Poem

Déjà Rêvé

by Philip Mead •

April 2023, no. 452

Poem

Déjà Rêvé

by Philip Mead •

April 2023, no. 452

This is not your life said the sushi train,

but this is what happened, illusion and voyaging,

all of it episodic-like, muted, a dantological trajectory,

advancing as a nebula of mental life.

Your guide appearing as a figure

from a pack of dreams, a guy who looked like Brecht,

and who only ever does what he wants,

munching a cigar, telling the clouds how to process.

But he was gentle, worried about you.

because you were adrift. So he led you down

through your story, your souvenir, its sandy tracks

and banks of everlastings, its barren ledges of intention

past the muttering of screened crowds. You missed

the entrance, distracted as usual, that eternal sense

of hiding things from yourself. He said just follow me,

don’t take any notice of that witchery of sound.

There are endless meanings in this geography,

lives streaked with occasions and things they didn’t invite.

Anyway everyone has sundowner issues.

Or a brow ache, or memories that are an obstruction.

It’s an armselig path this kind of travel,

but look at those bright red kangaroo paws,

think about what you might be able to offer.

The limit of your experience isn’t a limit, it’s mutable,

happily for you this is just a juncture. An induced waypoint,

which is not to say you’ll forget. For me, I’m not sure.

But get to know the intimacy of the alphabet, I think of it

as microdosing knowledge, googling corrections. And look around,

there’s a lot of value in distortions and damage, they can go with you.

I can help you with form, and with the visualisation bit.

I’ll see you in the marshy reed beds when you’re free, or freer,

on your way out. I’ve got an Airstream near there

where I hang out the rest of the time.

Philip Mead’s most recent collection is Zanzibar Light (Vagabond Press, 2018).

Philip Mead

Philip Mead was born in Brisbane in 1953. From 1987 to 1994 he was Lockie Fellow in Creative Writing and Australian Literature in the English Department, University of Melbourne, and from 1995 to 2009, Senior Lecturer, then Associate Professor in English, at the University of Tasmania. Since 2009 Philip has been Winthrop Professor and inaugural Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia, and Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science. In 2009-2010 Philip was Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack Visiting Chair of Interdisciplinary Australian Studies, at the Free University, Berlin.

From 1987 to 1994 Philip was Poetry Editor of Meanjin Quarterly magazine. He reviews poetry for various magazines and newspapers and edited, with John Tranter, the Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1992). This River is in the South (1984) was published by University of Queensland Press. His edited collection of essays, Kenneth Slessor – Critical Readings appeared with University of Queensland Press in 1997. He has also edited selections of poetry by Frank Wilmot, Selected Poetry and Prose (Melbourne University Press, 1997) and David Campbell, Hardening of the Light (Ginnenderra, 2007). He has been co-editor of JASAL (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature) and is on the editorial advisory boards of Australian Literary Studies and the Cultural Studies Review.

In 2009 his book Networked Language: History & Culture in Australian Poetry (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009) was shortlisted for the Association for Australian Literature’s Walter McRae Russell Award, and in 2010 it won the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Literary Scholarship.

Philip’s current research projects include Anglophone poetics, a transnational study of the commemoration of Shakespeare in Sydney and London, and the literature of mining.

His most recent poetry collection is Zanzibar Light (Vagabond Press, 2018).