Book Review 'Some Other Landscape'
by Bruce Dawe, Australian poet
I have followed the poetry of the Pente Poets ever since Ron Wiseman introduced me to their work, and this new collection is impressive. This is a fine production, a professionally produced book with its striking cover by Susie Faint and with her vignettes gracing the pages of all six poets, and with Brad Drew’s excellent drawings and prints. I would be very proud indeed, to have such a fine production for a collection of my own poetry! The layout and type-face designed by Judith Bandidt further enhance the production and also encourage the reader throughout…
In a poetry collection of over 220 pages, it is beyond the capacity of any reviewer to do more than touch on some of the highlights. The order I will follow is that in which the individual Pente Poets appear.
Lyn Browne’s poems range as widely as she has travelled geographically. Sharp-edged always, there are no self-indulgent lyrical outbursts here. All her poems are clearly defined. Such poems as ‘Studying Trees’, which focuses on her mother might well exemplify her own tacit respect for getting it said with all due respect.
The preparation of a family member for a hospital operation deftly deals with those tedious yet caring details involved. This poem’s title sums up the feeling Lyn has at this time: ‘Í wish I’d kissed her.’ While using free verse, Lyn Browne’s skill also reveals itself in ‘Special needs’, in the sonnet form. In her poem ‘Spray’, Lyn establishes a very different mood. In this poem Lyn steers a tricky course between affection for raiding foxes and a family member’s strategy in discouraging them by peeing on a fence!
Landscapes feature largely in her poems here, and I am less able to respond instinctively to them as a non-traveller. However, her poems on war reach across this divide. ‘Al-Hillar Field, Iraq’, for example is grim and precise. Its last line, ‘How shall we sing’, echoes Psalm 137 (‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land’.)
Finally, Lyn’s poem ‘Larvik ’adds its weight to her earlier poem, ‘Difference’. In the earlier poem, her husband’s shells are found in a drawer and compared with her own collection of smooth white pebbles. In the later poem, ‘Larvik’, they signify a range of experiences and situations. This rock (in Scandinavian) utters its own immovable word to her memory-hoard.
Deanne Lister says that ‘often it’s been things around me, especially nature, which have started me writing.’ The voice here is a familiar one to us all: the wryly amused
voice of chastisement delivered in regular rhyme, as in ‘Éxasperated.’ Deanne’s use of rhyme assists us in recognizing the dramatic situation presented. Her reflections on the difference in climate between springtime in England and that in Victoria is well-handled in ‘Springtime in Victoria’.
In ‘The Pop Singer’ a prolonged satirical note is introduced, concluding:
‘of course the band and system-sound creation
were necessary to this operation.
The gigs were advertised to be so cool
that thousands would attend them as a rule.’
Deanne Lister’s poems involve various poetic forms from sonnet, ballad, rhyming couplets through to free verse. There is often an inherent value in working in various forms. Even should some appear to be less satisfactory, there is still potential gain in the attempt, just as one sets bars higher and takes up heavier weights at the gym. As writers, we all run our own gyms in our individual ways.
Many of Susie Faint’s poems confront valuable moments of insight, of unseen observations of the natural world and its creatures: a child’s moments, for example, in ‘never, ever, before and because’:
because here was a world worth the waiting
before learning why two butterflies kiss
why birds sing in pairs on high wires
why bees hide their honey in hives.
In other moments, Susie explores the values inherent in observing a crow battling high wind, a fox suddenly appearing on a back lawn, a walk in a forest where a dove, in silhouette, is seen as ‘the spirit of the forest both organ and choir’.
There is a special value in taking such experiences and making them ours to pass on to others.
‘Poetry’says Judith Bandidt, ‘should be read aloud’. In ‘Boat entrance, Mooloolaba’, Judith’s poem moves from the repeated rhythms of the sails furling and unfurling, the slap of the water on the rock at her feet and, finally, in sleep where she is united with the waves and the running tide.
In Judith’s ‘Climate of Change’ section, she draws upon the history of change which has lead to the present better gender balance and respect – from the bra-burning of the fifties through to the present. In her poem ‘Some Time Soon’ she echoes our common fears for the future, seeing
‘a Damoclean sword hanging by a thread
over a world hell bent on destruction.’
Judith’s range is wide, as one can appreciate when moving from poems relating to past wars, such as in ‘Destruction Vietnam’ and those memorial actions which bring together various conflicts, such as ‘Dawn Parade’ and ‘Soldier on the Stone’. This poet can arrive at such public concerns after a very moving poem about milking on a farm and the pre-destined short life of a calf.
It is especially pleasing to note that the six Pente poets belong to no common ideological or aesthetic grouping. That individuality of approach guarantees health and long artistic life.
Brad Drew in his preface also affirms the need for poetry to be read aloud: ‘the acid test is the aural one.’ Brad’s poems here range as widely as any, predominantly however, in the form of either haiku or tanka. In Brad’s poetry these forms are developed extensively, one series of tanka dealing with issues of Loss and Desolation. Others deal with love, such as his ‘Coupling Tankas: On Waking’.
A selection of Ron Wiseman’s poems completes the book, and he has chosen to focus on the theme of love. As with other Pente poets, some of Ron’s poems are in formal modes, some in free verse. Ron’s humour is at play in poems such as ‘The Poet’, ‘The Women’s Painter, by Repute’ and ‘Spring Love Song’. A number deal with artists as lovers, for example, ‘The Persian Miniature’.
I believe there are poems here to suit the individual reader’s particular preferences. I congratulate all those involved in presenting Some Other Landscape, sure that those readers travelling through these landscapes will receive satisfaction commensurate with their interest.
Bruce Dawe
In a poetry collection of over 220 pages, it is beyond the capacity of any reviewer to do more than touch on some of the highlights. The order I will follow is that in which the individual Pente Poets appear.
Lyn Browne’s poems range as widely as she has travelled geographically. Sharp-edged always, there are no self-indulgent lyrical outbursts here. All her poems are clearly defined. Such poems as ‘Studying Trees’, which focuses on her mother might well exemplify her own tacit respect for getting it said with all due respect.
The preparation of a family member for a hospital operation deftly deals with those tedious yet caring details involved. This poem’s title sums up the feeling Lyn has at this time: ‘Í wish I’d kissed her.’ While using free verse, Lyn Browne’s skill also reveals itself in ‘Special needs’, in the sonnet form. In her poem ‘Spray’, Lyn establishes a very different mood. In this poem Lyn steers a tricky course between affection for raiding foxes and a family member’s strategy in discouraging them by peeing on a fence!
Landscapes feature largely in her poems here, and I am less able to respond instinctively to them as a non-traveller. However, her poems on war reach across this divide. ‘Al-Hillar Field, Iraq’, for example is grim and precise. Its last line, ‘How shall we sing’, echoes Psalm 137 (‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land’.)
Finally, Lyn’s poem ‘Larvik ’adds its weight to her earlier poem, ‘Difference’. In the earlier poem, her husband’s shells are found in a drawer and compared with her own collection of smooth white pebbles. In the later poem, ‘Larvik’, they signify a range of experiences and situations. This rock (in Scandinavian) utters its own immovable word to her memory-hoard.
Deanne Lister says that ‘often it’s been things around me, especially nature, which have started me writing.’ The voice here is a familiar one to us all: the wryly amused
voice of chastisement delivered in regular rhyme, as in ‘Éxasperated.’ Deanne’s use of rhyme assists us in recognizing the dramatic situation presented. Her reflections on the difference in climate between springtime in England and that in Victoria is well-handled in ‘Springtime in Victoria’.
In ‘The Pop Singer’ a prolonged satirical note is introduced, concluding:
‘of course the band and system-sound creation
were necessary to this operation.
The gigs were advertised to be so cool
that thousands would attend them as a rule.’
Deanne Lister’s poems involve various poetic forms from sonnet, ballad, rhyming couplets through to free verse. There is often an inherent value in working in various forms. Even should some appear to be less satisfactory, there is still potential gain in the attempt, just as one sets bars higher and takes up heavier weights at the gym. As writers, we all run our own gyms in our individual ways.
Many of Susie Faint’s poems confront valuable moments of insight, of unseen observations of the natural world and its creatures: a child’s moments, for example, in ‘never, ever, before and because’:
because here was a world worth the waiting
before learning why two butterflies kiss
why birds sing in pairs on high wires
why bees hide their honey in hives.
In other moments, Susie explores the values inherent in observing a crow battling high wind, a fox suddenly appearing on a back lawn, a walk in a forest where a dove, in silhouette, is seen as ‘the spirit of the forest both organ and choir’.
There is a special value in taking such experiences and making them ours to pass on to others.
‘Poetry’says Judith Bandidt, ‘should be read aloud’. In ‘Boat entrance, Mooloolaba’, Judith’s poem moves from the repeated rhythms of the sails furling and unfurling, the slap of the water on the rock at her feet and, finally, in sleep where she is united with the waves and the running tide.
In Judith’s ‘Climate of Change’ section, she draws upon the history of change which has lead to the present better gender balance and respect – from the bra-burning of the fifties through to the present. In her poem ‘Some Time Soon’ she echoes our common fears for the future, seeing
‘a Damoclean sword hanging by a thread
over a world hell bent on destruction.’
Judith’s range is wide, as one can appreciate when moving from poems relating to past wars, such as in ‘Destruction Vietnam’ and those memorial actions which bring together various conflicts, such as ‘Dawn Parade’ and ‘Soldier on the Stone’. This poet can arrive at such public concerns after a very moving poem about milking on a farm and the pre-destined short life of a calf.
It is especially pleasing to note that the six Pente poets belong to no common ideological or aesthetic grouping. That individuality of approach guarantees health and long artistic life.
Brad Drew in his preface also affirms the need for poetry to be read aloud: ‘the acid test is the aural one.’ Brad’s poems here range as widely as any, predominantly however, in the form of either haiku or tanka. In Brad’s poetry these forms are developed extensively, one series of tanka dealing with issues of Loss and Desolation. Others deal with love, such as his ‘Coupling Tankas: On Waking’.
A selection of Ron Wiseman’s poems completes the book, and he has chosen to focus on the theme of love. As with other Pente poets, some of Ron’s poems are in formal modes, some in free verse. Ron’s humour is at play in poems such as ‘The Poet’, ‘The Women’s Painter, by Repute’ and ‘Spring Love Song’. A number deal with artists as lovers, for example, ‘The Persian Miniature’.
I believe there are poems here to suit the individual reader’s particular preferences. I congratulate all those involved in presenting Some Other Landscape, sure that those readers travelling through these landscapes will receive satisfaction commensurate with their interest.
Bruce Dawe