Fryer Folios Vol 6 No 1 Jun 2011
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FRYF oliosER JUNE 2011 ISSN 1834-514X FRYER FryerF Library, The University olios of Queensland Volume 6 | Number 1 | JUNE 2011 3 7 10 BRISBANE RIVER POETRY ALIEN POET THE RIVER AT BRISBANE After Queensland’s disastrous summer UQ student from the School of English, Media Poet and Fryer Library supporter Emeritus floods, Ruth Blair discovers a rich tradition of Studies and Art History, Kristian Radford, Professor Thomas Shapcott reflects on the Brisbane River poetry. writes about Antigone Kefala’s book, The alien. Brisbane River in its many moods. 11 14 19 ‘Poets are alWAYS WRITING THE UQP ARCHIVES: POETRY IN PAPERBARK COUNTRY about the sea …’ AND MATERIAL CULTURE UQ librarian and poet Pam Schindler Stephany Steggall writes about the papers of Deborah Jordan discusses the role of UQP as contributes one of her recent poems. poet John Blight in Fryer Library, particularly his a significant publisher of Australian poetry in correspondence with Judith Wright. the 1960s. 20 23 28 ART IN MINIATURE WHAt’s new in FrYER FRIENDS OF FRYER Penny Whiteway profiles a selection of We farewell Mark Cryle as Manager Read all about the recent events enjoyed by bookplates from the extensive collections of Fryer Library, and welcome Laurie the Friends, and forthcoming activities. held in the Fryer Library. McNeice. We also announce the winner of the 2011 Fryer Library Award. Cover: Montage of Brisbane River images by Janine OBITUARIES: PAGE 30 Nicklin with photos by David Symons, Mila Zincone, Volodymyrkrasyuk (Dreamstime.com) and OnAir2 Brenda Lewis and John McCulloch (Dreamstime.com). Words by Pam Schindler, from ‘In paperbark country’, see p. 19. Fryer Folios is published twice a year by the University of Queensland Library to illustrate the range of special collections in the Fryer Library and to showcase scholarly research based on these sources. ISSN 1834-1004 (print) ISSN 1834-1012 (online). Fryer Folios is distributed to libraries and educational institutions around Australia. If you wish to be added to the mailing list, please contact the Secretary, Friends of Fryer, the University of Queensland Library, The University of Queensland Q 4072. Telephone (07) 3346 9427; Fax (07) 3365 6776; Email: [email protected] (Note: individuals wishing to receive a copy will need to join Friends of Fryer). Unless otherwise stated, the photographs in this magazine are taken by the Fryer Editors Ros Follett, Laurie McNeice, Cathy Leutenegger, Chris Tiffin Library Reproduction Service. The views expressed in Fryer Folios are those of Photographers Francisco Roelas, David Symons the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors Penny Whiteway, Mila Zincone or publisher. Every reasonable effort has been made to contact relevant copyright Graphic design Janine Nicklin holders for illustrative material in this magazine. Where this was not possible, the Printed by Westminster Printing, Milton, Qld copyright holders are invited to contact the publisher. 2 UQ LIBRARY BRISBANE RIVER POETRY After Queensland’S disastrOus summer flOOds, RUTH Blair Above: WA Clarson, Brisbane, original discOVers A ricH traditiON OF Brisbane RIVer POetrY. lithograph printed as he river is getting its shine back’, a remotely aware of; how this sinuous, impressive a supplement to The friend remarked some little while after and idiosyncratic, ‘this short but flash-flood river’, Illustrated Sydney ‘Tthe 2011 big flood. Recently I walked as Peter Porter calls it, anchors whatever sense News, 30 August 1888. across the Eleanor Schonell Bridge (the ‘green’ of belonging we might have to this place, and for Digitally enhanced by pedestrian and bus bridge slung across the visitors anchors impressions and experience. A Francisco Roelas. river between Dutton Park and The University of Howe, in ‘Evening on the Brisbane River’ (1912), Below: Curving roads Queensland) reading poetry by Samuel Wagan has a sense of the way in which the river enters and pathways mimic Watson and Luke Beesley embedded in the the souls of those who live beside it: the sinuous bends of footpath and embossed on the railing. Because The beauty of the River is like a benediction the Brisbane River. the bridge is so high you have almost a bird’s eye To the workers passing homeward by the winding, Photo by Mila Zincone. view of this reach of the river. And on this day, shaded Road: with the stretch of water smooth down to the … bend, the shine–a velvety brown shine, ‘fawn- For they feel the gentle influence of the River’s quiet thick’, Dimitris Tsaloumas calls it–was almost teaching As its beauty o’er them casts its dreamy spell; dazzling. Since the January flood, I’ve wanted to With its ever-changing currents, its tender curves and know more about how, from the time of European windings, settlement, the river has been celebrated and I’ve It speaks of far off fair things, and an endless story gone hunting, especially for poems. What follows tells. are reflections on a trove of poems, from 1859 to Across the poems I’ve been reading a story today.1 The river’s shine is a recurring theme. unfolds, both of learning to see the river and of learning to live with it and alongside it. Early poets In his Foreword to the collection Rivers (the work clearly stand apart from it, admiring, and weaving of three poets: John Kinsella, Peter Porter and the river into a paean to European colonisation Sean O’Brien), Kinsella writes, ‘Creation myths, and to ‘progress’, as in ‘The River of Queensland’ the “world river”, sources of life and death, diverse (Anon., 1859): ecologies, connectors and “edges” of habitats, places of commerce and spiritual significance– Hail to thee life stream of our now infant nation. rivers bind life together across continents’.2 Poets Thy glory shall be ours where the Bay extended, And the Pacific leaves its billows on our strand, can help us understand how the river that we Bidding us to mould this birthright of our children criss-cross or walk beside or scoot up and down Till poets rise to tell the wonders of Queensland. on fast ferries does things to us we may be only FRYER FOLIOS | JUNE 2011 3 I acknowledge the Peter Porter’s poem, ‘The role of the Brisbane On this transom, the river’s dawning Aboriginal peoples River in the fortunes of my family’ (2002) skin … Stand here … give your breath to gives, more than a century later, a sense of the fleeting mist … Stand here … in the crimson who have lived shadow of Cootha’s the disturbing realities and costs of European dusk … Stand here … and whisper upon and live along the fortune-seeking. The Porter clan, arriving in the night’s canvas, whirlpool eyes, the song- Brisbane River nineteenth century, sees: lines of Kurilpa’s ghost … from its source to a river altering the lives Others too have sung the river. In Mabel Forrest’s of men and beasts, for all the world as if its mouth and who ‘Brisbane River’ (1916), the personified river is ‘a a feud as old as that of sun and rain blue-eyed wanton’ who ‘drags her skirts beneath have always known were set off by these migrant magistrates hoping to make careers twelve thousand miles the bridge, / The ripple kisses on her mouth’; but how to respect a from home. industry is never far away, and there is death in this Arcady: great river. The end of this poem, mimicking the stately iambic pentameter and locutions of many of its Sometimes within her reedy curves, predecessors, is a parody of early celebrations of Sometimes across her sandy bars, A drowned face, tired of every day, colonisation: Awaits the judgment of the stars. The river’s cowed today as must befit Her similarly titled 1927 poem, expresses sheer a State’s proud capital, its comely banks joy at the beauty of this city with its winding river, well-skirted by broad drives and galleries, its smooth and smiling surface now outranks ‘so full of godhead do we feel today’: the plush riparian pleasures of the Yarra’s Bright Prussian-blue the winding river lies; saunter through Victoria’s savannahs, And here some milk-white seagulls, like a reef and Queensland, once Louisiana, turns Found in warm seas beneath pale, tropic skies, Super Texas, primus inter pares. Rest in mid-stream. Glimpses of a developing city are common in The river in this poem is blue, not the brown we the poems. A Howe observed (1912): ‘From tall see now, intensified after the flood. For George chimneys in the city smoke wreaths are lightly Essex Evans, in ‘Adrift: a Brisbane River reverie’ drifting, / shrouding shining waters with a veil of (1891), the ‘steel-blue waters flow / With gloom and whirling grey.’ Mabel Forrest, in ‘Brisbane River’ glint’. For Emily Bulcock, in 1924, the ‘delphinium (1916), begins with industry at the mouth of her blue’ of the sky, at the time of Oxley’s coming, personified river: was mirrored in the river ‘clearer than today’. A She shudders by the shambles where not insignificant reason for searching out these The dawning brought an oily calm poems is to see what they can tell us about the And iron roofs are bleak and bare river. Observation, though not the major driving Above the works at Eagle Farm. force, is nevertheless the seed from which the Samuel Wagan Watson, who is our great poet poems grow. I have already mentioned the river’s of the city and its river today, relates progress, shine–perhaps the most commonly observed politics and communication in a richly dense feature. The river breeze and the tidal nature of the poem, ‘smoke signals’ (2004): river are frequently alluded to.