical aspects of Australian poetry, and talks about his recent project, the anthology, The Best of Australian Poetry 2003.

It is something that we expect critics to do because they have read so widely in an area (or seen so many productions or screenings in the case of theatre and film people). But there is a lovely epistemological paradox here. Sometimes trends are best seen from the outside and the more you know about a field the more difficult it is to see trends. In the early nineteenth century when few people had traveled really widely it was easy to decide that mankind divided up into Caucasian, Negroid and Chinese types. Now that we see so many varieties of people this looks a ludicrous myth. So the more you know, the harder it is to believe in crude sub-groupings. On the other hand there is some truth in such groupings: even I believe in the existence of English Romantic poetry - though, come to think of it, Blake and Byron might not have! All knowledge is a conflict between the power of the individual case and the power of the generalisation and temperamentally I tend to be on the side of the former.

There's a lot of talk about post-modern literature, could you define this for our readers?

Not easily. It is probably a different thing for different people (like Romanticism!). To me it derives from a healthy suspicion of the idea that styles of writing are in some way organic. A post-modern poem, then, is one which tends to parody different styles, or rather use them (parody implies a satirical intention) and move from one style to another or allow styles to conflict. This is a definition that suits someone like John Ashbery, of course, and it makes something like “Daffy Duck in Hollywood” - which uses imitations of Tasso or Ariosto - into a central text. But other views of the post-modern would suit other poets.

You were involved with  Makar in the sixties. Tell us about its beginnings and has the name any particular significance?

I didn’t found it, I inherited it from Graham Rowlands as a kind of student magazine which was a bit more ambitious than others and wanted to become more than just a publisher of local poets. Peter Annand joined me in the second year and we expanded it further. Our biggest breakthrough was in 1972 when we dropped one of the four annual numbers and replaced it on the subscription with three small books of poetry - the Gargoyle Poets series. The magazine then fed into that - publishing interviews with poets in the series and also holding out to regular contributors of poetry the possibility of later book publication.

The name is as un-indigenous as can be. It is the medieval Scots word for “poet”. The head of UQ’s English Department at the time it was founded was a medievalist, Arthur Cawley, so I suppose that is why they chose it. The word appears in William Dunbar’s great poem, “Lament for the Makaris”

Have you ever written poetry yourself and what effect does having written poetry have on editing it?

Only as a schoolboy amateur. The older I get the more anomalous I feel. It now seems very unusual for poetry critics not to be a poets themselves, if only poets manque. This is true in Australia though it may not be true overseas. Again it relates to our lack of a powerful tradition of literary journalism so that you tend to be either a scholar or a poet - or at least you did when I was starting out. Another thing that relates to this is that I really love good prose and always have. In the days when I could memorize texts easily I found it just as easy to remember good prose as good poetry. So I feel that whatever destiny I might have had glimmers of when I was starting university was one which directed me as a writer towards prose.

I think the great thing about being a non-poetry writing poetry editor and critic is that you can be more of an honest consumer. You are able to face any poem with the question “Does this interest me?” rather than “I have chosen not to write like this so what is wrong with it?” Of course things are not so simple as that and the best poet/editors seem to be able to empathize with work which is vastly different to their own and even challenges it.

As the editor of Makar, what did you look for when deciding what to publish?

I think I wanted then what I’ve always wanted since. From established poets, something new that doesn’t rework old successes; from new poets, a voice that doesn’t sound like anybody else’s.

What poets of the time did Makar publish and promote?

A large number. Not because we were wonderful but because this was the late sixties and there seemed to be new and challenging poets arriving in every batch of mail. We were very eclectic and not really interested in the perceived lines of the literary battlefield. Inevitably we are associated with the poets of The New Australian Poetry, an anthology we published in 1979 when we had gone on to being a poetry press rather than a magazine. But we also published poets like Geoff Page and Roger McDonald who were thought to belong to a very different camp. The poets I formed the strongest relationships with were probably John Tranter (who, with his wife, Lyn, lived in Brisbane for a short while in the mid-seventies), Rae Desmond Jones (a greatly underrated poet), Alan Wearne and John Scott. Gargoyle poets published the first books of the last three and we published John Tranter’s third book.

There was a trend in the sixties to get away from the mainstream publishers of poetry of the day, why was that so and what do you think of self-publishing in the context of the current environment? Do poets have to 'publish or perish'?

The late sixties was a complicated time. The technology was such that it was difficult to produce an inexpensive book that looked good. Nowadays, given the availability of word processors there is no excuse for not producing a book which is, in typography and design at least, attractive. That keeps the book designers on their toes because they don’t have access to special technology (hot-metal typesetting for example) to give them an edge.

What was happening was that there were only a couple of major publishers doing poetry (really only one: Angus and Robertson). Their lists were filled with poets who rose to prominence in the 1940s - great poets like Judith Wright and David Campbell. There was a later interim generation trying to get into print (people born in the 1930s and collected in books like Hall and Shapcott’s New Impulses in Australian Poetry). One of the reasons why UQP began its Paperback Poets series in 1970 was to publish such people (Rodney Hall’s Heaven in a Way and David Malouf’s first book, Bicycle, were in its first series of three). But this group was overshadowed by the “Generation of 1968” or “New Writing Group” and much of the Paperback Poets success comes from this group - it’s significant that Michael Dransfield’s first book, Streets of the Long Voyage, was the third of the initial trio.  For most of these poets, self-publication or (more accurately) starting their own small press, was a viable option. It is something that people like Kris Hemensley and Robert Kenny did.

There was also, in keeping with the turbulent times, a tendency on the part of many younger poets to see commercial publishing houses as belonging to an arm of capitalism and indirectly responsible for horrors like the Vietnam war. So for many there was a desirable, underground quality about small presses.

Sentimentally I remain a supporter of small presses but it is a very vague term (as is “Small Magazines”). I think it is fine for poets to publish themselves though they would want to make sure that they get good advice about the selection because once it’s published you are stuck with it. All poets should belong to some sort of group that reads their work - that was something where poets used to be able to rely on an editor like A.G. Stephens or Beatrice Davis and Douglas Stewart or, later, Roger McDonald and Tom Shapcott; apart from distribution (and the warm feeling of seeing that your book has a reputable imprint) the publisher seems less significant nowadays.

Over the years, whose work has made a significant contribution to poetry in Australia and why?

That is a really large question. In a sense all poets whose talent and achievement is at a point where they are not derivative make a contribution. But I think it is true that in my time there have been books which are more important than others. This is often because they break new ground or show the rest of the poets that different things are possible - Beethoven, late in life, reading through Schubert’s songs is supposed to have said, “Why did nobody tell me you could write songs like that?” People different in age to me would probably have radically different books, but for me Bruce Beaver’s Letters to Live Poets is a crucial book in Australian poetry. I can remember that Rodney Hall lent me a copy and I read it at almost one sitting. It is significant because of an older poet’s openness to American poetic influences, its breaking of the old rhyme and metre expectations (something which was difficult for a poet born in 1928 and you can feel in the poems a desperate need for an alternative driving force), and its lovely blend of the homely Australian with high rhetoric and a high culture framework - it is peppered with quotations from all sorts of poets from Davies to Valery and Olson.

Then there are books like Robert Adamson’s Canticles on the Skin, Dransfield’s Streets of the Long Voyage, John Tranter’s The Alphabet Murders and John Forbes’ Tropical Skiing. All these books appeared within a short period in the late sixties and early seventies so it is obvious that either something very powerful was happening then or I think that everything important happened in Australian poetry when I was a young man!! Obviously everybody meets Les Murray at some stage and the first book of his that really gets hold of you is going to be an important book. For me that was Lunch Counter Lunch. Other crucial books in my period (more or less) would be Gwen Harwood’s much delayed first book,  and David Malouf’s Neighbours in a Thicket.

In your opinion what particular qualities does a poet have to have to make an impression, as it were, on the craft?

I tend to think in terms of originality and there are probably historical and cultural reasons why I do that. I want to read poets who don’t sound like anybody else. I really hate it when poets (or academics for that matter) are producing work that looks as though it is happy to follow on from what others have done. The really major poets (this probably applies throughout intellectual life as well) as those that you have to read whether you like it or not. Figures as different as John Forbes and Les Murray are poets you don’t have any choice about - you have to read them: how you feel about their attitude to life or to poetics is pretty irrelevant. Of course, this is what only the really major poets are able to do: to force themselves on our consciousness. James Dickey once wrote that what every poet really wants is to write a single poem which is remembered by its culture - and that’s a different approach entirely.

According to your tastes, which established poet or poets of today have mastered voice and form in Australia?

I think I might pass on this question - I wouldn’t like to be picking and choosing amongst Australia’s major poets.

What advice would you offer to the emerging poet in regard to improving their writing?

I would recommend two things: read a lot and get involved  in a group of sympathetic writers who you can show your work to. Each of these have their awkwardnesses. In the case of the first there are poets who read and absorb everything, there are readers who find a few poets who appeal to them and then devour everything that these poets have written, and then there are poets who are terrified of reading any contemporary work in case it infects their own poetry. I’ve known poets in each of these categories so the only general point I can make is that one rule about reading may not apply to everybody. But most poets I have met are very good readers in their own way and all use their reading to get a leg up.

The idea of a writing group is difficult as well because the odds are that you will enrol in a group where very few of the other poets appeal to you. I think the most successful method is an ad hoc group who know and like each others’ work and are prepared to give honest responses. Of course it is tricky finding such a group but at least with the existence of email it doesn’t have to be a group which is physically together.

Do you think entering poetry competitions is a worthwhile pursuit for emerging poets and why?

The number of entries in poetry competitions is pretty large and the chance of making an impression on the judges is very low. Of course it is fantastic if you win or get on a commended list and it must give an enormous boost to confidence but the downside may mean that it is not worth it. Too many poets probably see not winning as a kind of rejection - something that it isn’t. So I don’t think entering a general prize is all that important for a new poet - entering a competition specifically for new poets is a better idea. Sending your poems to journals (actually another kind of competition) is really a far better use of your time. I’ve often thought, when judging, that I would like to see the entrants in the competition given the chance to read, say, the first hundred entries. It would make them see what a difficult business judging is, and how difficult it is for a poet to win.

What advice would you offer the emerging poet in regard to how to go about winning poetry competitions?

This is one of those questions where the only advice you can give is so obvious that you wonder whether anybody who hadn’t worked this out for themselves deserves to win a prize! The central “trick” is to put yourself in the place of the judges - people who have to read hundreds of poems one after the other. You need poems that quickly establish themselves as distinctive and interesting in the readers’ minds - it is like an audition: you don’t have the readers’ attention for very long. At the same time the poems have to have a certain gravitas: a sequence of three haiku is not likely to win a prize of thousands of dollars. Of course this leads people to write a certain kind of “prize-winning” poem - extended, serious etc etc - and there may be a specific genre growing up nowadays. If there is, I don’t see anything wrong with it. All the plays of Classical Greece (the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, as well as many others) were written to win prizes and nobody thinks any less of them for this fact though I suppose rumours went around the playwrights as to who would be on the judging panel and what would appeal to them!

Your latest project is The Best Australian Poetry 2003 which was launched at RENEW THE WORD Queensland Poetry Festival September 12 - 14. Can you tell the readers about this and what inspired you to begin such a project?

It's based on similar series in other places which are just too good not to steal! In Australia, in the past there was a series of Angus and Robertson annual anthologies selected by a different editor each year and there was also a series, Poet's Choice, run by Philip Roberts from his Island Press.
There, he picked the poets and asked them to send the poems of their own (of the particular year) which they liked most. Both of these were valuable series but they did lack a couple of things and Bronwyn Lea and I have tried to improve the basic model. For a start we included the authors' comments about their poems. I found, in the American series, that this was as surprising and interesting as the poems themselves. We've also tried to solve difficulties of where the poems come from. We've not included poems from books but only poems appearing in periodicals and newspapers and we've also chosen only local newspapers and journals. So our series is not only a celebration of poetry but also a celebration of those places in Australia which have committed themselves to publishing the poetry of Australians.
They deserve some sort of recognition.

I've talked about the act of editing the first issue in the introduction to the book. It was a surprisingly enjoyable task, much more enjoyable than I expected. Making anthologies which, as I say, I always do in my head anyway, turns out to be much more pleasurable than I thought - almost addictive.
Fortunately we have different editors every year and so I won't be able to become seriously addicted.

Martin Duwell and Bronwyn Lea are the general editors of The Best Australian Poetry 2003.  This is the first in a series of anthologies that will be produced annually by University of Queensland Press.  For further information go to < www.uqp.uq.edu.au >