Ken Bolton
Ken Bolton has published many books, the most recent being Lonnie's Lament (Wakefield Press, earlier this year). Forthcoming in 2018 are Starting At Basheer's (from Vagabond Press in Sydney) and Species Of Spaces (from Shearsman Books in the UK).
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A TRAVELIN' MAN
all afternoon in a car
parked at the ferry wharf
Pam Brown
At the beginning of Laurie's Crab & Winkle
the quote, I note, is the Shangri-las
the word "rumori"
is in there too
faint echoes of Australia
as he begins to settle in
begins determinedly
(their possessions as Laurie says
—their "worldly goods"—
"still somewhere in the Indian ocean")
He & Rosemary,
landed in Kent,
Canterbury
where Rosemary
will take up her job, in law, professoring
So Sasha, Denis
Pam & I,
Alan, others,
ghost in & out of the early
pages
Laurie still half in Australia
Australia, functioning maybe, as a reference point, a measure
('imperial',
the empire come back to verify things
via
pop songs
via sensible or far-fetched ambitions
(Sasha)—
till Laurie, I expect
—till Laurie as he
must expect or anticipate—
begins to feel
on-the-pace
less foreign
'here' ('Here'?)
("Here" being ''there",
(Kent) (England) (London)
as
he will & did
#
as he would & has?
#
Published now eight years
—the record of a year settling in, some time spent
setting & designing—
Crab & Winkle must have been written
ten or more years ago
now he might allow
his mind to drift south again, as they
prepare to leave
for Sydney, I think
—tho
a year
or two away.
Here he'll miss them, might be
missing them now already
the mind, as it will,
ahead of itself.
Mine always is.
Who can live
'in the moment'?
#
Not me.
"No time!" ha ha ha
#
I'm reading
for the first time
Under Western Eyes
no I'm not—I'm reading Heart Of Darkness
#
the early pages set maybe close to Kent
evocative
of
a serene mildness
#
& Johnson's Lives Of The Poets
which is amusing
& intelligent
(tho who needs me
to remark it?)
some of the lives & their passions
reminding of literary figures still current
maybe
'perennial' these acts & motivations
—& Tim Wright's
small collection
lines & phrases in it that I love
am drawn to
that I can maybe draw heat from
I am situated
in or
between
Laurie's last decade
Conrad's what? 1890s?
Tim
(in Melbourne, now more or less)
Pam Brown
& me & Cath
(—now definitely—& currently on Bruny Island),
& Johnson's eighteenth century & sure, generalising, imperial
latinity & secure English good sense
(Get the picture?)
(to quote
Laurie Duggan
&
'Shadow' Morton)
Sasha
—the editor, & sole writer, of The Only Sensible News—
whose project was the resurrection of Harry Hooton
And now a younger friend of Pam's
—Pam was closer
than us to Sasha—
has gone into bat for him. Harry Hooton.
I thought Hooton was an awful poet.
Which I told Sasha.
#
timor mortis conturbat me,
Laurie quotes,
recalling John Forbes
occasioned by
a high voltage warning
Laurie sees
on the side of a generator.
Thinking, I suppose, Here I am in England,
where John went before me
the strangeness of it
#
Will this
continue, as a line by line commentary on Laurie's poem?
Not the worst thing one could do.
#
Tho I'd soon
catch him up
—he already having done the hard thinking—
the heavy lifting,
in John's phrase
& then where would I be?
here?
there?
"footsteps in the courtyard
the rattle of leaves on the path"
(Womack & Womack)
"In the offing the sea & sky
welded together without a joint"
&
"A haze rested on the low shores
that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness"
"What greatness had not floated on the ebb
of that river into the mystery of 'an unknown earth!'
& so on
Hmm, I should quote Sam & Tim
& perhaps I will
inevitable?
irresistible?
a bad idea?
(but
'none the less'?)
at the cafe past the turn-off to Adventure Bay
on the way to Alonnah
with Cath
she reading
Zadie Smith
which I'll read after her
I read Crab & Winkle.
At
first
—for a moment—the shop seems too crowded:
tourists—New Zealanders, Aussies, some Singaporeans
the owner very
talkative
so it is very noisy.
But where else to go
on an island?
So we
stay
there is somewhere else to go because the crowd moves on
& we sit & read & write exchange remarks
then 'go'—
to buy petrol, groceries, have a walk on the beach
'Adventure Bay'
tho the bay, the beach, live up to it
the automatic thought: what can Cook & Co have made of it
all those years ago?
idyllic?
the berry farm is shut
contrary to its advertisement
pale blue, silvery, the sands
white as I have ever seen them
our prints the first today,
aside from those of a dog
& numerous small birds
#
two plovers, a dotterel
a pacific gull (a 'dominican')
#
see Ian & Lorraine in the afternoon
see Dan & Sophie that night
Three days later, a trip to Adventure Bay, again for groceries—
a trip for promised meals, with Ian & Lorraine, & Pat & Chris
the next few days.
"No nice milk,"
so Cath rings Lorraine (just, at that moment, at the checkout in
Kingston). Lorraine will bring us some tonight.
A walk
on the beach near the berry farm ("closed till October")
tourists photographing each other on the rocks before the
swell of incoming waves & the enormous panorama—
that says 'Endless space', 'time'&'miles away'. Cath goes
for a skinny dip at the other end, the water invigorating
& cold. Small puffins & large gulls gathered near by,
keeping thirty metres' distance from us as we move down
the beach. Cath has seen the eagle this morning, a sea
eagle, perched in a large tree in the neighbour's yard. I
see it too. (Gabe's idea of Cath's motto—"I've seen an
eagle"&"I'm going in"—proved true.)
I take some photos for Cath. They resemble Richard
Hamilton's of Marilyn—tho of course the special virtue
of those was to have her resemble every woman In That
Same Situation: full of enjoyment, endorsed, &
communicating these things, their smile addressed not
to the camera but the person behind it. These photos
verify that Cath did, in fact, go in.
Zadie Smith. I finish Heart Of Darkness: a mess finally.
As Conrad must surely have known. I haven't read much
of him for forty years now, except for The Nigger Of The
Narcissus a year or two back. Also impossible.) Should
I read more? Nostromo? Lord Jim?
For now, tho,
Zadie, The Autograph Man. Three years back I read
NW& liked it very much.
We go home, rest & cook.
Lorraine & Ian show up early. After an exhausting day
on the mainland, seeing to various things. They have
disinterred, from years in storage, a standard lamp that
we can use. They leave. (No dinner tonight.) And we
go squidding at Lunawanna—return for late tea.
#
Once or twice a day the phone pings, telling us of photos
arriving, of the grandchildren in Adelaide—Noah mooning
in the parking lot of Marion shopping centre, Gabe looking
on, Max, a small general or fearless merchant banker—a
'commando' merchant banker perhaps—short videos of him
learning words from Anna. Say "garden," Max. Max, say
"cat".
I must remember that I want to end with Tim's "I move thru
the traffic like a pin."
Tho, why do I
like it?—Tho I know I do.
#
Pat & Chris for a day or two, then the drive back with them—
ferry (abjure cheese shop—no time!) & prep for dinner that
night at their place, Olga & Paul coming.
#
We go on an amusing op-shop crawl, with Chris, the next day.
Pat stays home to prepare his Spanish for an end-of-day
weekly tutorial.
Chris phones from just up the street—she has gone for
vegetables—telling us to come out & see the spectacular sky.
We set off with Pat in the lead, see the fabulous sky—whorls
of red, Altdorfery clouds against beautiful bruised, plum-blue
background cloud & patches of silver & moonstone grey. Call
into Betts Gallery on the way back & see the paintings there. A
designer's take on the possibilities of various modes of
representation, contrasted together: scumbled expressionist paint
used representationally over mirror-enamel surfaces & offset
against geometric abstraction, bits of stencilled nineteenth-century
drawing or cartoon. Salle-meets-Patrick Caulfield-meets-
Gordon Bennett, pop art & Rauschenberg distantly behind it.
His earlier work reminded of Stephen Bram schooled on Kenneth
Noland.
#
"I glide thru the traffic like a pin"
Ken Bolton has published many books, the most recent being Lonnie's Lament (Wakefield Press, earlier this year). Forthcoming in 2018 are Starting At Basheer's (from Vagabond Press in Sydney) and Species Of Spaces (from Shearsman Books in the UK).