and her reputation sullied by the Party's inability to come to terms with her sexual politics, she was abandoned to poor health and extreme poverty.
The biography might have read as tragedy, but it does not. Rather, it echoes the themes of Devanny's novels. She believed firmly that a socialist novel must not just state the problems of the oppressed - it must offer solutions and hope for a better future. Ferrier's autobiography does just that. The success of the book comes from her sensitive and scholarly reconstruction of the context of Devonny's political and literary achievements. Her portrayal of the CPA is masterly. While never blind to the frequent absurdities of
"the line" and the cruelties that resulted from a constant and authoritarian focus on "the big picture," she is always aware of the optimism, humanity and hope that drove the "struggle for liberation."
(320) The Party that held (to some extent and for some of the time at least) the loyalty of so many of Australia's leading writers and thinkers in those decades, had to have a personal and intellectual appeal that transcended its many shortcomings.
Ferrier is also very aware of the problems of biography: the problems of constriction versus reconstruction; the need to choose between contradictory evidence. My own experience of oral testimony has suggested that the problems of
evidence become acute when relying on interviews with political activists who often have decades of experience in filtering communication. The task was certainly not helped by Devanny's own varying constructions of herself. These problems only add to the biographer's achievement. The result is a portrait that never shies away from her subject's blind spots, prejudices and insensitivities. On the other hand, Devanny's immense enthusiasm, her generosity and her unflagging will to change a flawed society shines through every page.
This makes the book a joy to read as well as an essential text for anyone interested in the history, literature or politics of twentieth century Australia.
Mark O'Flynn
TAPPING THE DEEP WELL
Turning up the heat: New Poets Series Seven. Five Islands Press. ISBN 0 8 6418 713 0 $27.50
Once.again, Five Islands Press, the lone flagship for new Australian poetry, presents a powerful series of new voices as strong and coherent as those in previous years. It is refreshing to note, yet again, the thematic consistency and control
Volume 24, number 1, May 1997 evident in each of these individual
collections, as well as the manner in which they complement each other as a series.
Sarah Atfield's "Hope in Hell" is an aptly named shapshot of the generational and gender differences set in both post-war and contemporary London. This is the poetry of tenement slums and domestic squalor, presenting various moments of life on a council housing estate where the neighbours can be heard squabbling and humping through the walls. Here is the language of the race track and old cockney songs which become menacing rather than corny, capturing an urban tension. A caustic vernacular feeds a strong sense of irony.
Human ambition reduced to survival:
all I want is to be one ticket further in the queue (14)
She has an eye for the critical moment in the relationships between her four central characters who pop up and speak in what is a cleverly structured discontinuous narrative. The poet's position in this is ambiguous, not least for the shifting, slippery narrator who links the various characters. Each poem is a short, sharp moment, shocking in its intimacy. Ultimately, Atfield leaves us with hope in this rather bleak and recognisably ordinary hell. The hope and energy of the streets.
we know there's promise in tonight we know there's life left in tomorrow (32)
len Crawford's "Admissions" also offers a sequence of untitled poems detailing the moments of crisis in the life of her protagonist—a young woman called Ruth. It tells a common story, yet the manner of its telling is engaging and compas- sionate, as she deals with the myriad issues surrounding mental illness;
most particularly the confusion of family and friends of the mentally ill, people often left in the dark, and people often blamed.
Divided into three sections- emergency, neurology, and psychiatry, there are some positive comparisons to be made between "Admissions"
and Dorothy Porter's "What a Piece of Work." Crawford comes to a similar topic more from the family or the afflicted person's point of view, rather than the clinical or, as in Porter's case, the Machieavellian one. I'm reminded as much of Janet Frame, or Marie Cardinale by her sympathetic exploration of a difficult theme.
The language is pared back, suc- cinct, presenting a non-romanticised picture of the despair of institution- alisation. Crawford doesn't attempt to explain or seek out causes; rather she searches for what small understanding can be found in the mutual confusion of patient and friend. It seems that in this shared bewilderment there is some sign of
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hope. Her precise style at times approximates the language of madness: (not all that different to the language of poetry, really)
whatever was concrete, shook whatever was wood
cried.
Yet Crawford is never didactic, she is always accessible, compassionate, and deeply moving.
At first reading Annemaree Adams'
"The Dogs" appears a little dark and sinister. The early poems are beautiful unravellings of the personal myths which emerge from family history. But by page 10 which contains the title poem, you realise that it's also dense, intelligent and very sinister.
Adams unflinchingly confronts, across a broad social canvas, the kind of subjects that cannot be ignored. There are other strong poems here about Rawanda, Kosovo, Timor. Her language drips with the grisly detail. There are recurring scenes of butchery, blood, war, dismemberment, or should we only talk in terms of syntax? Bad things happen in the world and need to be challenged. However confronting her images are, and this is obviously deliberate, they are based firmly in the contemporary world and as such there is a pervading sense of political or social outrage.
There is also a sense of grief which
drives this indignation and gives it voice. While this is ostensibly political protest, Adams burrows beneath the poetry of headlines to engage with something of a moral exploration of the nature of evil.
There seems to be an angry dialogue between the state of the modern world, and how a beneficent God might allow this:
the fontanelle is not the seedbed for devil's horns
he grafts his scions there and cultivates their unfurling. (18)
Adams is dealing with important issues. There is something em- powering in her pessimism; yet also something liberating in her resistance to despair. There can be no doubting her commitment to the cause that poetry can make a difference.
Brendan Ryan's "Why I Am Not A Farmer" gives us the down to earth, visceral view of rural experience.
There is a deceptive simplicity in the title poem's answer, which begins: "I live in the city."
Like the farming poems of Philip Hodgins, much more than a gritty realism is going on underneath.
Conversational in tone these poems defy nostalgia and bring a new perspective to the darker side of farming life.
my father concentrates on saving the cow /1 by kicking it in the ribs,
which is a type of country blessing. (5)
Volume 24, number 1, May 1997 Ryan defines the dichotomy of the
city versus the bush, and then proceeds to bridge the gap by detailing the fodder for a more traditional yarn in a compelling, modern voice, opening up fresh avenues of experience and perception. At the same time he is a terrific story teller. The country is a rough and ugly place, full of portent and metaphor. The poems reveal a lackadasical cruelty which is ultimately alienating. Yet these are the scenes of formative memories;
and now traditional values, for all their apparent barbarity, are being undermined by technological advances.
With great control of form and structure Ryan articulates, in a vivid and exciting way, the tension between the city and the country.
The everyday violence of country life juxtaposed against the need to get away; of not quite belonging. It must be said that the city doesn't fare too well either, both worlds informing each other in what is a marvellous ambivalence.
"Fatherlands," by Brett Dionysius traverses some of the same paddocks as Brendan Ryan, yet comes to both rural experience and
• wider array of subjects in perhaps
• more metaphysical way. The poems are structurally confident, lyrical narratives sometimes with a sting in the tail, or a keening in the lullaby. There's also a little bit of flies to wanton boys in his shady past where childhood is explored with vivid detail:
What is it that makes little boys into little soldiers?
It is the steer shot in the head.
It is the goanna punched out of the tree (26)
These are strangely tender poems of strength and versatility observed with an enviable memory.
They move from the naturalistic to the bizarre, and give the impression of a dialogue—of resonances between the past and the present.
They deal with generational vagaries, and all the various notions and applications of fatherhood. It is pleasing to see his poems about children which are infused with the inner logic of the child's world:
her brain is the best Weapon of all when it comes To laying whole cities to waste. (19)
These are poems which are indelibly informed by a grounding in history.
Dysfunctional fathers from earlier generations exert their influence on childhood, juxtaposed against a desire not to repeat the past;
similarly the point of view of a young dad only too aware of his own history is crystal clear. They acknowledge with candour the impact behaviour has on impressionable minds, and present a poetry of witness:
I know she is memorising my crimes.
(26)
"Fatherlands" is a passionate, honest, and poignant account of the ur%JQ
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significance of fathers, (and thereby of children), with both a foot lodged in memory, and an eye gazing towards the future.
Lucy Williams "Birthmarks" may well repeat the success of her sister Jane Williams "Outside Temple Boundaries" published in series 5 of the New Poets. Apart from their obvious qualities, and a reference to the same mysterious hat stand, the two books couldn't be more different. The poems here in
"Birthmarks," especially in the first half celebrate a sensory relationship with the world. They explore, amongst other things, the sexual politics of hedonism and good old- fashioned lust while utilising some fairly lusty imagery. Read the erotic life of the waitress in the first poem.
Or elsewhere:
your wine dress three drinks away from somebody's floor. (8)
But of course it's much more multi- dimensional than this. There is a touch of cynicism in her view of these casual encounters, or the reviving of past associations as in Reunion Dinner.
the room is full of people meeting for the first time. (12)
There are poems about paintings and film; poems about farming, about landscape. Kevin Brophy rightly describes Williams as having a superb sense of balance and voice.
This is true. Always implicit in her
narratives there is an underlying celebration of love, accompanied by an awareness of the inevitability of change.
Once again, Five Islands Press is tapping the deep well of new poetic voices in this country. This series is as powerful and assured as any previous. More power to Ron Pretty and his vision. Again I say where is the future of Australian poetry without him? Not resting on its laurels I hope? God knows the malor commercial publishers have turned their backs. Do yourself a stanza.
Three cheers to Five Islands.
