The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry

by John Kinsella

  When it came to selecting a poet’s work, we didn’t necessarily go with their most recent, or even what they themselves might consider their best, but what we felt represented a period when they were becoming well known, or when their poetry had a decisive effect on what was being written by others. Every poem selected is a poem we respect, like or consider relevant to the historical overview of Western Australian poetry in some way. If we had selected every living poet’s most recent work (which is often the work poets feel most strongly about and close to), it would be a lopsided book — an anthology of recent poetry and little more. Many of the poets here are writing as well as they ever did, and maybe at their best, but their poems of the past are also relevant, important and often equally good and effective as anything they have written since.

  So the selection process has been to look across time and select accordingly, rather than out of a poet’s life-work. However, in some cases, where a poet has had an ongoing influence and has produced a vast and diverse array of work, we have selected poems across the span of a writing life, sometimes numbering to four or even five poems. Jack Davis, Dorothy Hewett and Philip Salom are examples of such poets. In the case of the latter two, despite spending decades outside Western Australia, they remained and remain central to any notion of poetry from the West — in fact, we would argue that this notion led them to reinvent their presence on the east coast in interesting and vital ways.

  Further to this, the idea that Western Australian poetry is ‘isolated’ and separate in any absolute sense is inaccurate and reductive (we will pick up on this ‘isolation’ later). Though clearly ‘British’ in its origins, the Swan River settlement soon had people from elsewhere as part of its literacy, and by the time of the goldrush of the late 1880s through to the 1920s, it had become a diverse ethnic mix, with some volatility and even conflict, to the point where the many poets publishing in goldfields newspapers used poetry as a jingoistic ‘dissing’ of cultures outside their own.

  ‘Afghan’ people, Chinese people, and others without access (linguistically or otherwise) to the print venues of the colony, who were perceived as a cultural threat or (more often) an economic rival on the goldfields, were racially abused, as were Indigenous Australians. There were better ‘goldfields poets’ (we might consider this, at least in part, a construct of the Bulletin magazine’s A.G. Stephens’s nationalist agenda, as much as a psychogeographical and demographic grouping of poets), and there were worse, in their abilities to hold a poem together beyond jingle-jangle rhyme schemes, but most were blighted by racism. But we should, nonetheless, never underestimate the power of poetry as a means of expression and aesthetic, cultural and artistic interest on the goldfields.

  Eminent poets like ‘Dryblower’ Murphy often lifted their art to a social conversation that reflected a certain type of community attitude, using wit and irony to great effect, but more often the very local nature of the poems kept them trapped in local bigotries. But at their best, the goldfields poets spoke of fortune and loss, of ambition and death, of the human predicament beyond (locally) humorous anecdotes, Schadenfreude, and human foibles and folly. Doses of self-irony (even for the commonly ‘anonymous’ bard) helped!

  The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century would seem to be a period of sparseness in Western Australian poetry, at least among the English language poetry that was appearing in print, though not of course among the Indigenous songs that cannot be collected here because they were not recorded and translated, but were an eternal part of life, of existence.

  One poet not represented here because his works don’t ‘select’ as well as others is W.S. Siebenhaar. Beverley Smith notes, regarding his long poem ‘Dorothea’ (1911), that according to J.S. Battye, then librarian of the Public Library in Perth, ‘the appearance of Dorothea caused a considerable stir in the state’s literary circles. He [Battye] gives no details as to the exact cause of the “stir” but there was sharp difference of opinion among Perth critics as to the merit of the work. This seems to have arisen not so much over specific political content as its literary form.’ (Farmer, 223) Farmer touches on this literary debate but makes very little investigation of the poem itself. As is the case with almost all early Western Australian poetry, there are references, even tantalising references, to contexts and interrelations between poets and their work, but in reality little more. There’s space for serious consideration of poetry of this period in its context, looking at it within the circumstances of its writing and publication and the mores of its time, however problematic the poetry might seem today (politically or socially or ‘quality’-wise).

  Despite being an historically based anthology, this book nonetheless concentrates on the post−Second World War period. From examples of early ‘colonial’ poetry, ‘goldfields poetry’, we take a journey through to the mid-twentieth-century pre-eminent poetries of Kenneth McKenzie, Dorothy Hewett, and Randolph Stow, and on to the intensity of Jack Davis and Fay Zwicky in the 1970s and 1980s, up to the present day with younger, internationalist poets such as J.P. Quinton, Caitlin Maling and Siobhan Hodge, who still have a strong sense of the local, but often also write about ‘elsewhere’.

  Further, though many of the poets collected here wrote from Perth, the State of Western Australia is considered ‘regional’ in demographics, and many of the poets write from particular areas with particular regional inflections. This is clearly true of Indigenous poetry where identity and country are closely connected and interwoven; but also of non-Indigenous poets — Caroline Caddy writing out of the south-west, Elizabeth Deborah Brockman from the Avon Valley, the ‘goldfields poets’ during the goldrush but also those writing out of that region in more recent times (with often very different aesthetics and politics!), those writing from the mid-west, the Pilbara, and the Kimberley.

  Identity is a complex, cross-hatched, three-dimensional portrait, and indigeneity often fuses with migrant heritage, altering the spatial dimensions of place. Jimmy Chi working out of Broome shows not only a vital interweaving of identities, but also of ways of seeing and transcribing cultural identity. Further, his mixture of song and poetry, music and words, is part of the broader activity we consider poetry. The brilliant songwriter and composer, David McComb of Perth band The Triffids, was such a poet-composer, and is also celebrated herein as one who crosses boundaries with ease. In the same way, we might look to the non-English language influences on so many English-language poets: behind these many English-language poems are often different languages, different artistic practices, and always different life experiences.

  In this ‘painting’ of a very large place, there is no prescriptive formula for what constitutes a collective poetry or poetics. Many of us search for and identify many diverse ‘essential’ characteristics of place. Dennis Haskell has said, in private discussions with me (John), that humour is an essential part of the Western Australian poetic experience. If we find ourselves asking why, we will come up with many self-effacing and also self-ironising answers, but sometimes it amounts to an enjoyment of the absurd and/or a need to lift the spirits in the face of life’s various difficulties.

  There have been few surveys of Western Australian poetry, but all of them have been consulted in compiling this work. We have drawn upon earlier anthologies from the early twentieth century such as the annual Jarrah Leaves, through to Bruce Bennett and William Grono’s Wide Domain: Western Australian Themes & Images (A&R, 1979) and Alec Choate and Barbara York Main’s Summerland: A Western Australian Sesquicentenary Anthology of Poetry and Prose (UWAP, 1979), and Brian Dibble, Don Grant and Glen Phillips’s Celebrations (UWAP, 1988), in terms of broader literary surveys connected to state or national celebrations of foundation (or invasion); or Western Australian Writing: An On-line Anthology through UWA, or the poetry-specific surveys of the contemporary from Fremantle Press (Quarry: A Selection of Contemporary Western Australian Poetry, edited by Fay Zwicky, 1981; Wordhord: Contemporary Western Australian Poetry, edited by Dennis Haskell
and Hilary Fraser, 1989), and the ur-text of Western Australian poetry anthologising: William Grono’s Margins: A West Coast Selection 1829–1988 (FACP, 1988).

  Large piles of individual collections have covered desks, shelves and floors in our house and workspaces for years. We have also considered newspaper, journal and newsletter publications, and poets in the light of their communal as well as personal contributions. In the end, needing to contain the brilliance of a poetry that geographically occupies almost a third of Australia, we decided that we would prioritise book publication, but that this would not be exclusive.

  It is limiting and reductive to separate poetry from the environments in which it is read and heard. In the introduction to Taruru: Aboriginal Song Poetry from the Pilbara by C.G. von Brandenstein and A.P. Thomas (Rigby, 1973), Thomas discusses Dr Carl von Brandenstein recording songs of Indigenous stockmen by setting the environment: ‘an outcamp by a windmill, on the boundary of two sheep-runs’. We later read:

  With his intimate knowledge of Jindjiparndi song, von Brandenstein listens fascinated, savouring the subtle variations, the fine sensibilities revealed in the poetry. To him, these songs are like the desert orchids, inconspicuous, faint-scented, but full of beauty for him who opens his heart and mind. Mirrga is singing a song from his youth, of his days of hunting, dancing and chasing the girls, when Cossack, now a ghost town, was the bustling port of Roebourne.

  In the dark — make the torch shine!

  Eyelids heavy.

  In the dark — make the torch shine!

  Oh Wandjuli!

  Over five years, von Brandenstein sat at many campfires, joined many such nights of songs.

  Issues of appropriation and inadvertent offence aside, there is a genuine effort here to relate the ‘poetry of a place’ that doesn’t require either linguist or anthologist, but is complete and entire in its own space. So what right do we have to bring it into a poetry anthology of a place that has compromised its very existence?

  This is a key question of the present anthology and all such anthologies. We believe all the poetry gathered here is in the light of this fundamental relationship between place and circumstance. This is not to privilege one poet over another, one poem over another, but to show that poetry is its own necessity and is driven by knowledges no invader or state can suppress entirely. We admire and deeply value the Indigenous poetry, the songs, this land has nurtured and is nurtured by. And the performance aspect of these songs is at the very heart of all poetry, however and wherever it is made. How a poem is spoken or sung, performed or uttered, is part of a ‘reading’ process as much as following signs on a page.

  We also considered the various ‘reading scenes’ that evolved in Perth during the 1960s to 1980s (and, of course, pre-dated this in public places, people’s homes, local halls, Mechanics Institutes etc.), which were often connected to or arose out of ‘music scenes’ (e.g. Lipservice and the Hayloft folk performances), and led to the anthologising of work that would otherwise have been lost to the occasion. Organisations such as the Fellowship of Australian Writers (WA), the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre, Peter Cowan Writers Centre, Writing WA, Fremantle Arts Centre, Out of the Asylum Writers Group and many others, have fostered and anthologised writing, and most importantly, operated as points of dialogue and community.

  Over the last couple of decades, slam poetry has altered the poetry landscape, reaching its peak maybe a decade ago. But the dynamism of performance has always been at the core of poetic identity, and whether it is ritualised performance, or spontaneous eruption in an environment designed for such moments, or culture-jamming in the face of the status quo, poetry is there, everywhere, in your face and whispering into your ear at once. Allan Boyd the Anti-poet is included here with a poem performed for his regular stint on ABC radio, a ‘to the people’ activist engagement that takes the street to people’s living rooms, cars, or wherever they can access radio. The on- and off- page performance activisms of anarchist poet Mar Bucknell are conveyed here through an extract from his performance-text piece (works well on the page!) The History of Glass, which we heard staged (music/sound and voice) in the Blue Room in the Perth cultural precinct some years ago. Bucknell has been a printer, an editor, an activist, an anarchist thinker, and a poet for many decades now, and his work is not as well known as it should be outside the poetry community because of his decision to remain low-fi and uncompromisingly community-based.

  Publication happens in many ways. The various literary awards and competitions over the decades add another layer of discourse — from the Thomas Wardle Prize in the early 70s, to the Perth Poetry Prize, the Tom Collins Poetry Prize, the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, the various university awards and others, and rich seams of work that remain untapped and bizarrely, relatively unknown. We encountered our first Western Australian poets outside home, in school publications. Lee Knowles surfaced in educational publications, and therein established her name and reached into the psyches of many schoolchildren. She spoke locally, but also universally. Her restitutions of women in colonial and more immediate contexts, her exquisite weavings of the sea and the quotidian, have become reference points in outward–inward fluctuations of Western Australian poetry.

  The conscious declaration of a female and feminist poetics during the 1970s and 1980s in Western Australia is strongly tied to the poetry of writers like Lee Knowles, Fay Zwicky, Wendy Jenkins, Morgan Yasbincek and many others, whether or not they would themselves overtly espouse those poetics. Women of diverse poetries, their work helped drive generational change in publication and reception. In some ways WEB, the women’s poetry reading that began in the early 90s, was the crystallisation of a lot of activism and effort that went into sidestepping patriarchal (and national) means of disseminating women’s poetry, and might be seen as a turning point, along with Wendy Jenkins’s poetry editing at Fremantle Arts Centre Press, and the communal activism of a bookshop like Terri-ann White’s Arcane Bookshop in Northbridge, a place of literary, feminist, LBGQTI+, and ideological conversation and strength.

  In Western Australia one must search widely to understand the nature of poetry-publishing when there were few opportunities within the state. Book and journal publication interstate and abroad were the norm for many Western Australian poets until the 1970s, but with the advent of UWAP publishing the odd poetry volume (though nowadays they are publishing many), and also the establishment of Fremantle Arts Centre Press (now Fremantle Press) in the mid-1970s, in addition to the work of Westerly and other local journals, publishing became two-phased for poets: home and away.

  The argument over who was the first book-published poet in Western Australia is hard to resolve, as a certain Charles Walker seems to have had a book printed and distributed briefly in Perth (though possibly printed in Britain, but this is unlikely) before he and the book were ‘lost’. But the first confirmed local publication was by Henry Ebenezer Clay in 1873. Concurrently, the Fenian convict and escapee from the colony, John Boyle O’Reilly, published his collection of poetry, Songs From the Southern Seas, in Boston, USA, where he was to become a prominent editor and writer. This remarkable book includes a number of his dynamic poems of Western Australia such as ‘The Dukite Snake’. The dedication page and preface of this work mention his escape and time in Western Australia.

  In doing research for this anthology, I have come across some unusual material. John Hay’s 1981 essay ‘Literature and Society’ from A New History of Western Australia (UWAP, 1981) draws on Beverley Smith’s UWA thesis written in the early 60s on early Western Australian writing, and makes a very brief point of reference worth following up in the context of the earliest publications. It interests me in particular because it complicates the claim made elsewhere about Henry Ebenezer Clay’s Two and Two: A Story of the Australian Forest by H.E.C., with Minor Poems of Colonial Interest, being the first volume of poetry by a single author published in the colony, as I mentioned above.

  Hay notes, ‘In Febr
uary [?] 1856, the convict Charles Walker seems to have published a small volume entitled Lyrical Poems, the first book of verse to be published in Perth. No copies are extant.’ (p. 607) One might guess that the claim (not Hay’s claim but asserted in various places) for Clay’s being the first book of its type published in Perth is due to the ‘No copies … extant’ regarding Walker’s volume. There is no evidence outside newspaper advertisements that Walker’s book existed at all. Naturally, this has got me intrigued, especially as, through drawing on colonial and later sources, I have made the same claim for Clay’s book myself.

  Though he is not part of this anthology in terms of a poem included, Walker is part of the picture of what underlies this anthology. Poets and convicts easily forgotten. What do we know of Walker? Almost nothing. In the Western Australian newspaper The Inquirer and Commercial News (1855–1901), Walker published almost weekly advertisements from 19 December 1855 through to late March 1856, relating to a work entitled Lyrical Poems. The advertisements up until that of 6 February 1856 are worded ‘ “Lyrical and Other Poems”, By Charles Walker. Persons requiring a copy will please to forward their wishes to the author, at Mr G Marfleet’s, Perth; which will meet with due attention.’ Then they change to this: ‘Just Published lyrical poems by Charles Walker. Copies can be had at the Stores of Mr G. Marfleet, Perth. price — Half-a-crown.’