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Nathan Hobby, a biographer in Perth

~ The life of Katharine Susannah Prichard, the art of biography, and other things

Nathan Hobby, a biographer in Perth

Category Archives: poetry

This is why we can’t have nice things

19 Sunday May 2019

Posted by Nathan Hobby in poetry, politics and current affairs, Uncategorized

≈ 14 Comments

i.

Shorten conceding. He speaks in waves
And says the right words
Politicians have bigger selves than me
I’m only watching by accident
Having sworn off all politics a couple of hours ago
For years it’s taxed my time
And left me with a dry mouthful of shit

ii.

How many times do I learn the same lesson?
Salesmanship trumps substance

These are the things Australians choose:
Reality TV, franchise shopping, tabloid media, property speculation, the Liberal Party.

To be prime minister you need slogans and photo ops
You don’t need to answer questions
You don’t need policies
You don’t need to try to save the world
Let’s just carry on to hell as we were

iii.

Today I’ll turn off the news forever.
Today, tell me if you voted Liberal
So I can unfriend you and never speak to you again.
Today I’m retreating to aesthetics
I’ll look at paintings from long ago
And live for myself, it’s the Australian way now.
Today we’ll sell the house and go self-sufficient in Balingup.
Today we’ll gird our loins and replenish the armoury,
Planting seeds in the backyard with the kids
And saying you have to keep hoping no matter what.

 

 

Thirty-three ways of looking at the boglands: Tracy Ryan’s Hoard

29 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Nathan Hobby in book review, poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bog, Ireland, Tracy Ryan

hoard

I like poetry collections with a strong thematic unity which hold together as a book. My friend Tracy Ryan’s latest collection Hoard (Whitmore Press, 2015) is a beautiful example, as she examines the Irish boglands and the hoards hiding within from different angles, different times, different voices.

The collection begins with “The changeling addresses Ireland,” a long poem which gives a sense of the patchwork of styles and voices which compose the book as a whole. Thematically, the poem is on a larger scale than the rest of the collection, situating bogs and hoards in the context of the poet as an Australian of Irish descent returning to a place of origin. A century ago, the relationship of Australians to Britain and Ireland was a pressing concern; even if this is no longer the case for most Australians, time has only complicated the dimmed ties:

diverged from your
conflicted history

which even so tries
to persist in me

The perspective in the poems which follow shifts from that of “Hoard hider” to “Hoard finder” to the ‘experience’ of the hoard itself in “Orphaned hoard” – “wrenched out of context / finds itself split and separated”. All these people, all these objects connected across time and consciousness by this landscape. The narrator makes a welcome return, too, providing some sense of the quest through the boglands which are generating these poems in a couple of poems like “Bog conversation”:

I sip from a hot mug big as a chalice
and where we stop is arbitrary
because with bogs we are barely
ever more than scratching the surface

Searching for a comparison point in my limited knowledge of poetry, it’s one of my favourite poems, Auden’s “The Quest”, which comes to mind. The twenty parts of that poem offer a similarly shifting, multi-perspective view of the subject, adding up to a composite narrative that is different – and in certain ways superior – to the more consistent narratives fiction tends to demand. In this multiplicity of ways of looking at the bog and the hoard, the subject begins to turn into a lens for looking at the whole world anew, reimagining things like memory, the passage of time, legacy, belief, identity. It’s this sustained attention to one subject which allows Tracy to drag from it and hide in it so many treasures.

‘You came like the stars’ far light, already out’: a review of Tracy Ryan’s Unearthed

20 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by Nathan Hobby in book review, death, poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

death, divorce, Tracy Ryan

unearthed

Tracy Ryan, Unearthed (Fremantle Press, 2013)

Margaret Atwood once said, “A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there’s less of you.” I’ve always imagined this to be true, but my friend Tracy Ryan’s collection of poetry, Unearthed, depicts divorce not as an amputation but a haunting. In the first section of the collection, “Karlsruhe”, a series of connected poems follow a narrative of remembering. After fighting vivid dreams for two years, the narrator looks up her former husband only to discover he died two years ago. ‘You came like news on ships in former times / or like the stars’ far light, already out.’ (We know instantly when the famous die; but it is the unfamous people we were once close to who stop existing without us knowing, and that is a difficult thing.) The haunting, of course, is intensified.

A highlight to the book is the breadth of allusion and the appreciation of unusual words, an education for the reader worn lightly; I have learned new words like ‘aestivation’ (an animal’s state of dormancy) which illuminate love and loss in new ways.

The process of remembering and the sense of haunting is evoked not just by allusion to a wide range of literature, but also the new ways of relating to the past which technology brings. I like the poem “Dural Way” in which the narrator ‘stalks’ her own past on Google Street View and ‘what was unique, generic / into the garden once hidden / any browser may look / but hindsight is mine / alone.’

Then there are the memories around objects, something which has always fascinated me. In “Offertory”, there are ‘tomb objects’ which have survived the late lover, a hole-punch, a blue stapler, which are ‘small unexploded ordnance’. In “The Pawned Wedding Ring”, the narrator contemplates the fate of the eponymous ring, its history since.

Loss, of course, comes in many guises, and the section of the book is entitled “Other Elegy”, extending from elegy for lost friends to elegies for nature and finishing with a translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Requiem for a Woman Friend”.

This is poetry that could draw in even those unaccustomed to poetry, accessible yet still with the density and surprises of language which makes poetry poetry.

[Thursday 3pm #25] Endpoint and other poems : a dispatch from the afterlife

17 Thursday Sep 2009

Posted by Nathan Hobby in book review, death, poetry, Series: Thursday 3pm feature posts (2009)

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

death, John Updike

endpointReading John Updike’s final book, a collection of poems, is like receiving a dispatch from the afterlife.  The poems take us nearly up to the point of his death from lung cancer in January this year. He sent the manuscript off and then he died.

The cover photo has a poignancy to it, with its spontaneous, snapshot quality, the sombre ordinariness of it in its black and whiteness, and the sense that John is about to head off down a path we can’t follow him down, not yet.

The collection starts with the ‘Endpoint’ sequence that takes us through each of his last birthdays, starting with his seventieth in 2002, and then into his diagnosis and swift death. His thoughts range across his life, from childhood to old age, as he reflects on mortality, aging, memory. In 2005 he writes

A life poured into words – apparent waste
intended to preserve the thing consumed.
For who, in that unthinkable future
when I am dead, will read? (p.8)

In hospital, having learnt of his death he writes:

Must I do this, uphold the social lie
that binds us all together in blind faith
that nothing ends, not youth nor age nor strength,
as in a motion picture which, once seen,
can be rebought on DVD? My tongue
says yes; within, I lamely drown. (p. 23)

His final reflections are baldly honest.  His poetry is less ornate than his prose, and it makes him seem more vulnerable, frail. He has let me in on the final secret journey he took, which I only learned he had taken when his death was announced that hot, hot January day.

After the ‘Endpoint’ sequence, are pages and pages of other poems, as if to say John is not really dead, as if to say he’s still alive like he should be, like I thought he would be.

Between you and me : a review

26 Thursday Feb 2009

Posted by Nathan Hobby in book review, poetry, Western Australia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Christian writing

Between you and me / By Amber Fresh (2009)

Let me tell you a secret: the last six years I’ve found it hard to enjoy poetry. Something changed in my brain sometime around 2003. But then there’s collections like this one that remind me how good poetry can be.

Amber is a Perth poet and this small collection evokes a certain scene in Perth so well, of poetry readings, of enduring a session at the Ocean Beach Hotel, of twenty and thirtysomething parties, of Coles carparks and of the inner suburbs.

Her poems have a casual, insightful humour which manages, paradoxically, to also be passionate and intense. Thus in ‘Casual as’:

While you were at the bar
trying to organise some
casual sex
I was in my room
writing a melancholy song for you
and drawing a comic about how we met

…

But that’s because
I didn’t know then
that you were at a bar
making other arrangements

That phrase ‘making other arrangements’ gets me every time I read it – such a brilliant piece of sarcasm and so terribly sad, using that rather old fashioned phrase to devastating effect.

These poems show an ability to express states of mind and stray, strange thoughts that I believed no-one else knew about it. Thus in ‘Did you do it’:

i hit myself in the face
to see what it would feel like

it felt like

did you do it?

Two poems deal in a fascinating way with faith; in “1 Corinthians 6:18”, the Holy Spirit is compared to ‘an X-men girl/ who turns boys to dust/ with a touch of her hand’. It’s an earnest, distinctive take on evangelical experience. In “Jesus is my homeboy”, the poet hears God tells her to take her doona to some people who will need it ‘on the corner of aberdeen and station street’. It’s a poem of quiet faith that doesn’t lose its sense of humour just because it’s talking about God.

The collection hangs together so well. I was left at the end feeling like I’d read a short novel, that I’d experienced a season in the poet’s life. It was a season that felt a bit like the film You and me and everyone we know, with that same quirky take on big questions, a bit like Leunig’s cartoons, and a bit like (I’m not sure why this came into my head) Leonard Cohen’s novel Favourite Game.

You can buy the book at Oxford Books in Leederville (I’m told it’s on the counter) or from Amber herself – amberinparis@hotmail.com. It costs around $15 plus postage.

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Harold Coppock on Wandu, the lost manor in …
Faith Peters on Used tea bags for missionaries…
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Seasons Greetings, 2… on An A to Z of Katharine Susanna…

Bookmarks

  • Adventures in Biography
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  • Bernice Barry
  • It only goes up to your knees
  • Jane Bryony Rawson
  • Jenn Plays Recorder
  • Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre
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  • Reader's Digest Condensed Books: 'as difficult to dispose of as bins of radioactive waste'
  • [Thursday 3pm #4] The tragedy of Robert Wadlow, world's tallest man?
  • About
  • Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World by Michelle Scott Tucker

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9/11 19th century 33 1920s 1921 1930s 1950s 1970s 1971 1981 2000s 2004 2011 2015 2017 20000 Days on Earth A.S. Byatt Aboriginals activism Adam Begley Adrian Mole adultery afterlife Agatha Christie Alan Hollinghurst Alberto Manguel Alfred Deakin Amazing Grace Americana Amy Grant An American Romance Andre Tchaikowsky Andrew McGahan angela myers anne fadiman Anne Rice Arabian Nights archives art arts funding A Serious Man Ash Wednesday ASIO atheism Atonement Australia Australian film Australian literature Australian Short Story Festival autism autobiography autodidact Barbara Vine beach Belle Costa da Greene Bell Jar best best-of Bible Big Issue Bill Callahan biographical ethics biographical quest genre biographies birthday birthdays Black Opal Bleak House Blinky Bill blogging blogs Blue Blades Bodega's Bunch bog Booker book launch booksale Borges Brenda Niall Brian Matthews Brian McLaren Britney Spears Burial Rites Burke and Wills buskers C.S. Lewis C.S. Lewis canon capitalism Carol Shields Carson McCullers Catcher in the Rye Catholicism celebrities Charles Dickens Charlie Kaufman childhood Child of the Hurricane children's books Choir of Gravediggers Christianity Christian writing Christina Stead Christmas Christopher Beha Cinque Terra Claire Tomalin classics cliches climate change Coen brothers coincidence Collie Collyer coming of age Communism concert Condensed Books consumerism Coonardoo Cormac McCarthy Corrections cosy fiction Dara Horn David Copperfield David Ireland David Marr David Suchet death Death of a president definition demolition Dennis LeHane dentist diaries divorce doctorow Doctor Who documentaries donald shriver Don DeLillo Don DeLillo Donna Mazza Donna Tartt Don Watson Dostovesky doubt drama dreams of revolution Drusilla Modjeska E.M. Forster ebooks editing Eichmann Eisenstein Elizabeth Kostova email empathy ensmallification existentialism faith Falling Man fame families fantasy fiction film and television folk football Frank Barscombe Fremantle Press G.K. Chesterton Gabrielle Carey Gallipoli genealogical fiction Genesis Geoff Nicholson George W. Bush Gerald Glaskin Gilead Golden Miles Goldfields Trilogy Graham Greene grandad great novels Greenmount Guinness World Records Guy Salvidge Hannah Arendt Hannah Kent Hans Koning Hans Koningsberger Harper Lee Haxby's Circus Hazel Rowley He-Man headers heaven Heidegger hell Henrietta Lacks Henry Morton Stanley Herman Hesse heroes Hey Dad! historical fiction history Holden Caulfield holidays Homer & Langley Home Song Stories House of Cards house of zealots House of Zealots Hugo Throssell humour Ian McEwan In between the sheets Indonesia Infamous Inside Llewyn Davis interstellar interview Intimate Strangers Invisible Ireland ISBNs Ishiguro itunes J.D. Salinger J.M. Coetzee J.S. Battye Janet Malcolm Jennifer Egan JFK JFK assassination Joanna Rakoff Joel Schumacher John Burbidge John Fowles John Howard John Kinsella John Updike John Updike Jonathan Franzen journal writing JSB Judgment Day Julia Baird Julian Barnes Kafka Kalgoorlie Kate Grenville Katherine Mansfield Kevin Brockmeier King's Park KSP Writers' Centre language last ride Laurie Steed Left Behind Leonard Cohen Leo Tolstoy Libra Library of Babel Library of Babel Lila Lily and Madeleine links lionel shriver Lionel Shriver lists literary fiction literature Lleyton Hewitt lost book Louisa Louisa Lawson Louis Esson louis nowra love letter Lubbock Lytton Strachey Madelaine Dickie Man Booker man in the dark Margaret Atwood Margaret River Press Marilynne Robinson mark sandman meaning of life Melbourne Mel Hall meme memorialisation memory MH17 Michael Faber Mike Riddell Miles Franklin mining boom missionaries moleskine Moon Palace morphine Mother Teresa movies Music of Chance My Brilliant Career names Napoleon Narnia narrative Narrow Road to the Deep North Narziss and Goldmund Natalie Portman Nathaniel Hobbie national anthem Nick Cave Nina Bawden non-fiction nonfiction noughties novelists novels obituaries obscurity On Chesil Beach Parade's End Paris Hilton Passion of the Christ past patriotism Paul Auster Paul de Man Perth Perth Writers Festival Peter Ackroyd Peter Cowan Writers Centre phd Philip K. Dick Philip Seymour Hoffman pierpontmorgan poetry slam politics popular fiction popular science Possession postapocalyptic postmodernism Pride prophetic imagination publications Pulp Purity Queen Victoria Rabbit Angstrom radio Radio National Randolph Stow rating: 5/10 rating: 6/10 rating: 7/10 rating: 8/10 rating: 9/10 rating: 10/10 ratings reading fiction autobiographically reading report Rebecca Skloot recap red wine reincarnation juvenile fiction rejection review - music reviewing rewriting Richard Flanagan Richard Ford Rick Moody Roaring Nineties Robert Banks Robert Hughes Robert Silverberg Robert Wadlow Robinson Crusoe Rolf Harris romance Rome ruins Russell Crowe Ruth Rendell Sarah Murgatroyd scalpers science fiction Science of Sleep secondhand books Secret River sermon illustration sex short stories Silent Woman Simone Lazaroo Simpsons Siri Hustvedt slavery Smashing Pumpkins social interactions social justice some people i hate sources South Australia souvenirs speculation speech speeches sport status anxiety Stephen Lawhead Stranger's Child subtitles Subtle Flame Sue Townsend suicide Surprised By Hope Suzanne Falkiner Sylvia Plath Synecdoche TAG Hungerford Award tapes teabags Ted Hughes The Children Act The Cure The Fur The Imitation Game theology The Pioneers The Revolutionary Thomas Disch Thomas Hardy Thomas Henry Prichard Thomas Mann thriller time Tim La Haye Tim Winton Tolstoy Tom Wright top 10 Towering Inferno Tracy Ryan Trove Truman Capote tshirts TS Spivet Twelve Years a Slave underrated writers Underworld unwritten biographies urban myth USA vampires Venice Victoria Cross Victoriana Victorian era Victorianism Victoria Park video Voltron w Wake in Fright Walkabout Walter M. Miller war War and Peace war on terror Water Diviner Wellington St Bus Station Westerly Western Australia West Wing What Happened to Sophie Wilder? Whitlams wikipedia Wild Oats of Hans William Wilberforce Winston Churchill Witches of Eastwick Working Bullocks workshop World War One writers writing Writing NSW youth Zadie Smith Zeitgeist Zelig

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