REVIEWS: Vleeskens' Sandals in a Camel (Earthdance, 2010)

Well, he said he was retired but PressPress insisted on publishing a mini-retrospective called CV and now Vleeskens is doing it for himself  - a self-mashed collection which clearly says at the beginning:

all the words
and many of the phrases
used in these poems
have previously appeared in print

Sandals in a Camel has fluid black and white images that probably were done in pen and ink - accompanying a fluid style of writing - the sort that Vleeskens does best. Some poems are very clear and direct in diction (and in terms of their referents) eg

Wetlands

a corroboree frog
croaks on the submerged
engine block

others are obscure and difficult to place. Images poke through and you think you should know what the whole poems mean - but you don't. They all reflect Vleeskens' deep engagement with the word over a long period of time and have a confidence which comes of this. Even when you don't get it, there's an assured tone which convinces the reader that its their fault.

It's a confident persona, though he's self-deprecating and self-aware - as in POEM.

lavish decoration
and scribbled prints
are as decadents as it gets
...
... a life
travelling in underwear.

It's good to see Vleeskens back doing what he's been doing for decades. Welcome home.
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Get your Book off the Ground

by Anthony Santoro and Suzanne Male

Writers Resource Centre (PO Box 397 Williamstown Vic 3016) 2009 127pp RRP $27.95 ISBN  9780980615807

This is a short How To book for very new writers of prose fiction (primarily) which incorporates some technical hints on plotting and point of view etc along with some behavioural advice designed to encourage new writers to persevere and to resist discouragement.

Sub-titled ‘What you need to know to write and publish your book’, it overpromises and underdelivers: an unpublished writer with even a little experience would find this book unsatisfying if they believed the title, though a first time writer would probably be cheered by its advice.

Anthony Santoro has published a crime fiction novel, The Deception, and has worked as an editor. Suzanne Male is a journalist and editor and is probably best known for her A year of Writing inspiration: A prompt a day for the Creative Writer.

Spinifex by Beverley George

Pardalote Press (44 Bayside Drive, Lauderdale 7021) 2006 62pp; RRP $AU18.50;

ISBN 0 957843609 0

Reviewed by Lorin Ford

'Spinifex ', as John Bird writes in his introduction to the book, 'comes to us after Beverley George has achieved national and international success with haiku, tanka, haibun, free verse and children's literature'. Its publication 'comes to us at the end of her editorship of Yellow Moon Literary Magazine, which made her a household name and friend of most haiku writers and many other poets. Spinifex assumes the status, although unsought, of a benchmark in Australian haiku.'

I looked forward to the release of Spinifex and was not disappointed. The book is presented in Pardalote Press's classic haiku book style - portable, aesthetically pleasing, with a good amount of white space around easy to read print and with subtle illustrations to complement the poems. There are 59 pages of Beverley George's prize-winning haiku, some of which are formed into sequences but each of which can stand alone and a three page haibun.

Interestingly, the title, doesn't originate from any of the poems in the book, nor does it designate any theme. The cover image and the delicate illustrations make it clear that the title names the tough, flexible, grey-green 'dune grass' which binds the sand along our coastal regions - the true spinifex, not the inland tussock grass often referred to by the same name. The spinifex illustrations haunt the pages, functioning, with the title, like a symbol to remind us that haiku, can take the reader beyond the obvious, the observed, to connections and correlations that surprise and delight.

Such implied connections also inform the editorial sequencing of the book. The opening haiku:

train tunnel

the sudden intimacy

of mirrored faces

and the second last (within 'Gathering Coke')

waterfall

our faces ripple closer

in the pond

both focus on images of reflected faces, though what a difference there is between the mutual discomfort experienced by train travellers shocked from private daydream into unexpected, fluorescent-lit intimacy and the gentler, hesitant of growing intimacy with those we know.

Those who are new to haiku and consider it a form of 'nature reporting' will be illuminated by Spinifex. Beverley George is not deceived by over literal interpretations of the notion that haiku should be about 'things as they are', aware that human beings perceive the world through the human senses and construe pattern and meaning with minds shaped by personal and cultural history.

clanking billy

the mist draws

eucalypts together

'Things as they are', when we observe them, become things observed by a human being whatever they may be without our presence: acknowledging this brings us into relationship to their mystery and to our own.

This haiku:

leafless stem

I prune above

a green bud

from the 'Scorched Garden' sequence shows the gardener's careful husbandry focused on a living bud's promise of regeneration. It's what gardeners do. It is also what poets do with unpromising poems and what we all do to promote new beginnings in our lives. Haiku such as:

winter twilight

the shadowed hill

beyond the hill

resonate with perceptions and concerns beyond the observed image of nature. 'Winter twilight' is an example of how the right kigo, well juxtaposed with an accurate visual image, can work to define context and to suggest a metaphorical relationship between the seasons of the year and the seasons in human life.

I was delighted to find some of Beverley George's haiku that I was already familiar with, such as the many-layered, prize-winning 'lengthening shadow - /above her eggs the hen's heart / beats against my arm'. My new personal favourite from this inspiring collection, one I find myself going back to again and again, is from the 'Village Hall, April 25, 2006' sequence:

sprigs of rosemary

something about the tea urns

makes me cry

I don't fully comprehend why this haiku affects me so much, any more than the haiku seems to comprehend what it is about the tea urns - those homely, functional, two-gallon steel fixtures of ordinary community life in Australia - that make the 'me of the poem' cry. Rosemary, of course, is for remembrance, on Anzac Day, in a Shakespearean tragedy or on any occasion which requires reflection on or acknowledgment of the significance of the past. Perhaps the poem's effect might be that it subtly springs a recollection of the value of ordinary community life and the sometimes taken-for-granted service that holds a community together, as the roots of spinifex bind sand and prevent erosion.

Beverley George's haibun, 'Gathering Coke', winner of the World Haiku Club R.H.Blyth Award for 2004 and voted Best of Issue by readers of Presence #26 2004, concludes the book. This haibun's three pages of tight prose, incorporating two well-placed haiku, validates Beverley George's anti-Procrastean belief that the topic and its sufficient development are the best criteria for haibun length.

I wholeheartedly recommend Spinifex to new readers of haiku and to seasoned readers and haijin alike. The haiku are as long as each needs to be, no more, no less, and the language throughout has the flow of carefully honed spoken language - no outdated adherence to the 5-7-5 model nor the chopped English of haiku 'telegraphese' here. Enter Beverley George's beautifully written, deceptively small poems and you'll find the world widening and deepening.