Kate Middleton

Dan Disney’s début collection, and then when the, is a slim volume infused with irreverent outings in philosophy and place. Just as the opening poem places its speaker in a philosophy class, philosophers offer constant points of reference. Disney reformulates such well-worn dicta as Descartes’s cogito ergo sum with verve, as in the poem ‘Towards a unifying theory of non-coincidence’, in which he writes, ‘the dead / (who tick not) / murmured “we do not think; therefore we are not”’.

The answer could only be yes. Or,
(as James would have it) it was a question,
the way she turned back to him
seemed to say, that deserved

With the recent focus on new anthologies in the Australian poetry community firmly placed on UNSW Press’s Australian Poetry Since 1788 (edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray) and the publication of two anthologies dedicated to the work of younger poets (UQP’s Thirty Australian Poets and ...

Kate Middleton’s accomplished first book, Fire Season, begins with ‘Autobiography’, where the child kicks against the perceived constraints and ambiguities of her sex: she could ‘make a half-decent boy’ only if the books she read were ‘full enough of war / or gunrunners, or treasure, or spies, or spoils / of piracy. No, I didn’t know how to hold a hammer.’ Middleton constructs a version of self defined by negatives: the narrator was not a ‘boy’, but does not explain why she sees ‘boy’ as the norm or as a preferred sex. Much of Fire Season explores some historical and mythical women, often in light of this shadowy definition (‘You once said // the visible and the invisible imply each other’, ‘Essay on Absence – Journal (with Judy Garland)’). In particular, Middleton invokes several movie stars – Lana Turner, Barbara Stanwyck, Doris Day, Clara Bow, Lauren Bacall, as well as Judy Garland – measuring her distance from these fabled figures, as well as investigating them as alternative lives.

for Anne Brumley

       Amid crustless sandwiches
the talk is all of fat and fat-

Imagine the moment of hesitation:

the catch in his voice,

                                   knowing

he could not turn back: after years

up and down the river, a request

Come – no grazed knee, no tears, no –

no fear of darkness in the singing wood.

Hear the threnody written on the wind:

a lament not for lostness, no, but for the slow

path homewards, the pebbles which guide us:

Seven dresses. Of satin, for example, and

crêpe de Chine, tulle, shot-silk, that sort of thing.

Beading and ivory buttons. One with a rip in it.

(The tailor, in interview, remembers the incident –

a sleeve torn on the workfloor; as there were no needles

left to mend it this passes without comment.)

Made before birth for the seven balls

which would have been held in her honour

by the seven suitors, princes from provinces nearby.

Gored by the briars, providence was not on their side.

So, little Ashenputtel & her groom
sit up in their palace,
                              growing fat
and ruling badly. Not exactly
role models for a new generation.
I mean, sure –
                        she had it rough
(her father made us realise early
how useful it would be to keep her
down)
           – but that’s no reason
to push her weight around now.
She hasn’t, it seems, thought it out
very carefully.