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.

---

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“

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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