Can bush poetry survive?
Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 11:05 am
Hi All
This post is prompted by Val Read’s poem (Defending Bush Poetry) in the last issue of the ABPA magazine and a presentation I gave yesterday to about 150 Year 8 students at a large co-educational non-government school here in Melbourne. The students are doing a unit on ballads at the beginning of next term and I was there to explain what a ballad was and how it worked. During the presentation I asked if anyone could name an Australian poet. One lone hand went up. “Banjo Paterson.” And what did he write? “The Man From Snowy River.” That was it. Nobody could name another poet or poem.
I also asked how many had either been to see or were going to see The Hunger Games, a just-released film set in a future where teenagers fight to the death on live television. Just about every hand in the theatre shot up immediately. That’s the reality we face, at least here in the city, as we attempt to keep our traditional rhyming verse alive. These are kids who have grown up with Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, the Twilight books and films, and now The Hunger Games. Are they going to write ballads about bushrangers, pioneers, shearers, and other aspects of our colonial history? No. Are we going to connect with them by always looking back, by writing exclusively about those issues? No. And yet that is exactly what Val Read’s poem insists that we do.
Following that direction would do little or nothing to promote our rhyming verse. The verse-form is more important than the subject-matter and the most likely way of encouraging interest from the younger generations is through issues that resonate with them. The fact that bush poetry currently occupies a very minor place in the poetry world, with poetry in general only a small part of the overall literary scene, is clear evidence that relying on our old favourites of Paterson, Lawson, Dennis etc. is not cutting through. When we in the 60+ age group, who grew up with their poetry, have gone, who will be left to carry the flame? Banishing ourselves into the past will only entrench a strategy that has clearly not worked.
That doesn’t mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater. History, ‘the bush’, and the works of our great poets have a part to play, but they alone will not keep the poetry that we enjoy alive. Young people can be led in that direction, but first they have to come to an appreciation of metre and rhyme. To that end, we need diversity and flexibility in what we write, and I, unlike Val, am greatly encouraged to see the range of verse published in the 2011 Bronze Swagman anthology. The poems about computers (by Don Adams) and the “fat girl’s misery” (by Leonie Parker) are perfectly valid and exactly the sort of pieces that might strike a chord with young and old alike. Val didn’t criticise my poem in the book, but she could have because it was about dementia, a topic that is neither historical nor necessarily related to the bush.
Going further, if we only allowed poems that were “purely bush” and devoted to history, most of the verse published in the last issue of the magazine would be disallowed.
My A Father’s Prayer wouldn’t qualify and neither would Charlee Marshall’s November or Zondrae King’s response. Kym Eitel’s Ghost Child, which was last year’s Australian Champion Written Poem wouldn’t pass the test either, along with the poems written by Paddy O’Brien, Heather Knight, Neville Briggs, Carol Reffold, and BJ Stirling. They’d all fall victim to Val’s protest: “Put the general odes aside!” Doesn’t leave much, does it?
To go down the “purely bush” history path introduces all manner of absurdities. What’s the time-line? Do we have to go back prior to 1950? 1900? Can we write poems about the two world wars and Korea, but not about Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq? And if we do write about the victims of war, must we place our main characters in a rural setting to qualify? If writing about the past in the bush is a poet’s strength because that’s the life he or she has lived, then that’s fine. But it’s not everybody’s experience or interest, and creating some sort of writing straitjacket for all poets who enjoy metre and rhyme would be completely counterproductive.
Unfortunately, Val has grasped the wrong end of the stick. In The Best Australian Poems 2010 (Black Inc.) there were 110 poets represented, with 129 poems. Only three (2.3%) of the poems could be called traditional rhyming verse, and not one of those three would get much recognition in a bush poetry competition. That’s the reality. Limiting what we write to a “purely bush” celebration of our history would only hasten the very end which Val is so desperate to avoid.
In the Australian literary world bush poetry is usually regarded as something of a curiosity, a quiet backwater, precisely because it is stereotyped as being confined to verse about bushrangers, kangaroos, gum trees, and hilarious tales about dunnies and red-back spiders. We have to break that stereotype to survive.
That’s why I wholeheartedly support the ABPA definition (“Australian bush poetry is metred and rhymed poetry about Australia, Australians and/or the Australian way of life”). It’s sometimes criticised for being too general, but I like it for the very flexibility that it provides.
It allows me to write about dementia, a world-wide phenomenon, in a poem that could be set anywhere. But dementia is something that affects many of us here, and I wrote two poems about the disease because it stole the last years of my mother’s life. Is someone going to tell me I can’t do that because it’s not a uniquely Australian subject?
On the other hand, I’m not going to submit to an ABPA competition a poem about poverty in the Sudan, the American election, the rebellion in Syria, the history of bagpipes (probably not Scottish, by the way), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, wildlife in the Serengeti National Park, a boat ride on the Ganges, or any one of countless other possible themes that are clearly not related to Australia.
The ABPA definition gives us scope. It allows those whose interest is history and ‘the bush’ to write accordingly but, importantly, it also provides a platform for those of us who want to tackle contemporary issues and the way they impact on our Australian way of life. To deny the latter, to follow the “purely bush” track, would most definitely give our much-loved rhyming verse a one-way ticket to oblivion.
Cheers
David
This post is prompted by Val Read’s poem (Defending Bush Poetry) in the last issue of the ABPA magazine and a presentation I gave yesterday to about 150 Year 8 students at a large co-educational non-government school here in Melbourne. The students are doing a unit on ballads at the beginning of next term and I was there to explain what a ballad was and how it worked. During the presentation I asked if anyone could name an Australian poet. One lone hand went up. “Banjo Paterson.” And what did he write? “The Man From Snowy River.” That was it. Nobody could name another poet or poem.
I also asked how many had either been to see or were going to see The Hunger Games, a just-released film set in a future where teenagers fight to the death on live television. Just about every hand in the theatre shot up immediately. That’s the reality we face, at least here in the city, as we attempt to keep our traditional rhyming verse alive. These are kids who have grown up with Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, the Twilight books and films, and now The Hunger Games. Are they going to write ballads about bushrangers, pioneers, shearers, and other aspects of our colonial history? No. Are we going to connect with them by always looking back, by writing exclusively about those issues? No. And yet that is exactly what Val Read’s poem insists that we do.
Following that direction would do little or nothing to promote our rhyming verse. The verse-form is more important than the subject-matter and the most likely way of encouraging interest from the younger generations is through issues that resonate with them. The fact that bush poetry currently occupies a very minor place in the poetry world, with poetry in general only a small part of the overall literary scene, is clear evidence that relying on our old favourites of Paterson, Lawson, Dennis etc. is not cutting through. When we in the 60+ age group, who grew up with their poetry, have gone, who will be left to carry the flame? Banishing ourselves into the past will only entrench a strategy that has clearly not worked.
That doesn’t mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater. History, ‘the bush’, and the works of our great poets have a part to play, but they alone will not keep the poetry that we enjoy alive. Young people can be led in that direction, but first they have to come to an appreciation of metre and rhyme. To that end, we need diversity and flexibility in what we write, and I, unlike Val, am greatly encouraged to see the range of verse published in the 2011 Bronze Swagman anthology. The poems about computers (by Don Adams) and the “fat girl’s misery” (by Leonie Parker) are perfectly valid and exactly the sort of pieces that might strike a chord with young and old alike. Val didn’t criticise my poem in the book, but she could have because it was about dementia, a topic that is neither historical nor necessarily related to the bush.
Going further, if we only allowed poems that were “purely bush” and devoted to history, most of the verse published in the last issue of the magazine would be disallowed.
My A Father’s Prayer wouldn’t qualify and neither would Charlee Marshall’s November or Zondrae King’s response. Kym Eitel’s Ghost Child, which was last year’s Australian Champion Written Poem wouldn’t pass the test either, along with the poems written by Paddy O’Brien, Heather Knight, Neville Briggs, Carol Reffold, and BJ Stirling. They’d all fall victim to Val’s protest: “Put the general odes aside!” Doesn’t leave much, does it?
To go down the “purely bush” history path introduces all manner of absurdities. What’s the time-line? Do we have to go back prior to 1950? 1900? Can we write poems about the two world wars and Korea, but not about Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq? And if we do write about the victims of war, must we place our main characters in a rural setting to qualify? If writing about the past in the bush is a poet’s strength because that’s the life he or she has lived, then that’s fine. But it’s not everybody’s experience or interest, and creating some sort of writing straitjacket for all poets who enjoy metre and rhyme would be completely counterproductive.
Unfortunately, Val has grasped the wrong end of the stick. In The Best Australian Poems 2010 (Black Inc.) there were 110 poets represented, with 129 poems. Only three (2.3%) of the poems could be called traditional rhyming verse, and not one of those three would get much recognition in a bush poetry competition. That’s the reality. Limiting what we write to a “purely bush” celebration of our history would only hasten the very end which Val is so desperate to avoid.
In the Australian literary world bush poetry is usually regarded as something of a curiosity, a quiet backwater, precisely because it is stereotyped as being confined to verse about bushrangers, kangaroos, gum trees, and hilarious tales about dunnies and red-back spiders. We have to break that stereotype to survive.
That’s why I wholeheartedly support the ABPA definition (“Australian bush poetry is metred and rhymed poetry about Australia, Australians and/or the Australian way of life”). It’s sometimes criticised for being too general, but I like it for the very flexibility that it provides.
It allows me to write about dementia, a world-wide phenomenon, in a poem that could be set anywhere. But dementia is something that affects many of us here, and I wrote two poems about the disease because it stole the last years of my mother’s life. Is someone going to tell me I can’t do that because it’s not a uniquely Australian subject?
On the other hand, I’m not going to submit to an ABPA competition a poem about poverty in the Sudan, the American election, the rebellion in Syria, the history of bagpipes (probably not Scottish, by the way), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, wildlife in the Serengeti National Park, a boat ride on the Ganges, or any one of countless other possible themes that are clearly not related to Australia.
The ABPA definition gives us scope. It allows those whose interest is history and ‘the bush’ to write accordingly but, importantly, it also provides a platform for those of us who want to tackle contemporary issues and the way they impact on our Australian way of life. To deny the latter, to follow the “purely bush” track, would most definitely give our much-loved rhyming verse a one-way ticket to oblivion.
Cheers
David