The Republic Readings are always interesting and fresh. There is
usually an 'open mike' section, where you can bring along your own
work to read. On some afternoons, publishers in Tasmania present
their recent work. Each event features
two or three invited writers, and often features writers
visiting Tasmania. Though mostly focused on poetry, short stories
and non-fiction work-in-progress and biography is also presented.
I have just returned from an international
conference where researchers met to discuss the nature of "Civic
Service" ... defined as: ‘an
organised period of substantial engagement and contribution to
the local,
national, or world community, recognised and valued
by society, with minimal monetary compensation to the
participant’.
I think on a local scale we have a shining
example of that kind of service in Liz Winfield. A commitment
to others is what Liz
would seem to be all about. Her service to others is indeed of
a kind that involves "an organised period of substantial engagement and contribution to the local
community" but in fact it reaches out into the national community too, and as
for its being "recognised and valued by society" I think her contribution is
– I certainly hope it is – recognised and valued. Poets who devote
themselves to the cause of others' poetry are not common, and all too often,
poets seem to me to work in a kind of solipsistic haze, or in a businesslike
frenzy to get themselves up through the snakes and ladders game of getting
themselves published, promoted and pomped and ceremonied.
Liz
desk-topped the broadsheet herself and received help with proofreading and
photocopying from Ralph Wessman, another communitarian spirit among us. Liz is
committed to doing the broadsheet for two years and hopes to see the 500 copies
of each issue appear around town perhaps plastered on people's walls, much as we
see posters for the State Cinema in various places.
In fact the State
Cinema brochures are one of the inspirations for this project, the other
inspiration was a broadsheet called Riposte – a Dublin broadsheet
containing poems and details of fringe literary events and
competitions.
In her own words, Liz says she is doing this project
because she feels the community we live in on this island ...
* doesn't
realise that there ARE writers in the community
* doesn't know itself, in
that it does not realise that it DOES relate to writing, and to
poetry
and because she feels the broadsheet is ...
* a way of
giving hope to our community, and
* a way of getting information out to the
community.
This embracing of public space as a domain into which a poet
can speak is encouraging.
The way she intends distributing the
broadsheet is a kind of print-world equivalent of the PUSH technology of email.
It's also a civilizing thing to do, surely, to approach the public in this
daring way:
Too often, poets acquiesce at being left
at the borders – Plato
himself in his Republic said we poets had no place in his
ideal city-state, and gave many arguments as to why it was important to
eliminate almost all poetry and art from the ideal city-state. (But if you
want to know more about this antagonistic relationship between poetry and
philosophy in Plato's world, I would recommend that you rather find time to
speak to Peter Macrow and not to me, it's more years than I would like to
remember since I studied philosophy.)
From my reading of it, Plato's
problem with poetry might not have been with poetry in itself, but with the
kind of poetry that did not fit his criteria. Anyway he allowed
for two exceptions to
this rule – those poets who wrote "hymns to the gods and who sung the
praises of good men" could remain. (Republic, 607a) Well, I think I feel
safe with this Poet's Republic.
First of all, in future issues, Liz
tells me she is going to exile Plato from the title of this broadsheet.
Second, knowing Liz, I fell she is wise
enough to pick a kind of poetry for this broadsheet series that
will not condescend to
the reader out there, but
will have nevertheless, if you will forgive the pun – a broad appeal.
Third, the Liz Winfield view of things is broad too. In future issues,
Liz says she intends to include not only a selection of poems from new and
established writers, but also information about Tasmanian small press publishing
initiatives, and web sites -- and here I wish to personally thank her for giving
the web site I manage, The Write Stuff, such a generous chunk of space.
(The Write Stuff is at present getting ready to announce a major poetry
and short story prize, with no entry fees for Tasmanian writers, but this is not
the time to showcase that.)
In future issues, a Tasmanian poet will be
selected as the editor's choice, and each of these featured writers will receive
a $20 Hobart Bookshop voucher as well as what is really free advertising space
in the broadsheet.
Philomena van Rijswijk is the first of these featured
writers from Tasmania that this broadsheet will highlight. The next issue will
feature poet Chirstiane Bostock.
How apt it is that the first issue of
this broadsheet has a tribute to the Dancing Man. It's excellent to see his
tragic passing marked respectfully here. Philomena van Rijswijk's poem captures
this way "he played his alienation like a maestro" outside "a place called
Sanity" ... One of my own sons, on hearing of the Dancing Man's death,
said oh you mean Anthony, and as it turned out, knew him well from
young people's parties and from life in communal houses, knew him as a person
who
would join in and jam with musicians playing their guitars and drums at a
party – and accepted him as a person who would dish out poetry from
his pocket on the spur of the moment too. I got the impression my son did
not think of him
as strange or eccentric, but as just another of the iterations of youth culture
so embued with its own sadness.
To go back to Philomena van Rijswijk – her
short article on the reverse of the broadsheet gives us a glimpse
into the talent
of this writer who herself can look, to use her own words,
'outside the frame' Responding to an exhibition at the Tasmanian Museum and
Art Gallery, Philomena encourages us to look inside the frames
of the pictures on
the walls, and allow ourselves to be lifted up or cast down or bent
sideways by them, and in a way I think this is what the broadsheet might
do for the general public: (again using Philomina's words) allow [us] to
see the artfulness that reaches into the ordinary world beyond [the
frame].
I urge you to look beyond the frame around these poems,
into the poems themselves, for special moments.
• There's John
West with a short poem that is almost a novel in its scope;
• There's
Graeme Hetherington's elegant poem, leaving us with a vivid picture of blackness
and grief and a 'tall thin girl, death-dark, her black umbrella
spread', who invites him underneath and smiles;
• There's a wonderful poem from a young writer, Angela Mahoney,
writing of streets that run dark with watery alien blood, that echo with
impromptu poetry and improvised hymns while the moon rose, and
• There's a nerve-wracking poem by Karen Knight, keeping watch and
waiting for the ambulance, from her book My Mother has become
which will be launched here in a few minutes.
• In a similar vein,
Peter Macrow comes up with surprises as always, holding the hand of a frail
person who sits with the silence of snow – I held her hand to
comfort myself, the time was not today, not now, not yet, again, in
Peter Macrow's words, I hear that expert tension, built into the taught sprung
words of the expert craftsman, of whom we are lucky to have so many in this
State.
I am sure this venture will succeed. I really hope it does. I
imagine it might have its detractors in the beginning, but feel sure it will
become a strong link in our community, building connections and crossing
barriers. We don't only want to sell our books or promote our publishing houses,
as poets we want our voices to be heard and we don't want to be reading
continually to the converted. We need our best ideas to be heard, we want to
contribute to an understanding of where in the world we are at this point in
time.
Finally, speaking from my own perspective from my involvement in
youth research, I ardently hope that the broadsheet becomes a way of reaching
into the world of young people, that young writers will find ways of connecting
with others and will find it useful for making the transition into the
all-too-often cliquish world of writing.
So quite literally. Liz is
getting the word out – I am sure we all wish that she will
succeed!
Thank you Liz
!
