Australian Poetry

With Axis, his first full-length publication, a.j. carruthers explicitly aligns himself with the lineage of the long poem. It is a bold move, if we consider that the major exponents of the form, from Ezra Pound to Anne Waldman, had invariably produced significant bodies of work prior to embarking on their poetic marathons. But ambition is fundamental to the long poem, and Axis, comprising thirty-one extended sequences and billed as ‘Book the first’, certainly outstrips Pound’s inaugural efforts – a mere sixteen Cantos issued in 1925 – by a country mile.

Angels are made from banksia. They are grown in Prague, are
Exported in all directions, and turn grey in air. They
Only fly in places where the ground is hard. If
You try to count them they turn into numbers. If
You try to call them they turn into names. They
Are not decorative at parties but illustrative, of Guernica, for example

It is a kind of sleep we must learn,
seasonal as spiders, our bodies
weights no web can hold.

sparrow strung up
one foot knotted
in an accidental
backyard trap

The eponymous poem in John Kinsella’s latest book recounts a group of teenagers witnessing a sack being flung from a speeding car. The sack, they discover, is filled with tortured kittens. This shocking poem of human cruelty begins a collection concerned with Kinsella’s great themes: the degradation of the environment, human violence (particularly towards animals), and the potential for language – especially poetry – to represent, and intervene in, those things. Despite the extraordinary variety and output of Kinsella’s career so far, his works (poetry, novels, translations, plays, short stories, autobiographies, works of criticism) share a single, ambitious project: to imagine a relationship between political action and literary speech.

They are stored in a box,
jewelled eggs:

The lover who says I’m sorry, I just
don’t want you anymore.
I woke up and the light
had gone out.

I’m inclined to say poems are triggered, or ‘arrive’, rather than they’re the fruit of inspiration. The poem does have to be written, which is in itself craft. The best poems may need a little tinkering, but on the whole I’d rather not labour away at a sow’s ear. (Though I should say I value a real sow’s ear above a silk purse.)

Seeing people who remind you
just a little of the dead
is always mildly disconcerting –

something in the face, the gait,
the shoulders from behind,
those likenesses that don’t surprise

The sudden blush on us        you move
as wind sweeps across blue water
you move       the clouds