ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

This is part of an interview I was asked to do for the Australian Songwriters Association (ASA) member's publication ...

I'm also interested to hear about your creative process as a bush poet.

1. Where do your lyrics ideas come from and how do you turn them into bush poetry?

Life seems to be a pretty random dealer, much the same with the Muses and their distribution of inspiration.

There are all sorts of ideas that flash past in a day but if one sticks, then my process is to write that idea down (record it). I then hit the computer and create a text file with the 'title' being the file name. A process that I call 'brain-dumping' then follows where anything that I can think of relating to the topic is recorded and saved. The first stanza usually manifests itself out of what’s written – this is also the template for the rest of the story.

I don’t throw anything away. Sometimes, a phrase from an abandoned piece is better applied in another poem or lyric.

There is also the agonising over whether the subject is best suited to a lyric or a poem. Writing lyrics is very different from writing poetry. In poetry, one can afford to be verbose and embellish, whereas a lyric needs to be distilled or sometimes ‘dumbed-down’.


2. How in your view does your bush poetry differ from other forms of poetry?

Bush poetry is telling stories in rhyme and metre - and not necessarily about the bush, campfires or dying stockmen. Australians have been entertaining each other with this form ever since we landed here. Contemporary issues predominate and are generously laced with satire, irony and humour. All topics are fair game and are fairly easy to turn into ballads. There are many verse forms of 'rhyme-n-metre' poetry, Villanelles, Ballades, Sestinas, Cinquains, Pantoums, Limericks, and Sonnets etc. ‘Free’ verse is verse without rhyme-n-metre.

Bush poetry tends to be written predominantly in iambic metre with good helpings of anapaest and mixed metre. Rhyming schemes are many and varied and are also used with great effect. All literary tools are available to the Bush Poet, metaphor, simile, alliteration, onomatopoeia etc. Appropriate use (not overuse) of Rich Language makes a piece shine.

I have written in 'free-verse' (non-rhyming) form but my preference is rhyme-n-metre.

3. In the tradition of bush poetry who is your favourite poet?

Henry Lawson all the way.

"Very interesting".

Thank you.
Jim.

Manfred, which would you regard as your higher priority, your poetry or your song writing?

... neither Stephen, it's all rhyme-n-metre to me. Writing both lyrics and poetry are challenging. People tell me there is no difference between lyrics and poetry, they quickly cite Slim Dusty's version of "The Man ... ". And of course many of Henry's works easily accept a tune. But I see a difference, maybe my vision is skewed.

I suppose one of the obvious differences is that songs generally have choruses. From memory, so do many of Lawson's poems - or at least a refrain.

In a song, I find I can sometimes use a chorus to introduce a theme, and then elaborate on it in the various verses. In this way, the verses need not follow on from each other in a narrative sense. Poems, as you say, lend themselves better to narratives. There are plenty of old folk songs though, aren't there, which are nothing more than poems put to music.

Interesting stuff, you learn something new every day - I always thought onomatopoeia was an eye problem.

No but seriously I agree about your differences between writing song lyrics and poems - how a poem can embellish whereas a song will dumb-down.

I think it was Paul Kelly who said something like "songwriting is a form of play . . . and true play is aimless".

Marty