Richard Hillman
Said the
Rat! Writers at The Water Rat 2000-2002
Edited by
Jennifer Harrison and Phil Ilton
FAW/Black
Pepper, 2004
ISBN 1
876044 446
Beside
the large number of poetry anthologies currently available it might be difficult
to find one that makes a point of distinction, stands out from the others, or
offers something else but Said the Rat! has done just that and, much
more. One of the problems with a collation that covers the history of Australian
poetry is that it often will confine itself to periods of time and to particular
styles of writing. Finding an anthology that showcases a wide range of
contemporary Australian poetry has never been a simple thing, often complicated
by a focus on established poets with little regard for the innovative and
up-coming poets that surround their lives. Said the rat! offers a mixture
of emerging and established writing from all over the continent, providing
readers with an opportunity to notice the diversity, originality, and
intelligence of Australia’s poets. As with all anthologies there is always
that stand out poem or peculiarity of image that captures the heart or the
imagination. In this instance I was struck by the creativity of Sarndra
Smith’s ‘Last Detail’, reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje’s
writing in its use of the eye dropper filled with salt-water to bring the ocean
life back to her ex-sailor father on his death bed. An oddity could have been a
Geoff Page poem that was not a rhyming poem. I was disappointed in three
contrived poems from Les Murray but was deeply moved by the integrity of Ray
Liversidge’s elegy for his father called ‘Baudelaire the bricklayer’. Many
of the poems from well-known poets come from current collections and, if read
before, will not offer the surprise of reading; for those who have not read
widely Said the Rat! will generate more than a few moments of excitement and
many hours of enjoyable reading.
Under A Medlar Tree
Syd
Harrex
Lythrum
Press, Adelaide 2004
ISBN
0 9751260 83
I recently had the opportunity to
collate material from all five of Harrex’s poetry collections and was amazed
at the diversity and range of the poet. Harrex writes with a clear and conscious
eye about matters and places that are often neglected by other poets. For
instance, in an earlier collection Harrex observes racism and bigotry as a
tourist in the Carribean. He is not, as Geoff Page has recently suggested,
simply concerned with the time honoured themes of ‘love and death’. Nor do
we find within his work the ‘rhythmic roughness’, ‘opacity’, and
‘slyness’, that Page attributes to it. Out of context anything can look
opaque, or rhythmically awry and, because the poet used the word ‘sly’ (to
illustrate growth where none was at first conceivable) doesn’t mean that it
would take a sleuth to understand what has been written. His work is
intelligent, witty, and erudite. Harrex’s extensive knowledge of literature,
especially poetry, leaves the poet open to an occasional playfulness that could
be best imagined shared between a group of professors letting their hair down on
a Friday night at the local watering hole. Under A Medlar Tree offers
Harrex in every shape and dimension. The opening poem ‘Stiff Nor’ Easter
Across The Derwent’ is one of the most moving elegies every written in this
country recreating, as it does, the raw energy and flowing power of the famous
river painted by David Harrex prior to his death (the painting is displayed on
the cover). For me, I like poems like ‘Child With Scissors’ and ‘The
Precious Thing’ which remind me of Harrex’s earlier work, especially ‘The
Walking Stick’, ‘The Stone Egg’ and other poems that offer the poet as a
father, not as academic or poet but as an ordinary man overwhelmed by the
creativity of the child. Lastly, I think Harrex’s collection is just one
collection that adds to a larger body of work. Hopefully we will see the
collected work of the poet in the near future.
