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Content From Issue: Volume 2 Number 2 (September 2015)

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Walking man

by Brenda Saunders

He walked this country with the eye

of a newcomer, showed us how to see

close up, take in the sweep of distance,

the shimmer on a paddock in drought.

Leaves us his long shadow striding

the slope, the sun always at his back.

I read, follow his footsteps, listen

to the accented lilt, the rise and fall

of  his words, notes in a vast sound-scape.

He contemplates the notion of fire

loss and renewal, how a land left bare

flickers still under the seeming emptiness.

He stretches an image on a line

in a walking meditation across the page.

Published: August 2022
Brenda Saunders

wrote “Walking man” as a tribute to Martin as a teacher/poet. She was in his poetry class at University of Technology Sydney in 2005.

Poetics, Writing, Thought: The Sound Files


Martin Harrison introduces the Poetics, Writing, Thought seminar series  

On the terms ‘interesting’ and ‘difficult’: a conversation with Astrid Lorange 

On teaching spaces 

Deborah Bird Rose presents her paper ‘Shimmer’ (includes Deborah and Martin’s Postscript from TEXT [beginning at 20:22] including Martin’s reading of “White Tailed Deer” at the end of this sound file [beginning at 34:20])

Conversation around ‘Shimmer’

Conversation around extinction referencing Harrison’s ‘White-Tailed Deer’ 

Conversation around the concept of ‘the beautiful’ 


Now read Deborah Bird Rose, “Martin Harrison in Conversation

Published: March 2016

lightened spokes

Dusk Dundler

 

Voice deep out thru kitchen window into watery garden, while his same voice speaks wiry from my laptop – layered, a few lines of poem over the other & rain tup tup atop tin

– dispersing Harrison’s voice …

From a deft Summer – announcing the moment of parable perception as “six white plastic recliners articulating full stretches of imaginary bodies”, the parable becomes exactitude, on more then negative space, or the passing between spaces but held effect and espec affect of creation. Holding a nucleus / while spinning (of course) black holes of great teaching. Layer upon layer, “and how will it end?” / time held to the flying chords of Music.

To grab you – churn yr insides. Know the drill, past expectations -beyond what you may claim from yrself anew, from just taking him in. Went to the auditorium – didn’t know going to see him. Could’ve been in anticipation whole hour – him singing post-modern hymn readying for crossing …

Year later reach in poetry class – elevated intellect returned – holding us in action wrapped in subliminal “act of attention”. Drawing necessary figures, delivering each path onward. Capacity of intellect measured by openness.

Some time close – momentous leap. A gathering of apt arrangement. Like having a golden bear extricate itself from the wilderness and recline framed – Cafe Niagara colours arrow back to grey drizzle world. Met – agreeing with life decision Martin’s arranging – knowing he’s right even tho I may not make it.

Dreams of lonely lit valleys with forest depth and dingoes taken in. Letter to Martin from creek-bank, with a hoodwink at vision, “of what can not be taught unless felt deeply and freely thankyou and the feeling of our … “

Bello filtrates natural elegance of the man. Festival – alive as breathing. Warmth of causality held in this space. As group celebration in the sharing of planting seed. Hitched a lift but was not allowed to record us. Trying to hold onto the list of books to read. But more startling wish to continue -shuttle of light curling language form containing us down highway – to continue, yes.

Two Naughty Chooks – that’s what it’s called – yes i found it – did you? very well then good – good – yes / major formations of interest / the land is opening us – carved temperance to perception. Ecological resonance – recognising the readiness & receiving Living Things

Till wandering again into Sappho night – like twinkle shift – eyes holding riffs – found and re-found, shuffle intro sequential wandering like handing out magic cards. After introductions to others he trails off on us all …


Influenced by readings of the critiques by Peter Riley, “Poetry Notes: Martin Harrison”, fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2013/10/martinharrison-pastoral/ and Stuart Cooke, “Liminal Narratives”, jacketmagazine.com/28/cookeharrison.html .

 

Dusk Dundler counted Martin as a mentor after studying under him at University of Technology Sydney. Dusk has produced documentaries for Radio National, and been published in the Griffith Review. Dusk’s poetry is published in Overland and The Prague Revue. He was short-listed for the 2012 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize.

Published: September 2015
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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Nourritures Terrestres

by Berndt Sellheim

André Gide, once dead, turns Lazarus

a century past, re-pens Les Nourritures Terrestres

whilst drinking cognac on Darlinghurst Road.

 

He works through spring and into summer

without shifting tables, shadows swallowing

every stroke in heat and traffic

 

the Sanskrit flow of his hand.

His lips a half-pout wet with drink and think

ing and everywhere the air thinned

 

of memories, scents, the revenants

competing for noise on this corner, this

small slice of presence

 

their purgatory: you see

it’s not the filament touch of it — fine threads

connecting a bulbous sheen of cognac

 

to windshields, sunglasses, the passing siren’s

brightness, another afternoon announcing God

in a clash of brass percussion

 

and certainly not our bodies

which bloat and thin and eat themselves

even as we watch

 

not cymbals, but words, that he wants

the light to be permanent, which is

the only game in town.      And yes

 

Mont St-Michel is a mirage on a tide

cracked earthen spires on blue tidal sheen

but then, so is Victoria Street, and Liverpool

 

all the city’s vibrant squalor. So he sits

at Le Petit Crème, writing light into time

in the ebb and flow of traffic

 

as the city’s arc of sun

allots the day in cracks of pavement,

the fading lines of his skin.

This was originally written for the MH60 production that was organised to celebrate Martin Harrison’s 60th Birthday, and was then republished in Best Australian Poems 2009.

Published: September 2015
Berndt Sellheim

is the author of Beyond the Frame’s Edge (Fourth Estate, 2013) and Saint Vitus Dance (Fourth Estate, forthcoming). He has taught poetry and philosophy at various major Australian universities, including University of Technology Sydney, where he taught with Martin Harrison, and his poetry and critical work have been published internationally. He recently completed his first collection of poems.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Coastlike

by R. D. Wood

Coastlike,

fjords

gullchicks, silvery,

across the sleeptrail

stimuli quanta, otterlike,

the fogs are burning

heavensbeetles

grey parrots

hatchetswarms

and animal-swarms empty, exactly as

blossom

on the rained over spoor

no halfwood anymore, here

winged soaring blackbird

the orange pepperwort

the not-to-be-mentioned prefrost,

there should still be glowworms

Published: September 2015
R. D. Wood

first came to Martin Harrison’s work via his criticism and essays. Wood edits for Peril and hosts a reading series with The School of Life. Find out more at www.rdwood.org

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

melting ice

by R. D. Wood

melting ice –

thunderstorm

then water came;

through the flood

into the fish –

dreamproof skiffs

scale and fist

water came, water

the dolphins dart

but sea still is, fire red,

sea.)

in the skiff

flood does not believe us

the towropes vulturegrip

fish

to a sea, drinks it

the salt of a co-

in the wrinkled flood

the ropes, salt-water-clammy

greybacked, seaworthy

minnows

three standing whales

the sacrificecall, the saltflood

salthorizons

musselheap: with

pearls

storm riddled

raincord breaking

to the harbour

the swimming mourning-domain

through which we swam, two dreams now, tolling

we swam, naked, swam

Published: September 2015
R. D. Wood

first came to Martin Harrison’s work via his criticism and essays. Wood edits for Peril and hosts a reading series with The School of Life. Find out more at www.rdwood.org

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Inflecting

by Justin Wolfers

You walk through this tunnel

which is in fact a telescope

 

Look out

and realise you are seeing sunlight

simply coming into the studio. Elongate

the vowels, inflecting Yorkshire

 

Now we are swimming

in Doncaster Dome

 

Coming on as ever is Kafka’s phrase:

“always first draw fresh breath

after outbursts of vanity and complacency”

 

Left nostril blocked, inhaling

only partially, wondering

if all this fiddling with old fragments

will lead to a moment of

Martin in the middle of the poem

– or if that is too much to ask

 

Trying to be less self-conscious, he steps forth

into the eco-poetics of writing under the flight path

 

You can hear birds here,

and the studio door

must be kept to

to keep the cat out

Published: September 2015
Justin Wolfers

is a Sydney-based writer, researcher and editor. He has written for The Lifted Brow, Seizure, Kill Your Darlings, and The Australian among others. He is a doctoral candidate in contemporary fiction at the University of Western Sydney, and was a friend and Undergraduate and Honours student of Martin’s in Writing at the University of Technology Sydney in 2011-2012.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Late Afternoon

by Leni Shilton

The late sun shines silver in the grass fields,

in the stretch of spinifex sprouting after rain.

It looks like fertile country

but it’s not.

As the wind dips, the quiet rumbles in my ears,

all the world centres here,

under the falling sun,

the country a gift of light and softening air.

I hear the night being called in,

kettles bang, voices lift in the stillness –

the fire coming to life,

and smoke rests along the creekbed.

Before the cold settles for the night

we hobble the camels, pile firewood.

And as the heat falls from the sun

I breath warmth into my skin,

that most days I cover up

for fear of burning,

this late afternoon light is a gentle change.

Late afternoon

Published: September 2015
Leni Shilton

lives in Central Australia where she has worked as a creative writing lecturer, a prison educator and a bush nurse. Her poetry is published in journals and anthologies in Australia and internationally. Leni met Martin Harrison at Varuna -­ The Writers House where they read manuscripts and talked philosophy.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

At Varuna

by Leni Shilton

And then, the mist came in and the afternoon turned dark and closed, and it seemed I’d only ever sat here in this chair by the wood grain windowsill contemplating whether it was time to get up, or not, or to get a cup of tea or not, or to have a sleep or just stretch out my aching hip.

I gave too much thought to everything.

Then strangely, I would find myself doing something else entirely,

something I’d given no thought to at all, like folding the washing that had dried beside me on the drying rack, or taking a photograph through the window of the eucalypt that had come into bright relief against the white mist, that really was a photograph already because of its stillness and the natural frame of the window held on each side by the blue striped curtains.

All this was possible, but I just sat and thought of it all, surprised by the sudden intensity of the thought and wondered if books had been written on the subject, if anyone else had had this exact same thought. And I thought I should raise this over dinner because Martin would have some thoughts on this.

As quickly as the mist came, it moved to another space and like a retreating dream, went to hang over another house, another garden, I wondered if the thought was the mist, and then I thought I really did want a cup of tea, even if it was just to stop the thinking.

With Martin Harrison at Varuna September 2012

Published: September 2015
Leni Shilton

lives in Central Australia where she has worked as a creative writing lecturer, a prison educator and a bush nurse. Her poetry is published in journals and anthologies in Australia and internationally. Leni met Martin Harrison at Varuna -­ The Writers House where they read manuscripts and talked philosophy.

article

Walking man

by Anne Elvey

Brenda Saunders

 

He walked this country with the eye

of a newcomer, showed us how to see

close up, take in the sweep of distance,

the shimmer on a paddock in drought.

Leaves us his long shadow striding

the slope, the sun always at his back.

I read, follow his footsteps, listen

to the accented lilt, the rise and fall

of  his words, notes in a vast sound-scape.

He contemplates the notion of fire

loss and renewal, how a land left bare

flickers still under the seeming emptiness.

He stretches an image on a line

in a walking meditation across the page.

 

Brenda Saunders wrote “Walking man” as a tribute to Martin as a teacher/poet. She was in his poetry class at University of Technology Sydney in 2005.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Still

by Melody Paloma

An afternoon slides across bitumen

you or me leaning on the window

watching hills with their skin peeled off

and a band of trucks blinking

until the vibrato of a cattle grid

and low rusted heath

three hours of pulling dust

a break at a dry riverbed

where a Rav4 has spent

maybe three days

pressed against a tree

tyres and roof racks taken

still, there are old movie tickets

and fresh bread in the boot

at the turn off is a submarine

half submerged in dirt

it might be a metaphor

but I decide then not to ask

a dead fox next to two small graves

I’ll hear about them later

the first thing you take a photograph of

is the petrol pump at the station

because all things seem intriguing

when left alone in space

up the hill I remember

to stop moving in straight lines

to find gaps between thorn

let grass break off on socks

I thought it might be nice

to read Landscape

to record it up there

on my iPhone four

a week later in Melbourne

someone tells me of rocks

with tops that burn to black

and keep their colour underneath

but I hadn’t turned them over

or held the cool inside my palm

two goats emerge

over the ridge at sunset

and face west for a while

they move away

with the shadow of a cloud

mimicking a wombat hole

paddocks that change colour

slight slopes shift to clay

and one swift strip of orange

reaching across the range.

Melody Paloma

          After Landscape by Martin Harrison

Martin Harrison’s creative and critical work has been hugely influential for me. Martin’s work consistently engages and is bound to place; it speaks with place rather than to it, and continues to ground and encourage my own voice.

Published: September 2015
Melody Paloma

is a Melbourne-based writer currently undertaking her honours year in Creative Writing at RMIT University. Her poetry has been published in Overland, Rabbit and Voiceworks and she was recently awarded the 2014 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets. In 2015 she received a WriCE fellowship and took part in a collaborative residency held in Vietnam. Melody is founder and editor of Dear Everybody (IG: @deareverybodycollective twitter: @deareverybody_), a creative collective facilitating collaboration and creative exchange between artists and writers.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

White-Faced Heron

by Allan Padgett

A white-faced long legged

lonesome bird flapping,

graceful, soundless, focused.

Wings propel this blue-grey softly feathered

body downstream,

rippling river surface height

white cheeks glowing, eyes probing

shallows.  Bill poised to strike.

On landing, skinny legs step

forth, adopt a stalking posture

seeking to transform an innocent

finning fish to weightless birdness.

My introspection rises to a gleaming surface to wonder

at the ease with which blue-grey heron

spears into turbid rippling zephyr-paddled

waters to pierce the wetted scaly

resistance of one more squirming bream.

I roll down the nearby looming grassy

bank into your inquiring gaze,

and retreat in morbid haste from your finely focused

unspoken disturbing query:

is it on, or is it off, do you fetter my

tangible signal with a dismissive smile –

or do you cry into the night, alone

with memories of touch and melting promises.

I surface from the reed beds bawling, as

you, my white-faced heron, fly

silently by into

a night darkened far too soon by freedom.

My “connection” to Martin is through the fact that I read a terrific two-page feature story in the Weekend Australian’s Review celebrating Martin’s life and in particular, his brilliant poems.  I then purchased a book of Martin’s (Wild Bees) and fell more in love with his poetry, especially the “nature-based” themes and content.

Published: September 2015
Allan Padgett

is a Western Australian poet who performs regularly at Perth Poetry Club.  He has been published in Creatrix, Uneven Floor, Creative Connections and Regime, and has read his poems on 89.7 Twin Cities FM.  Allan’s poem “The Wheatbelt Turns to Dust” was second in the 2012 Creatrix Poetry Prize.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Eco Poetics

by Sophia Rose O'Rourke

Consider,

That there is a convergence

Between immersive states of consciousness in poetry

and everyday awareness of land, and weather and space

Martin read from his lecture notes.

 

Consider,

Yourself as a kind of – cartographer

Mapping inward and outward spaces of consciousness

Tracing out the landscape

You find meaning – you make sense

 

Consider,

That it is this form

Eco poetics – if you like

That connects the mind with outside events

Working through what we cannot process

 

Consider this,

A way of remembering

Things which otherwise

Remain memories living in landscape

That we think can be forgotten.

 

-M.

Published: September 2015
Sophia Rose O'Rourke

was in Martin Harrison’s final writing class at the University of Technology Sydney, mentored by Martin to always push conventional boundaries, reinvigorate philosophical thought and pursue writing in a difficult climate. Sophia was raised in Canberra, attending the Orana Steiner School and now lives in Sydney where she works in production at the ABC and continues to write independently. Sophia has a particular interest in creative non fiction and experimental writing.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

spring chromatic

by Ella O'Keefe

this year more oranges

will stay on the orange tree

a little jar on the shelf

– sugar and globs of morning sun

 

this night is full of sound

trilled calls undercut

by wings and embers

compositions apprehended only

once others drop away

my lines cannot hold the weight

of this word                ‘perception’

    (your word)

it floats in

strange ground,    an environment

emerging or stepping off a boat

moments before the elevator

arrives. In Cambridge

rippled green light

in the backs which connect

    river to sky

 

late telegrams bounces across cobbles

time-travels from the besotted 70s

air       unscrolls

    from airmail packets, pages of brass

flagons, un peu français

making its shape known to vowels

often corralled between hedgerows

don’t forget your pencil box

of unused colours, a way of pretending

to thatch the haystack (likewise French inflected)

 

like Bonnard prints for explaining

what can never really be held

living in the edges of a postage stamp

three handkerchiefs of lawn,

actual walls,

open then close the gate

but keep some thoughts

in a pale blue envelope

 

flecked harbour through a spout

the voice inscribes itself

on the ground of other-narratives

reach for a different colour

turn the engine

 

looking at the slow moving cars

able to picture under the asphalt

     this stuff – a lemon in the boot

tea drenched light

falling on the blush scrub

you stand and make

a point, a perspective

Published: September 2015
Ella O'Keefe

is a poet and researcher living in Melbourne. She is the Audio Producer for Cordite Poetry Review and has previously produced work for radio. She encountered Martin Harrison’s teaching and innovative courses in poetics, sound studies and genre as a University of Technology Sydney undergraduate and he was the supervisor of her honours thesis in 2009.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Western Wind

by Jill Jones

i.m. Martin Harrison

 

Sometimes a failed notion to copy

nature or autumn into words,

it was a good idea, syntax

or the party of pattern between leaves

 

I’m no giant but sometimes I dream

places from heights, very blue harbours

linked by bridges and arcane currents

it’s better not to understand

 

If you put two things together

you have two things which may be

more than you had before, or less

 

The canal ripples, I guess it’s a westerly

breeze blowing through the archipelago

As a giant on a plane I saw

the dark chains of islands

and almost white morning water

It wasn’t a dream, not even a notion

 

Flying isn’t natural nor is anything

anymore, the world is hazy over the Baltic,

or over the dam, all the bright horses

won’t save you, nothing, not even a line

read out over the phone

 

But if you pick a way through the archipelago

it might be this breeze you feel

that’s come all the way across earth

and leaves you that way

I was honoured when Martin Harrison asked me to launch his book, Wild Bees, in Melbourne in 2008. He was also kind enough to write an endorsement for one of my books a few years previously. We were friends. We talked about poetry, and much else besides. We talked at events, in offices, in cars, houses, the outdoors. We talked over food, gin, wine, coffee. We talked in Sydney, in Wollombi, other places. I miss him. There was still a lot to talk about.

Published: September 2015
Jill Jones

was born in Sydney and has lived in Adelaide since 2008. Recent books include Wild Curious Air, winner of the 2021 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, A History Of What I’ll Become, shortlisted for the 2021 Kenneth Slessor Award, and Viva the Real, shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and the 2020 John Bray Award. In 2015 she won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry for The Beautiful Anxiety. She has been an academic for a number of years, but has also worked as an arts administrator, journalist, and book editor.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Royalty

by Phillip Hall

for millad Miller & Raggett mob

 

I drove out bush with family

again to Jayipa

a catfish hole lined

with paperbark and river gum

and those gleaming quartzite outcrops

like a silver and zinc plinth encompassing

dark sheet water:

 

we hopped, stinging, across the baked

earth, a tessellated black

soil with small sand drifts gathering

to the decaying stone-boiled edges:

 

and while nana fired

a billy, weaving

pandunus frond sieves

we all crashed, energised

in the brown water’s warm wash:

 

in the late afternoon

cool relief as pop arrived to dig

a bush-turkey ground-oven

we all set to work:

 

the boys

took a castnet and handlines

for barra

while the girls hunted

in water, feeling

in the mud

for waterlily bulbs, onions and yams:

 

later they tap-danced the mud

sweetening our outlook –

a seismic detection service reading

for hibernating turtles –

a shelled familial finery:

 

at nightfall

our guts tight

with their fill we fired

the billy and traced

stars as pop smoked us

in quandong, picking us up:

 

and nana sang country, rousing

the scrub

and a rainbow’s payback on this mine’s seepage,

and another’s foreshadowed hole in our burial grounds,

mucking us up

making us sick.

Millad: is Kriol in the Gulf region of northern Australia for the first person plural pronoun: we, us, our.

Published: September 2015
Phillip Hall

is an essayist and poet working as an editor with Verity La’s “Emerging Indigenous Writers’ Project”. In 2014 he published Sweetened in Coals. He is currently working on a collection of place-based poetry called Fume. This project celebrates, and responds to, Indigenous Culture in the Northern Territory’s Gulf of Carpentaria.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

I am your reader twice Sur

by Juan Garrido-Salgado

Martin Harrison I am one of your reader with new arrival accent.

I am political prisoner from Chile.

We are lost in the city

even the birds consume the charity.

My heart doesn’t fly anymore.

I have got a comfort cage to spent time and obligations.

Happiness is a homeless without a park to sleep

To be able to dream it is it very expensive matter.

 

So much already vanished, you said

muchas cosas ya han desaparecido.

Martin Harrison I am telling you I am one of your reader

if I am not writing in my tongue it will vanished/desaparecer

the smell of my childhood I only taste in my dream.

 

I feel I grow up as a native tree in this city

I don’t understand your language

 

Your accent is an electric saw

cutting

bark and body into pieces.

My place is here on earth

And I can see the sky as a river

where my leaves jumped it as fish

and where seeds became stones

playing the melodies of silence.

Disforestation of this time across my ancient roots.

 

I am your reader Martin Harrison

I inhabitant of new vowels and consonants

From Pablo Neruda and Lionel Fogarty

as an ecosystem of life and death to share in this earth.

My connection with Martin’s poetry was always as a reader in my development to be a bilingual poet in Australia. It was a very deep process to learn, and to keep my heritage and culture alive.

Published: September 2015
Juan Garrido-Salgado

as born in Chile and was a political prisoner under the Pinochet regime. He now lives in Adelaide. He has published four books of poetry, and his poems have been published in Chile, Colombia, Spain, El Salvador, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. He has also translated into Spanish works from John Kinsella, Mike Ladd, Judith Beveridge, Dorothy Porter and MTC Cronin, including Talking to Neruda’s Questions. He has translated five Aboriginal poets for Espejo de Tierra/Earth Mirror Poetry Anthology. He is a co-translator of this anthology. He has translated many of Lionel Fogarty’s poems into Spanish. Juan is the co-translator with Sergio Holas and Steve Brock of the Trilingual Mapuche Poetry Anthology (Interactive Press), 2015.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

The Department

by Toby Fitch

The Department page 1

The Department page 2

Published: September 2015
Toby Fitch

is the author of Rawshock (Puncher & Wattmann 2012), which won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, and Jerilderies (Vagabond Press 2014). He lives in Sydney and has a new book of poems forthcoming in 2015/16, Bloomin’ Notions. Martin Harrison was Toby’s poetry teacher at University of Technology Sydney, 2002-2004.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Vague Bonds

by Toby Fitch

Vague Bonds

Published: September 2015
Toby Fitch

is the author of Rawshock (Puncher & Wattmann 2012), which won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, and Jerilderies (Vagabond Press 2014). He lives in Sydney and has a new book of poems forthcoming in 2015/16, Bloomin’ Notions. Martin Harrison was Toby’s poetry teacher at University of Technology Sydney, 2002-2004.

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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Death of a Year

by Michael Farrell

for Martin and Tomaz

 

Our memories of ruin fail to make it through customs. The

helicopters rave, make no sense; somehow they know what

they’re doing

But go back, thoughts, to laughter and neurotic running around

a European city. An exchange of books through a third

party. There is one friend in these cases that takes on a huge

debt. The newspaper columns write themselves, they are writers

of a generation, they

were implicated in the mistakes that everyone made. To not

enforce them in an obit would itself be betrayal. White

spaces indicate hospital, erect letters represent love. We were

way too tired to think of going on with

life as it was. There was no room for projects of small ambition

of mere example. The appropriate would go on being perpetrated

but not by

us. In the Slovene city, the tea house drips with rust from

the local trees. The trace of poetry in the air only with

the mention of the dead’s name. It was a year of change here

too. A white sea eagle in a too small tree foretold of knowledge

disappearing; a blue-faced honeyeater would forever be our

bird of mourning. The surety of a line paired

with the thrusting of translation; unlabelled orange juice

I’m drunk. Perhaps we still have grave dirt on our hands

The city rumbles

This close to the centre, the lights never go out, lovers and

starers-into-rivers mean the bridges are never clear. As our

friends

knew, a lot of loss can inhere in a year. A whole town can

be wiped out. A habitat, a type of mole or fly. We have their

recorded voices of course. We can turn our backs on what

we have and let it disappear like we’re asleep. In our

dreams we’re being hunted in a forest that is itself endangered

We’re passengers in a car, joking at each enjambment we

survive

Published: September 2015
Michael Farrell

I wrote this poem thinking about Martin and Tomaž Šalamun, who both died last year. I owe all I know about making a book of poetry to Martin. He was also one of my encouragers in writing a PhD. The published version, Writing Australian Unsettlement, is dedicated to him.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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