Aa
Content
So you started writing poetry as soon as you left school?
AN INTERVIEW WITH
ROBERT
GRAY
Robert Gray is relatively little known to those who are
unfamiliar with recent Australian poetry. Yet Patrick
White chose Gray's most recent book Grass Script as one
of his "Books O f The Year" in 1980, and a reviewer in
the literary quarterly Southerly has named him as one
of the best half-dozen writers of poetry in English. In
the following interview he discusses his early writing,
his methods, and influences — particularly his interest
in both Buddhist philosophy and socialism.
W'ould you like to talk about your very early poems
and what started you writing?
The first things I wrote are in Creekwater Journal,
which is m y second book. A poem called Back There,-Ana
another, A Kangaroo. They are the second and third
poems I can remember writing; I was 17 or 18. At the
time I published them in this book, I re-worked the
lineation, but not the imagery. I have since removed a
couple of words and re-worked the rhythm of A Kangaroo
some more. I wrote a great m a n y poems after that which
I've never been able to publish. However, both of these
poems (the second one in the form that only I have seen)
are still things that I very m u c h like. I like the physically
mimetic rhythm of Back There, particularly - which I
think comes, of all unlikely places, for its subject-matter,
from reading e. e. cummings. I always think of this as an
expressionist poem. It started with the image of the bare
tree that's "like a nerve-ending", and then that image
created for itself a context of personal feelings.
I always wanted to be a writer, nothing else except, for a while, a professional soccer player. Actually,
that lasted for quite a few years. I used to make short
stories out of m y school compositions - and all m y
English teachers were encouraging about it! I wanted to
be a novelist; it was the only way I could bear to think of
making a living, but I never finished any of the novels I
was always starting. It was quite a while before I could
admit (destroying all m y dreams of a sophisticated life,
travel and wealth) that I was only really interested in
writing the descriptive, atmospheric parts. W h e n I read
novels then - I read a great m a n y while at school,
neglecting all m y other work - I was most of all interested in the description, atmosphere and m o o d . A n d m y
o w n writing would start off with great evocations of these
things, but as soon as it came close-up to the characters,
I found I just wasn't interested any more.
Then I dropped out of school, the start of m y last
year. I'd c o m e to disagree, some while before, with m y
mother's religion, which insisted on a very close, intense
community, so that I was disruptive, being around; and
there was an antagonism between m y father and myself.
Also, I was extremely bored at school - the English
master had high expectations of m e , but I was having a
bad time with all the other teachers. A n y w a y , I 've never
written any stories since the day I stopped elaborating on
those school fiction-themes.
No, I went to North Queensland; I used to walk on
the beaches, and camp out, and read. I went with a
friend w h o was a fair bit older, and w h o was a travelling
school-supplies salesman, although he was mainly there
to do his painting. This was something I was really
interested in; I was learning, talking, about art. (I've
always done a great deal of drawing, but I've resisted any
training, or laborious studio-type approach, or accumulating paraphenalia, and therefore the practice of an oilpainting technique.)
Then m y family, w h o were pretty anxious, persuaded m e to c o m e back home, and m y English teacher got
m e a job on the local newspaper. H e wanted m e to c o m e
back to school, but there was too m u c h of a gap, I didn't
want to start again. A n d for the job m y grandfather
bought m e a typewriter. S o m e h o w , having that typewriter got m e started writing poetry. It was being able to
use the machine to produce those objective artifacts,
self-contained, of a contemplative size. It was the
accomplishment of producing the separate, worked,
finally clean-typed pages. The scope changed.
I was already interested in D. H. Lawrence's poems,
from school. A n d I'd encountered Slessor there - first
as an unseen poem for an exam question; I'd loved it.
They were the people w h o really got m e started - I felt
great empathy for that sort of visual writing. Also for
Hugh McCrae - a couple of his poems I liked, at that
time. But it was the naturalness, directness and freedom
of Lawrence, in particular.
Let's talk about method - it's quite clear that from the
beginning you 've been intensely interested in the physical
details of experiences - you've been interested in the
atmosphere and authenticity of the experiences that
you 're relating. Yet you 've said that your poems are
imaginary, in spite of the sense one has that they actually
happened. Do you ever feel that these fictions are an
elaborate con? How do you see such work as having
value?
Well, I've said that almost all these poems are
imaginary, in their details, but that I want to present
them as straight realism. Of course, as soon as you try
to recount any experience in poetry, I think you have
to fictionalize it and concentrate it, to make it work. I
mean, what I'm interested in is the emotional centre of
what I'm describing, and to present that you have to
select from the details of some whole confused
experience, and then the poem seems to take on a life
of its o w n , and demand that certain things be fictionalized or changed, heightened, concentrated, etc. But
always emotionally it is quite true. It's just that I have
to change a lot of the details, or make them up, for the
sake of the forcefulness and authenticity of the poem.
There are poems of mine that are completely fictional such as those ones about the slaughter house and the
rubbish d u m p . I k n o w where they derive from - m u c h
smaller-scale experiences. I believe that everything that
you imagine must be the rearrangement of things that
you have already experienced in some way; it m a y be
from movies, books, paintings, things seen and forgotten,
or heard about. The imagination is a griffin. If a science
fiction writer-has to make up a new creature, it's always
an amalgam of creatures that already exist, it's impossible to imagine something absolutely original; it's
always derived from things w e already know, exaggerated
and caricatured and magnified. Everything
from 15
ISLANDderives
MAGAZINE
experience. The poem about m y father, for instance,
was actually written before he died; the feeling is
completely true although m a n y of the details are not.
The poem called Telling the Beads comes from a photograph. I was flicking through a book and saw a picture
of grass blades with heavy drops of dew on them, and
I turned over, but s o m e h o w that stuck in m y mind. I
don't know why. All those details which sound as if
they're the record of an experience I've had of walking
into a garden in the morning are things that actually I
never knew I'd observed, and when I sat d o w n with a
white piece of paper those things came into m y mind
like a new experience. They'd obviously been things
I'd encountered somewhere, in some form, but then I
really saw them for the first time on the white page as
I wrote, which is the great reason for writing, of course one of the reasons one enjoys writing so much.
Robert Gray.
Your poetry is a poetry of clarity. Would you like to
talk about your method of working your poems, and
does it ever concern you that your fastidiousness might
diminish spontaneity, say the spontaneity that Lawrence
gets into his poems ?
N o , I never feel that. 1 keep the drafts, and I just trust
to m y response to k n o w if and where I've overworked
it, but usually I haven't. T o m c , to write we!! is to have
the exact word. It's absolutely essential to choose only
the words that are appropriate and nothing else; obviously good writing is to use words with great economy. I
just try to always work for the feeling of clarity. The
thing I hate most of all, in any sort of writing or conversation or in any encounter with anyone else's mind,
is obfuscation, or dishonesty. I think if you're going to
say something, if you're going to open your mouth at
all, you have to be prepared to really examine and
define and refine what you're talking about until you
get it right. I can't tolerate some sort of agnostic twilight where you can let things just be vague. The whole
drive of the human mind is towards understanding.
What you don't k n o w - to k n o w that you don't. If
you reach a conclusion and you later disagree with it,
then you have to have the courage to abandon that
position or modify it, but you have to always propose
some solid ground to stand on, so that you can be
criticised and you can criticise yourself. O n e can never
ISLAND MAGAZINE 16
really examine m a n y people's work because they're
evasive - the worst cheating in writing, and in painting.
I think it is really essential to everything in life, you
know, to think clearly. That's just intelligence as far as
I'm concerned.
The use of simile is very evident; you use it more consistently than any other writer I can think of.
Yes, probably. Though Ted Hughes makes use of
simile about as m u c h as I do - he's someone who's also
influenced by Lawrence. A n d Derek Walcott's very
prolific that way. I 've got a belief in simile as being the
honest w a y to write. It avoids the visual confusion or
ambiguity that symbolism (which is metaphor) represents.
A symbol says that something is something else, though
it isn't - it's a mystifying and obscuring and imprecise
way of writing and thinking. A simile shows the similarity between things and also their differences, at the
same time. So that when I say something is like something else, I'm making you aware through their likeness
and their differences - it's m u c h more vivid; it illuminates both things together.
The only way to explain something that people
haven't seen for themselves, or haven't noticed, is by
comparison to something else - which one does in conversation all the time. Y o u have to use simile to define you can't say, for instance, some generalisation like the
word "tree". I would never just generalise and say "a
tree"; it means nothing; you don't see "a tree", you
see a particular type or shape or colour; so one says,
well, perhaps to take an example from a p o e m of mine,
perhaps it's a winter tree - a tree "like a fish's skeleton",
then you see a specific kind of tree, you've got the sort
of reality that's in the world. That's w h y a simile is
essential to m e - to make concrete, to make vivid what
you're talking about; but the metaphor leads one into
symbolism and I needn't go into all the dissatisfactions
of that - the whole of Poundian modernism is a rejection of that sort of vague and undefined writing.
How do you feel about the use of colloquialisms?
I think that a colloquialism is really a cliche, very
often, whereas some writers think that because they're
using an expression out of the people's mouths, out of
the c o m m o n mouth, it's admirable - but it's still a
cliche to m e . So I want to use colloquial construction
and an unpretentious type of language and so on, but I
avoid all ready-made word formations. That's just
what good writing requires; you have to think every
construction out afresh.
You 've said that poetry is about human values. Would
you like to talk about this?
I'm getting typecast as a humanist, someone
always insisting on human values. That is the case, but
it's not the whole story, so it's not an exact description.
I also insist on style and aestheticism; very m u c h on
aesthetic values, too. The reason I'm interested in poetry
is because it involves the whole person. If I have ideas I
want to express 1 can do it in an essay, but that leaves
out so m a n y aspects of an idea. Y o u see, the ideas that
I'm talking about have a sensual nature, dimension, as
well as a rational side, and I want the whole thing.
That's what poetry is; it's one of the rare possibilities
for the complete person to be present - the unfragmented
person. So I've insisted, in criticism, on h u m a n content
or values because that's been so put d o w n recently, not
just by the local trendies and avant gardists, but since,
really, Mallarme', content has been disparaged, and I'm
just opposed to the mind being valued below its full
stature or potential. A natural, undogmatic ethical
response is very m u c h a part of all great poetry, but at
the same time craftsmanship is just as important; they're
finally the same thing - a disinterested care; I don't
raise the one above the other. O n e has to be balanced,
otherwise the result is so inadequate one keeps moving
to the opposite extreme, and so on. Y o u have "isms".
I want to reconcile all of that, for myself.
So you'd agree that the way you live very much
influences the way that you write.
Of course, I wouldn't separate the two; I've got a
horror of that sort of bookish life where writing becomes
entirely separate from one's life; to m e they're one
thing. M y poetry enables m e to live, to see, to experience; I discover myself and m y values and m y
experiences - really experience them - through m y
writing.
Does a poem ever arrive completely in one go?
No, 1 couldn't say that. This is how I work - but
it's really misleading to other people, because it
represents only m y o w n temperament - m y poems
don't start with an idea that I want to express or something of the sort; they start with a visual image. I do
keep a notebook in which I put d o w n ideas, but poetry
begins with some sensual image, and that image leads to
others. It creates a situation, a context, and I find that
as I begin to write those images and describe that setting
they e m b o d y some idea already important to m e , and
the two join up; I find that the images become the
physical realization of an idea. So, the sensuous side,
most often, needs to complete itself (not always, sometimes the sensual thing seems realized enough in itself);
and the rationalistic side needs to be incarnated into a
specific situation. W h e n the images begin to flow they
often demand to represent something, as well as themselves. So one's not "only an eye". Then the two
aspects join and they give this great feeling of realisation.
The two sides of the brain seem to be in harmony, the
feeling side and the rational side, and that's the great
pleasure of writing. T o mix thought with feeling.
M y method of writing is to do m a n y drafts, and I
leave a poem often for a long time. I write the first
draft very quickly and I refine it and polish it very slowly. I accumulate all the imagery very quickly, but then
after maybe a long time I c o m e back to it, when I 'm in
the particular m o o d to work on it and to refine it. Then
I use the brain's logical side. I think a p o e m is written
with the imagination and with logic or rationality: the
imagination piles up all the detail that you could need,
and rationality carves it into its absolutely perfect,
efficient shape, if that's possible. So often I have a lot
of poems advancing together.
I'd like to talk some more about the ideas in your work,
politics and religion in particular. How do you see your
interest in Buddhism informing your work ?
The Buddhist ideas in my work, implicit or specifically stated, are a really major impetus - the only more
prevalent one being something that's more fundamental,
out of which the interest in Buddhism arose, as an effort
to heighten and understand it: the interest in sensory
experience - primarily visual. Buddhist ideas of a
certain type - which I'll go into - inform m y work, as
content, in the sort of w a y that, say, to go to the top,
G o d w i n and d'Holbach inform Shelley, Spinoza is behind
Goethe, Schopenhauer is in Hardy and Conrad, Confucius
is in Pound, Aquinas is the structure for Dante, and
Epicurus is behind Lucretius.
So it's not h o w it informs m y work that's the
interesting question, I think, because that can be seen,
that's what the poems are about, but rather w h y it should
be that particular source.
M y interest in Buddhism arose very early, perhaps
because of a very beautiful image of the Buddha m y
father used to o w n . I was attracted by the Buddhist iconography. A Buddhist image holds out the promise of
release, freedom, realization, in this life, in this body. I
was just as strongly repelled by Christian iconography the idea of the necessity for a blood sacrifice, for redemption, seemed just too primitive - this whole scheme
of vengeance, guilt, punishment, blood-debt, retaliation.
I was willing to believe all that was a major factor in the
destructiveness particularly characteristic of Western
history.
I pretty early on, as a teenager, when everyone
goes searching, read Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki those misleading people w h o introduced Zen to the
West. Alan Watts, despite some dreadful schmaltz, and
confusion of Vedanta with Buddhism, and despite his
non-practical, misapplied emphasis, did actually write a
couple of worthwhile and scholarly books, particularly
"Psychotherapy East and West". But old D. T.'s influence I think has been pretty m u c h disastrous - nearly
as bad as that of the theosophist Christmas Humphreys.
If people say to m e something silly like "Westerners
can't understand the mysterious Eastern mind" I say,
and w h y not? Easterners can certainly appropriate the
Western mind, completely - there was never a more
Germanic philosophical carry-on than in Suzuki . . .
But the point I want to make about Buddhism is
that I certainly don't consider myself a Buddhist. They
themselves claim a Buddhist is someone w h o practises a
Buddhist form of meditation, - but, despite that, there
are a great m a n y dogmas and interpretations around
Buddhism that I can't accept, and would not want to be
associated with. M y interpretation of Buddhism is a
completely demythologized one, that I've arrived at
after a lot of study, and I believe that the essential idea,
or couple of ideas, in Buddhism are facts of psychology
and physics, independent of East or West. If you go
around saying you're a Buddhist, you're probably trying
to parade some sort of exoticism, which is pretty smallminded, and as well you're associating yourself with a
lot of things that I think are certainly not true excrescences like the animist beliefs, the piety, the
Hindu ideas about rebirth and Karma, the ghosts and
heavens and hells, and the Idealist doctrines, or lifedenying schools of thought and practice - I want
nothing to do with all of that. That's part of "Buddhism", so I'm not a Buddhist. Besides, I think one
must never commit oneself to a label. Y o u blur all
discrimination.
However, I see Buddhism as containing a form of
natural mysticism, or self-transcendence, and an ethical
system, that is in complete harmony with scientific
naturalism, with positivism, which is what I do believe
in. That is, I believe in the scientific approach to facts.
The nature of the facts is in total support of the
essential ideas in Buddhism. Fascinatingly, and I don't
think it can possibly be dismissed as in any way superficial, the discoveries of quantum physics were thorough17
ly foreseen by Buddhist philosophyISLAND
- arrivedMAGAZINE
at without instruments, by extrapolation from their knowledge
O n Contradictions
T h e black swan, drifting,
suggests a cartoon
about a Victorian lady,
being all refinement and propriety, with
a bustle.
Yet, o n land,
it is at once a lurching
tough - the whole b o d y
like shoulders;
it keeps doubling back,
then stretching-out, flexing,
the threatening
length of neck;
its mussel-shell beak, clacking,
drips;
a leathery
slap o n the stones,
and hissing.
B u t it leaves
along the water, and n o w
again
is calm as a paddlewheeler, o n s o m e idle
pleasure course.
With millinery's m o s t extravagant
bouquet the tail-feathers,
that are each curled inwards
fluffily
from the sides.
These live feathers have all
the ashen colour,
the tremor, and frailty,
of layers of a newspaper
burning
in a daylight, clear flame.
ROBERT GRAY
ISLAND MAGAZINE 18
of the mind, its functioning and its relation to nature.
I'm talking about the discovery of the completely fluxive nature of the fundamental particles, and, at different
rates, of all the "societies", or objects, that are composed of them, which was a fundamental teaching of
Buddhism from the sixth century B.C. The only
Western thinker who's really comparable to Buddhism,
until w e get to the modern physicists, is Heraclitus.
The essence of Buddhism is the constant flux of nature,
including the mind, but you won't find out about that
in Suzuki or Watts.
Questions about Buddhism are prompted by
Dharma Vehicle I suppose. That poem is really a celebration of the effect of Taoism on Buddhist thought;
it's about the love of nature; the emergence, and
maintenance, of this-worldly values, which produced
Zen, or the Zen of certain people.
Where do you stand politically? Do you see your
political beliefs informing your work?
Buddhist values can really only combine with
the Left, Buddhism is radically egalitarian - was
always against caste, or class, and against gender discrimination.
If you want m e to define very accurately where I
stand, as a Leftist, I can say that I a m most convinced
by the ideas of Guild Socialism, an English movement
which is just beginning to have a revival, or so I hope,
and which has worked out in most detail by G. D. H.
Cole, and publicised to some extent by Bertrand
Russell in books like "Roads to Freedom". Russell is a
very lightweight political thinker, a gadfly, but Cole's
ideas are particularly thorough - and I find them very
attractive because of his equal concern for both individual freedom and egalitarianism.
A movement that is practically the same as Guild
Socialism, and which is starting to be heard, is Worker's
Control or Self-Management, which is a much more
radical thing than workers just sitting on the Board and
getting production bonuses - that watered-down version
bandied around in Australia, and applied in West Germany.
Self-management, or economic democracy, is the form
that all the organized revolts against Soviet-style
communism have taken - in Hungary, in Yugoslavia
(though held back by Tito), in Czechoslovakia. It's a
further development of Marxism, is very compatible
with the Marxist critique, and has been advocated by
numerous Marxist or neo-Marxist philosophers (the
Leninist variety of Marxism is only one possibility, and
supported only by certain moods in Marx's writing) self-management has been campaigned as essential by
such Marxists as Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Korsch, Gramsci,
Pannekoek, Lucien Goldmann, the later Sartre, and so on.
This is why, although what I believe in is really a radical
democracy, very anti-totalitarian, I am still not adverse to
thinking of myself as a critical Marxist - Marxism where
there's no dogma, no holy writ - because the Marxist
tradition is so fascinating, so fecund, so far from workedout.
Do I see political beliefs informing m y work? I
hope they will, even more explicitly, in m y next book.
A n interesting question, to me, though, is whether they
should inform one's work; is there any point in it? I
think there is. First of all because what a poet must
write about is what he's most interested in - quite
apart from any intention of putting an idea across. What
matters most to you will become your subject - for
its own sake; to hell with anyone else's reaction, they
can take from it what they can. M y writing is an invocation of the goddess of - whatever m y values are. This is
the Muse, the inspirer - I write to clarify, to examine,
to discover those values; they have ultimate worth in
themselves. A n d there's an old Hebrew proverb that
says if you influence just one other person you have
changed a whole world.
But I believe in the purity of poetry, in this way:
not the purity of language, as an end in itself (a very silly
idea - as if language could ever have been evolved as an
end in itself), but the purity of motive. It's a good thing
that poetry doesn't have the exigencies of great popularity pressing upon it. O n e writes for its o w n sake. That
detachment leads one to discoveries, discriminations,
that one could never make, couldn't manage to, in the
public forum.
But even though poetry's written in this spirit, it
does have its effect. Y o u see, the question is - w h o do
you want to influence? Y o u don't have to influence
everyone - it need only be one person in a practical
position; one m a n whose special ability is in public life.
Poetry has always been immensely influential socially but not always in a very direct way. Take Shelley's
socialist ideas: these had a great influence on Shaw and
through him on the Fabian Society, from the Fabian
Society grew the British Labour Party, and the Labour
Party helped bring about untold practical improvements
in the day-to-day standard of life of ordinary people.
N o w m u c h of this is in danger of being taken away by
Mrs. Thatcher, so the fight is never permanently w o n intellectuals have to make those same visions new,
relevant, applicable. T o "make it n e w " - that's what
it's always all about.
There are m a n y other examples apart from
Shelley - Whitman had just as great an influence on the
establishment of British socialism, through his disciple
Edward Carpenter. A n d what about all the writers
who've helped make us a little less moralistic and
persecuting towards other people's sexual lives? What
about the immense practical influence of Dickens? O f
Chernyavsky's novels in Russia? Or the influence of
Milton's figure of Satan on the liberalization of
Europe? That's a thesis I wouldn't mind going into I think the main vehicle of the influence was Byron.
A n d the most recent example is that of the whole
Hippy movement - whose ideas have been assimilated
amongst us more than w e probably notice - which was
all started by Kerouac, Ginsberg, and (much the deepest of them) Gary Snyder.
It's been said by Brecht and by McDiarmid, in
their self-defence, and I think they're absolutely right,
that all poetry is propaganda; it's either good propaganda or bad, it's either in a h u m a n or an anti-human
cause, and that's all there is to it. There's only one
movement, the history of ideas; poetry belongs to it in an implicit, or unconscious, or direct way. It's not
whether the ideas of writers have an effect, they're all
part of that movement: useless, redundant, or with
some new insight that will be picked up by someone.
Who or what has most significantly influenced you?
I can remember my influences very clearly, as I
often return to most of them, to re-enjoy and I suppose
reinforce them. T o go right back, the first would have
been The Wind in the Willows, as a child, which made
m e want to be a writer; it taught m e that sensuous
enjoyment, particularly the visual, can be preserved in
writing, recreated by it, re-enjoyed in the imagination.
The other person w h o m a d e m e want to write was
Robert Louis Stevenson, w h o I thought the best
adventure writer, and w h o m y mother used to identify
m e with, as I was in bed sick a lot when a kid, and living
in m y imagination - she used to buy m e his books, tell
m e about his life, make a play on our names. Then
there was Oscar Wilde. I think what impressed m e in
him, in his aestheticism, was the feeling that there's a
natural moral sensibility, which is like the sense of beauty,
is part of it, and is its most poignant and moving form. I
read everything from The Happy Prince to The Picture of
Dorian Gray, which I came to just at adolescence; and I
was particularly affected by The Soul of Man Under
Socialism. I guess those are m y foundations. I still feel
as m u c h for them as ever; I think all of them are really
great writers.
Later, the main influences have been, in something
of their order, Lawrence's poetry, Slessor (about a dozen
of his poems), Whitman, Williams, Chekhov, R. H. Blyth,
and a lot of painters, but probably most of all Edward
Hopper. Also, there's m y friendship with a painter
named Ted Hillyer (not the painter referred to earlier,
w h o was too slavishly realistic, w h o I used to disagree
with from the start, w h o was not m u c h good). Ted
helped m e to see, or directed the ability I had; I met him
when I was working on the newspaper, at 18; w e still
minutely discuss painting.
Maybe, too, an influence is the drawings I do, for
myself. It's a sort of training for poetry - it's to keep
m e observing, actively looking. I like drawing because
it's so completely direct; it's like a form of writing.
Drawing is what Kirchner called "the finest first sensation".
Drawing is poetry, painting is prose. Drawing doesn't
exclude an appropriately spontaneous colour-use, as a
superstructure to line. Y o u can get the essence of a
colour-configuration or light with watercolour or gouache.
A n y w a y , the point is, I only want something that's small;
like haiga, Zen painting - I'm always conscious of what
Chekhov said, that you can't chase two hares at once.
If there had to be any choice, then, the whole aural
dimension of words, and their immediate identity with
ideas, and their expressive exactness and range, would
always make m y temperament prefer poetry. Unless I
thought I was just repeating myself in writing.
Since m y interest in painting is so largely theoretical, I'm pleased that at present I'm writing a commissioned book of art criticism. That's an area I've always
wanted to work in - I hope to do a lot more. M y
favourite art-critic, Ruskin, is someone w h o kept a
practical contact with art through drawing and watercolour, and the results, some of the ones I saw in
England and have never seen in books, are really extraordinary; no one can do that now, not even professionals, it's all been lost.
What about music as an influence?
There is certain music that I feel my work has a
rhythmic affinity with - certain types of music that
confirm m y o w n rhythmic sense. I have never tried
to imitate musical structure, which would be to impose
a purely formal limitation, and that is what I want to be
free of. I a m also wary of any facile meUifluousness.
The idea that all the other arts aspire to the condition of
music is a very destructive and limiting one. N o art
should be subservient to the nature of another. The
sort of music I like is strongly "linear". I don't like
"rhetorical" music - don't like Romantic, grandiose or
ISLAND
theatrical music - which is embodied
for m eMAGAZINE
in m u c h of 19
the carry-on of symphony conductors. I hate the
cultural snobbery, nostalgia and affectation of classical
music circles - which is not to caricature them at all.
A n d there's what I 'd call a "regressive" feeling that goes
with a lot of classical music that worries m e . I love quite
a bit of jazz, such as the early Louis Armstrong, or some
of the piano improvisations of Keith Jarrett, including a
number of those with the saxophonist Jan Gabarek. I
like Satie. A n d I also feel a strong affinity for m u c h of
Sibelius. I share Chekhov's admiration for certain
Chopin piano pieces. I love a lot of ethnic and so-called
"primitive" music. The sort of music I find probably
most like m y o w n feeling of rhythm, or ideal of rhythm,
is the Japanese shakuhachi flute.
On what principle do you write some poems as free
verse and some as prose?
In the prose poems, each paragraph is felt by m e as
a line, a rhythmic unit. This line is chosen, as in all m y
poems, because it's mimetic - expressive. In a sense,
these are long-line free verse poems, and they could be
printed, like Whitman's, with the over-lap indented, but
I don't do that because I want to emphasize something
else I believe in - the ideal identity of poetry and prose,
as far as all that's essential goes; to emphasise that
there is really only the one thing, good writing; the
ultimate standards are the same. All language requires
a certain sort of respect, a certain treatment.
The thing that separates poetry and prose is the
functional exigencies of prose. Poetry is intense statement because of its limiting, balancing, purely expository argument. It presents ideas aphoristically and
concretely, to try and maintain a whole, or complete,
m o d e of apprehension. Expository prose is strictly
functional, though it certainly has its beauties - the
beauty of logic, of gracefulness, of an eloquently sustained syntax, of a voice. A n d good narrative prose must
be functional. But poetry is concerned with maintaining, along with any ideas, a sensuousness for its o w n
sake. Also, it seeks to put the emphasis, in its argument,
on where the emotion lies. It is more directly emotive
in its appeal.
T o paraphrase him a little, Milton said poetry is
more direct, sensuous and passionate. It is because
poetry always wants to incorporate the physical, the
emotive, that it assumes rhythm. A n d Williams said
the only difference between poetry and prose is one of
intensity. By intensity he doesn't mean loud emotion he means vividness. What I'm saying is that poetry and
prose aren't to be distinguished by any mere stress on
form. Poetry is really a matter of a complete imaginative, h u m a n involvement. It is a W a y , a tao, a state of
being.
INTERVIEW BY ANDREW SANT.
Twelvetrees
Bookshop
247 SANDY BAY ROAD, SANDY BAY. 341951.
TRADITIONAL BOOKSELLER AND QUALITY
BOOK STOCKIST.
THE SHOCK OF THE NEW
by Robert Hughes. $39.95
AFGHANISTAN
five years work to produce this
fantastic photographic essay.
$59.50
CHINAMEN
by Maxine Hong Kingston. $4.95
THE OXFORD BOOK OF SATIRICAL VERSE
$29.00
THE OXFORD BOOK OF VERSE IN ENGLISH
TRANSLATION $43.00
PENGUIN BOOK OF WOMEN POETS $5.95
These and many more . . .
TWELVETREES BOOKSHOP
Proprietor: Clive Tilsley.
VOL.1, No. 6/7: Peace, T h e Nonviolent Alternatives — also inciudee -
SOCIAL
AL1
Christian Bay Acquisitive Liberties tot Some; Mark Plunhett Queenslsnds Nonviolent Campaign lor RlghV»>Majch; Doug Evermgham Wortd Citizenship. David Biggins Einstein vs the
Ideology of Science; H.C. C o o m b s Aboriginal Treaty; Glenn D Paige A Nonviolent Political
Science; M J Saunders Peace Movement and Australia s Withdrawal from Vietnam; C Rootes
Living with Terrortam; B Martin Mobilizing agalnal Nuclear War, Reviews by Dennis Altman
and Tony Stephens; also poems and ahort stories
VOL.1, NO. 8: City & Citizen — also Includes Hugh Stretton Alternative Road Maps;
Tow Hayden The Decline of the American Frontier Jim Ward Homeieeaneea In the City; Paul
Stange Mysticism. Moya Costello Women's Occupational Health and Safety; Dennis Phillips
An Alternative View of American Security; also Reviews, Short Stories, Poems as well as
Photographs, Drawings and Cartoons
V.OL.2, NO. 1: includes Ivan lllich Shadow Wort; Barry Commoner Energy, Profits and
People; David Burch Development through Appropriate Technology; Dawn
Margetson
Secretarial Studies and Sexism; David Campbell Franklin River — damned? Jack Mundey
Socialism; An Untried Social System; Margaret Smith Interview with Humphrey McQueen; also
Reviews. Poems and Short Stones
SUBSCRIBE!
$10 lor 1 year
$20 lor 2 years
I wish to begin with Issue
Individuals:
(please nominate clearlyi
Institutions
Vol 1 No (3) (4) (5) (671 <S)
and Libraries
$14 tor 1 year
$28 lor 2 years
VolJNoMj
TEAS, pensions, dole. $8tor1 year
Single Copies. $2.75
Subscriptions cover the cost ol surface mailing ol four issues — Overseas air mail, add $3
The International Magazine Focusing on
Social Change and Alternative Strategies
ISLAND MAGAZINE20
The Editors, Social Alternatives, Department of External Studies,
University of Queensland. 4067.
AUSTRALIA
Cheques and money orders (SAUST) payable lo SOCIAL ALTERNATIVES.
AN INTERVIEW WITH
ROBERT
GRAY
Robert Gray is relatively little known to those who are
unfamiliar with recent Australian poetry. Yet Patrick
White chose Gray's most recent book Grass Script as one
of his "Books O f The Year" in 1980, and a reviewer in
the literary quarterly Southerly has named him as one
of the best half-dozen writers of poetry in English. In
the following interview he discusses his early writing,
his methods, and influences — particularly his interest
in both Buddhist philosophy and socialism.
W'ould you like to talk about your very early poems
and what started you writing?
The first things I wrote are in Creekwater Journal,
which is m y second book. A poem called Back There,-Ana
another, A Kangaroo. They are the second and third
poems I can remember writing; I was 17 or 18. At the
time I published them in this book, I re-worked the
lineation, but not the imagery. I have since removed a
couple of words and re-worked the rhythm of A Kangaroo
some more. I wrote a great m a n y poems after that which
I've never been able to publish. However, both of these
poems (the second one in the form that only I have seen)
are still things that I very m u c h like. I like the physically
mimetic rhythm of Back There, particularly - which I
think comes, of all unlikely places, for its subject-matter,
from reading e. e. cummings. I always think of this as an
expressionist poem. It started with the image of the bare
tree that's "like a nerve-ending", and then that image
created for itself a context of personal feelings.
I always wanted to be a writer, nothing else except, for a while, a professional soccer player. Actually,
that lasted for quite a few years. I used to make short
stories out of m y school compositions - and all m y
English teachers were encouraging about it! I wanted to
be a novelist; it was the only way I could bear to think of
making a living, but I never finished any of the novels I
was always starting. It was quite a while before I could
admit (destroying all m y dreams of a sophisticated life,
travel and wealth) that I was only really interested in
writing the descriptive, atmospheric parts. W h e n I read
novels then - I read a great m a n y while at school,
neglecting all m y other work - I was most of all interested in the description, atmosphere and m o o d . A n d m y
o w n writing would start off with great evocations of these
things, but as soon as it came close-up to the characters,
I found I just wasn't interested any more.
Then I dropped out of school, the start of m y last
year. I'd c o m e to disagree, some while before, with m y
mother's religion, which insisted on a very close, intense
community, so that I was disruptive, being around; and
there was an antagonism between m y father and myself.
Also, I was extremely bored at school - the English
master had high expectations of m e , but I was having a
bad time with all the other teachers. A n y w a y , I 've never
written any stories since the day I stopped elaborating on
those school fiction-themes.
No, I went to North Queensland; I used to walk on
the beaches, and camp out, and read. I went with a
friend w h o was a fair bit older, and w h o was a travelling
school-supplies salesman, although he was mainly there
to do his painting. This was something I was really
interested in; I was learning, talking, about art. (I've
always done a great deal of drawing, but I've resisted any
training, or laborious studio-type approach, or accumulating paraphenalia, and therefore the practice of an oilpainting technique.)
Then m y family, w h o were pretty anxious, persuaded m e to c o m e back home, and m y English teacher got
m e a job on the local newspaper. H e wanted m e to c o m e
back to school, but there was too m u c h of a gap, I didn't
want to start again. A n d for the job m y grandfather
bought m e a typewriter. S o m e h o w , having that typewriter got m e started writing poetry. It was being able to
use the machine to produce those objective artifacts,
self-contained, of a contemplative size. It was the
accomplishment of producing the separate, worked,
finally clean-typed pages. The scope changed.
I was already interested in D. H. Lawrence's poems,
from school. A n d I'd encountered Slessor there - first
as an unseen poem for an exam question; I'd loved it.
They were the people w h o really got m e started - I felt
great empathy for that sort of visual writing. Also for
Hugh McCrae - a couple of his poems I liked, at that
time. But it was the naturalness, directness and freedom
of Lawrence, in particular.
Let's talk about method - it's quite clear that from the
beginning you 've been intensely interested in the physical
details of experiences - you've been interested in the
atmosphere and authenticity of the experiences that
you 're relating. Yet you 've said that your poems are
imaginary, in spite of the sense one has that they actually
happened. Do you ever feel that these fictions are an
elaborate con? How do you see such work as having
value?
Well, I've said that almost all these poems are
imaginary, in their details, but that I want to present
them as straight realism. Of course, as soon as you try
to recount any experience in poetry, I think you have
to fictionalize it and concentrate it, to make it work. I
mean, what I'm interested in is the emotional centre of
what I'm describing, and to present that you have to
select from the details of some whole confused
experience, and then the poem seems to take on a life
of its o w n , and demand that certain things be fictionalized or changed, heightened, concentrated, etc. But
always emotionally it is quite true. It's just that I have
to change a lot of the details, or make them up, for the
sake of the forcefulness and authenticity of the poem.
There are poems of mine that are completely fictional such as those ones about the slaughter house and the
rubbish d u m p . I k n o w where they derive from - m u c h
smaller-scale experiences. I believe that everything that
you imagine must be the rearrangement of things that
you have already experienced in some way; it m a y be
from movies, books, paintings, things seen and forgotten,
or heard about. The imagination is a griffin. If a science
fiction writer-has to make up a new creature, it's always
an amalgam of creatures that already exist, it's impossible to imagine something absolutely original; it's
always derived from things w e already know, exaggerated
and caricatured and magnified. Everything
from 15
ISLANDderives
MAGAZINE
experience. The poem about m y father, for instance,
was actually written before he died; the feeling is
completely true although m a n y of the details are not.
The poem called Telling the Beads comes from a photograph. I was flicking through a book and saw a picture
of grass blades with heavy drops of dew on them, and
I turned over, but s o m e h o w that stuck in m y mind. I
don't know why. All those details which sound as if
they're the record of an experience I've had of walking
into a garden in the morning are things that actually I
never knew I'd observed, and when I sat d o w n with a
white piece of paper those things came into m y mind
like a new experience. They'd obviously been things
I'd encountered somewhere, in some form, but then I
really saw them for the first time on the white page as
I wrote, which is the great reason for writing, of course one of the reasons one enjoys writing so much.
Robert Gray.
Your poetry is a poetry of clarity. Would you like to
talk about your method of working your poems, and
does it ever concern you that your fastidiousness might
diminish spontaneity, say the spontaneity that Lawrence
gets into his poems ?
N o , I never feel that. 1 keep the drafts, and I just trust
to m y response to k n o w if and where I've overworked
it, but usually I haven't. T o m c , to write we!! is to have
the exact word. It's absolutely essential to choose only
the words that are appropriate and nothing else; obviously good writing is to use words with great economy. I
just try to always work for the feeling of clarity. The
thing I hate most of all, in any sort of writing or conversation or in any encounter with anyone else's mind,
is obfuscation, or dishonesty. I think if you're going to
say something, if you're going to open your mouth at
all, you have to be prepared to really examine and
define and refine what you're talking about until you
get it right. I can't tolerate some sort of agnostic twilight where you can let things just be vague. The whole
drive of the human mind is towards understanding.
What you don't k n o w - to k n o w that you don't. If
you reach a conclusion and you later disagree with it,
then you have to have the courage to abandon that
position or modify it, but you have to always propose
some solid ground to stand on, so that you can be
criticised and you can criticise yourself. O n e can never
ISLAND MAGAZINE 16
really examine m a n y people's work because they're
evasive - the worst cheating in writing, and in painting.
I think it is really essential to everything in life, you
know, to think clearly. That's just intelligence as far as
I'm concerned.
The use of simile is very evident; you use it more consistently than any other writer I can think of.
Yes, probably. Though Ted Hughes makes use of
simile about as m u c h as I do - he's someone who's also
influenced by Lawrence. A n d Derek Walcott's very
prolific that way. I 've got a belief in simile as being the
honest w a y to write. It avoids the visual confusion or
ambiguity that symbolism (which is metaphor) represents.
A symbol says that something is something else, though
it isn't - it's a mystifying and obscuring and imprecise
way of writing and thinking. A simile shows the similarity between things and also their differences, at the
same time. So that when I say something is like something else, I'm making you aware through their likeness
and their differences - it's m u c h more vivid; it illuminates both things together.
The only way to explain something that people
haven't seen for themselves, or haven't noticed, is by
comparison to something else - which one does in conversation all the time. Y o u have to use simile to define you can't say, for instance, some generalisation like the
word "tree". I would never just generalise and say "a
tree"; it means nothing; you don't see "a tree", you
see a particular type or shape or colour; so one says,
well, perhaps to take an example from a p o e m of mine,
perhaps it's a winter tree - a tree "like a fish's skeleton",
then you see a specific kind of tree, you've got the sort
of reality that's in the world. That's w h y a simile is
essential to m e - to make concrete, to make vivid what
you're talking about; but the metaphor leads one into
symbolism and I needn't go into all the dissatisfactions
of that - the whole of Poundian modernism is a rejection of that sort of vague and undefined writing.
How do you feel about the use of colloquialisms?
I think that a colloquialism is really a cliche, very
often, whereas some writers think that because they're
using an expression out of the people's mouths, out of
the c o m m o n mouth, it's admirable - but it's still a
cliche to m e . So I want to use colloquial construction
and an unpretentious type of language and so on, but I
avoid all ready-made word formations. That's just
what good writing requires; you have to think every
construction out afresh.
You 've said that poetry is about human values. Would
you like to talk about this?
I'm getting typecast as a humanist, someone
always insisting on human values. That is the case, but
it's not the whole story, so it's not an exact description.
I also insist on style and aestheticism; very m u c h on
aesthetic values, too. The reason I'm interested in poetry
is because it involves the whole person. If I have ideas I
want to express 1 can do it in an essay, but that leaves
out so m a n y aspects of an idea. Y o u see, the ideas that
I'm talking about have a sensual nature, dimension, as
well as a rational side, and I want the whole thing.
That's what poetry is; it's one of the rare possibilities
for the complete person to be present - the unfragmented
person. So I've insisted, in criticism, on h u m a n content
or values because that's been so put d o w n recently, not
just by the local trendies and avant gardists, but since,
really, Mallarme', content has been disparaged, and I'm
just opposed to the mind being valued below its full
stature or potential. A natural, undogmatic ethical
response is very m u c h a part of all great poetry, but at
the same time craftsmanship is just as important; they're
finally the same thing - a disinterested care; I don't
raise the one above the other. O n e has to be balanced,
otherwise the result is so inadequate one keeps moving
to the opposite extreme, and so on. Y o u have "isms".
I want to reconcile all of that, for myself.
So you'd agree that the way you live very much
influences the way that you write.
Of course, I wouldn't separate the two; I've got a
horror of that sort of bookish life where writing becomes
entirely separate from one's life; to m e they're one
thing. M y poetry enables m e to live, to see, to experience; I discover myself and m y values and m y
experiences - really experience them - through m y
writing.
Does a poem ever arrive completely in one go?
No, 1 couldn't say that. This is how I work - but
it's really misleading to other people, because it
represents only m y o w n temperament - m y poems
don't start with an idea that I want to express or something of the sort; they start with a visual image. I do
keep a notebook in which I put d o w n ideas, but poetry
begins with some sensual image, and that image leads to
others. It creates a situation, a context, and I find that
as I begin to write those images and describe that setting
they e m b o d y some idea already important to m e , and
the two join up; I find that the images become the
physical realization of an idea. So, the sensuous side,
most often, needs to complete itself (not always, sometimes the sensual thing seems realized enough in itself);
and the rationalistic side needs to be incarnated into a
specific situation. W h e n the images begin to flow they
often demand to represent something, as well as themselves. So one's not "only an eye". Then the two
aspects join and they give this great feeling of realisation.
The two sides of the brain seem to be in harmony, the
feeling side and the rational side, and that's the great
pleasure of writing. T o mix thought with feeling.
M y method of writing is to do m a n y drafts, and I
leave a poem often for a long time. I write the first
draft very quickly and I refine it and polish it very slowly. I accumulate all the imagery very quickly, but then
after maybe a long time I c o m e back to it, when I 'm in
the particular m o o d to work on it and to refine it. Then
I use the brain's logical side. I think a p o e m is written
with the imagination and with logic or rationality: the
imagination piles up all the detail that you could need,
and rationality carves it into its absolutely perfect,
efficient shape, if that's possible. So often I have a lot
of poems advancing together.
I'd like to talk some more about the ideas in your work,
politics and religion in particular. How do you see your
interest in Buddhism informing your work ?
The Buddhist ideas in my work, implicit or specifically stated, are a really major impetus - the only more
prevalent one being something that's more fundamental,
out of which the interest in Buddhism arose, as an effort
to heighten and understand it: the interest in sensory
experience - primarily visual. Buddhist ideas of a
certain type - which I'll go into - inform m y work, as
content, in the sort of w a y that, say, to go to the top,
G o d w i n and d'Holbach inform Shelley, Spinoza is behind
Goethe, Schopenhauer is in Hardy and Conrad, Confucius
is in Pound, Aquinas is the structure for Dante, and
Epicurus is behind Lucretius.
So it's not h o w it informs m y work that's the
interesting question, I think, because that can be seen,
that's what the poems are about, but rather w h y it should
be that particular source.
M y interest in Buddhism arose very early, perhaps
because of a very beautiful image of the Buddha m y
father used to o w n . I was attracted by the Buddhist iconography. A Buddhist image holds out the promise of
release, freedom, realization, in this life, in this body. I
was just as strongly repelled by Christian iconography the idea of the necessity for a blood sacrifice, for redemption, seemed just too primitive - this whole scheme
of vengeance, guilt, punishment, blood-debt, retaliation.
I was willing to believe all that was a major factor in the
destructiveness particularly characteristic of Western
history.
I pretty early on, as a teenager, when everyone
goes searching, read Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki those misleading people w h o introduced Zen to the
West. Alan Watts, despite some dreadful schmaltz, and
confusion of Vedanta with Buddhism, and despite his
non-practical, misapplied emphasis, did actually write a
couple of worthwhile and scholarly books, particularly
"Psychotherapy East and West". But old D. T.'s influence I think has been pretty m u c h disastrous - nearly
as bad as that of the theosophist Christmas Humphreys.
If people say to m e something silly like "Westerners
can't understand the mysterious Eastern mind" I say,
and w h y not? Easterners can certainly appropriate the
Western mind, completely - there was never a more
Germanic philosophical carry-on than in Suzuki . . .
But the point I want to make about Buddhism is
that I certainly don't consider myself a Buddhist. They
themselves claim a Buddhist is someone w h o practises a
Buddhist form of meditation, - but, despite that, there
are a great m a n y dogmas and interpretations around
Buddhism that I can't accept, and would not want to be
associated with. M y interpretation of Buddhism is a
completely demythologized one, that I've arrived at
after a lot of study, and I believe that the essential idea,
or couple of ideas, in Buddhism are facts of psychology
and physics, independent of East or West. If you go
around saying you're a Buddhist, you're probably trying
to parade some sort of exoticism, which is pretty smallminded, and as well you're associating yourself with a
lot of things that I think are certainly not true excrescences like the animist beliefs, the piety, the
Hindu ideas about rebirth and Karma, the ghosts and
heavens and hells, and the Idealist doctrines, or lifedenying schools of thought and practice - I want
nothing to do with all of that. That's part of "Buddhism", so I'm not a Buddhist. Besides, I think one
must never commit oneself to a label. Y o u blur all
discrimination.
However, I see Buddhism as containing a form of
natural mysticism, or self-transcendence, and an ethical
system, that is in complete harmony with scientific
naturalism, with positivism, which is what I do believe
in. That is, I believe in the scientific approach to facts.
The nature of the facts is in total support of the
essential ideas in Buddhism. Fascinatingly, and I don't
think it can possibly be dismissed as in any way superficial, the discoveries of quantum physics were thorough17
ly foreseen by Buddhist philosophyISLAND
- arrivedMAGAZINE
at without instruments, by extrapolation from their knowledge
O n Contradictions
T h e black swan, drifting,
suggests a cartoon
about a Victorian lady,
being all refinement and propriety, with
a bustle.
Yet, o n land,
it is at once a lurching
tough - the whole b o d y
like shoulders;
it keeps doubling back,
then stretching-out, flexing,
the threatening
length of neck;
its mussel-shell beak, clacking,
drips;
a leathery
slap o n the stones,
and hissing.
B u t it leaves
along the water, and n o w
again
is calm as a paddlewheeler, o n s o m e idle
pleasure course.
With millinery's m o s t extravagant
bouquet the tail-feathers,
that are each curled inwards
fluffily
from the sides.
These live feathers have all
the ashen colour,
the tremor, and frailty,
of layers of a newspaper
burning
in a daylight, clear flame.
ROBERT GRAY
ISLAND MAGAZINE 18
of the mind, its functioning and its relation to nature.
I'm talking about the discovery of the completely fluxive nature of the fundamental particles, and, at different
rates, of all the "societies", or objects, that are composed of them, which was a fundamental teaching of
Buddhism from the sixth century B.C. The only
Western thinker who's really comparable to Buddhism,
until w e get to the modern physicists, is Heraclitus.
The essence of Buddhism is the constant flux of nature,
including the mind, but you won't find out about that
in Suzuki or Watts.
Questions about Buddhism are prompted by
Dharma Vehicle I suppose. That poem is really a celebration of the effect of Taoism on Buddhist thought;
it's about the love of nature; the emergence, and
maintenance, of this-worldly values, which produced
Zen, or the Zen of certain people.
Where do you stand politically? Do you see your
political beliefs informing your work?
Buddhist values can really only combine with
the Left, Buddhism is radically egalitarian - was
always against caste, or class, and against gender discrimination.
If you want m e to define very accurately where I
stand, as a Leftist, I can say that I a m most convinced
by the ideas of Guild Socialism, an English movement
which is just beginning to have a revival, or so I hope,
and which has worked out in most detail by G. D. H.
Cole, and publicised to some extent by Bertrand
Russell in books like "Roads to Freedom". Russell is a
very lightweight political thinker, a gadfly, but Cole's
ideas are particularly thorough - and I find them very
attractive because of his equal concern for both individual freedom and egalitarianism.
A movement that is practically the same as Guild
Socialism, and which is starting to be heard, is Worker's
Control or Self-Management, which is a much more
radical thing than workers just sitting on the Board and
getting production bonuses - that watered-down version
bandied around in Australia, and applied in West Germany.
Self-management, or economic democracy, is the form
that all the organized revolts against Soviet-style
communism have taken - in Hungary, in Yugoslavia
(though held back by Tito), in Czechoslovakia. It's a
further development of Marxism, is very compatible
with the Marxist critique, and has been advocated by
numerous Marxist or neo-Marxist philosophers (the
Leninist variety of Marxism is only one possibility, and
supported only by certain moods in Marx's writing) self-management has been campaigned as essential by
such Marxists as Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Korsch, Gramsci,
Pannekoek, Lucien Goldmann, the later Sartre, and so on.
This is why, although what I believe in is really a radical
democracy, very anti-totalitarian, I am still not adverse to
thinking of myself as a critical Marxist - Marxism where
there's no dogma, no holy writ - because the Marxist
tradition is so fascinating, so fecund, so far from workedout.
Do I see political beliefs informing m y work? I
hope they will, even more explicitly, in m y next book.
A n interesting question, to me, though, is whether they
should inform one's work; is there any point in it? I
think there is. First of all because what a poet must
write about is what he's most interested in - quite
apart from any intention of putting an idea across. What
matters most to you will become your subject - for
its own sake; to hell with anyone else's reaction, they
can take from it what they can. M y writing is an invocation of the goddess of - whatever m y values are. This is
the Muse, the inspirer - I write to clarify, to examine,
to discover those values; they have ultimate worth in
themselves. A n d there's an old Hebrew proverb that
says if you influence just one other person you have
changed a whole world.
But I believe in the purity of poetry, in this way:
not the purity of language, as an end in itself (a very silly
idea - as if language could ever have been evolved as an
end in itself), but the purity of motive. It's a good thing
that poetry doesn't have the exigencies of great popularity pressing upon it. O n e writes for its o w n sake. That
detachment leads one to discoveries, discriminations,
that one could never make, couldn't manage to, in the
public forum.
But even though poetry's written in this spirit, it
does have its effect. Y o u see, the question is - w h o do
you want to influence? Y o u don't have to influence
everyone - it need only be one person in a practical
position; one m a n whose special ability is in public life.
Poetry has always been immensely influential socially but not always in a very direct way. Take Shelley's
socialist ideas: these had a great influence on Shaw and
through him on the Fabian Society, from the Fabian
Society grew the British Labour Party, and the Labour
Party helped bring about untold practical improvements
in the day-to-day standard of life of ordinary people.
N o w m u c h of this is in danger of being taken away by
Mrs. Thatcher, so the fight is never permanently w o n intellectuals have to make those same visions new,
relevant, applicable. T o "make it n e w " - that's what
it's always all about.
There are m a n y other examples apart from
Shelley - Whitman had just as great an influence on the
establishment of British socialism, through his disciple
Edward Carpenter. A n d what about all the writers
who've helped make us a little less moralistic and
persecuting towards other people's sexual lives? What
about the immense practical influence of Dickens? O f
Chernyavsky's novels in Russia? Or the influence of
Milton's figure of Satan on the liberalization of
Europe? That's a thesis I wouldn't mind going into I think the main vehicle of the influence was Byron.
A n d the most recent example is that of the whole
Hippy movement - whose ideas have been assimilated
amongst us more than w e probably notice - which was
all started by Kerouac, Ginsberg, and (much the deepest of them) Gary Snyder.
It's been said by Brecht and by McDiarmid, in
their self-defence, and I think they're absolutely right,
that all poetry is propaganda; it's either good propaganda or bad, it's either in a h u m a n or an anti-human
cause, and that's all there is to it. There's only one
movement, the history of ideas; poetry belongs to it in an implicit, or unconscious, or direct way. It's not
whether the ideas of writers have an effect, they're all
part of that movement: useless, redundant, or with
some new insight that will be picked up by someone.
Who or what has most significantly influenced you?
I can remember my influences very clearly, as I
often return to most of them, to re-enjoy and I suppose
reinforce them. T o go right back, the first would have
been The Wind in the Willows, as a child, which made
m e want to be a writer; it taught m e that sensuous
enjoyment, particularly the visual, can be preserved in
writing, recreated by it, re-enjoyed in the imagination.
The other person w h o m a d e m e want to write was
Robert Louis Stevenson, w h o I thought the best
adventure writer, and w h o m y mother used to identify
m e with, as I was in bed sick a lot when a kid, and living
in m y imagination - she used to buy m e his books, tell
m e about his life, make a play on our names. Then
there was Oscar Wilde. I think what impressed m e in
him, in his aestheticism, was the feeling that there's a
natural moral sensibility, which is like the sense of beauty,
is part of it, and is its most poignant and moving form. I
read everything from The Happy Prince to The Picture of
Dorian Gray, which I came to just at adolescence; and I
was particularly affected by The Soul of Man Under
Socialism. I guess those are m y foundations. I still feel
as m u c h for them as ever; I think all of them are really
great writers.
Later, the main influences have been, in something
of their order, Lawrence's poetry, Slessor (about a dozen
of his poems), Whitman, Williams, Chekhov, R. H. Blyth,
and a lot of painters, but probably most of all Edward
Hopper. Also, there's m y friendship with a painter
named Ted Hillyer (not the painter referred to earlier,
w h o was too slavishly realistic, w h o I used to disagree
with from the start, w h o was not m u c h good). Ted
helped m e to see, or directed the ability I had; I met him
when I was working on the newspaper, at 18; w e still
minutely discuss painting.
Maybe, too, an influence is the drawings I do, for
myself. It's a sort of training for poetry - it's to keep
m e observing, actively looking. I like drawing because
it's so completely direct; it's like a form of writing.
Drawing is what Kirchner called "the finest first sensation".
Drawing is poetry, painting is prose. Drawing doesn't
exclude an appropriately spontaneous colour-use, as a
superstructure to line. Y o u can get the essence of a
colour-configuration or light with watercolour or gouache.
A n y w a y , the point is, I only want something that's small;
like haiga, Zen painting - I'm always conscious of what
Chekhov said, that you can't chase two hares at once.
If there had to be any choice, then, the whole aural
dimension of words, and their immediate identity with
ideas, and their expressive exactness and range, would
always make m y temperament prefer poetry. Unless I
thought I was just repeating myself in writing.
Since m y interest in painting is so largely theoretical, I'm pleased that at present I'm writing a commissioned book of art criticism. That's an area I've always
wanted to work in - I hope to do a lot more. M y
favourite art-critic, Ruskin, is someone w h o kept a
practical contact with art through drawing and watercolour, and the results, some of the ones I saw in
England and have never seen in books, are really extraordinary; no one can do that now, not even professionals, it's all been lost.
What about music as an influence?
There is certain music that I feel my work has a
rhythmic affinity with - certain types of music that
confirm m y o w n rhythmic sense. I have never tried
to imitate musical structure, which would be to impose
a purely formal limitation, and that is what I want to be
free of. I a m also wary of any facile meUifluousness.
The idea that all the other arts aspire to the condition of
music is a very destructive and limiting one. N o art
should be subservient to the nature of another. The
sort of music I like is strongly "linear". I don't like
"rhetorical" music - don't like Romantic, grandiose or
ISLAND
theatrical music - which is embodied
for m eMAGAZINE
in m u c h of 19
the carry-on of symphony conductors. I hate the
cultural snobbery, nostalgia and affectation of classical
music circles - which is not to caricature them at all.
A n d there's what I 'd call a "regressive" feeling that goes
with a lot of classical music that worries m e . I love quite
a bit of jazz, such as the early Louis Armstrong, or some
of the piano improvisations of Keith Jarrett, including a
number of those with the saxophonist Jan Gabarek. I
like Satie. A n d I also feel a strong affinity for m u c h of
Sibelius. I share Chekhov's admiration for certain
Chopin piano pieces. I love a lot of ethnic and so-called
"primitive" music. The sort of music I find probably
most like m y o w n feeling of rhythm, or ideal of rhythm,
is the Japanese shakuhachi flute.
On what principle do you write some poems as free
verse and some as prose?
In the prose poems, each paragraph is felt by m e as
a line, a rhythmic unit. This line is chosen, as in all m y
poems, because it's mimetic - expressive. In a sense,
these are long-line free verse poems, and they could be
printed, like Whitman's, with the over-lap indented, but
I don't do that because I want to emphasize something
else I believe in - the ideal identity of poetry and prose,
as far as all that's essential goes; to emphasise that
there is really only the one thing, good writing; the
ultimate standards are the same. All language requires
a certain sort of respect, a certain treatment.
The thing that separates poetry and prose is the
functional exigencies of prose. Poetry is intense statement because of its limiting, balancing, purely expository argument. It presents ideas aphoristically and
concretely, to try and maintain a whole, or complete,
m o d e of apprehension. Expository prose is strictly
functional, though it certainly has its beauties - the
beauty of logic, of gracefulness, of an eloquently sustained syntax, of a voice. A n d good narrative prose must
be functional. But poetry is concerned with maintaining, along with any ideas, a sensuousness for its o w n
sake. Also, it seeks to put the emphasis, in its argument,
on where the emotion lies. It is more directly emotive
in its appeal.
T o paraphrase him a little, Milton said poetry is
more direct, sensuous and passionate. It is because
poetry always wants to incorporate the physical, the
emotive, that it assumes rhythm. A n d Williams said
the only difference between poetry and prose is one of
intensity. By intensity he doesn't mean loud emotion he means vividness. What I'm saying is that poetry and
prose aren't to be distinguished by any mere stress on
form. Poetry is really a matter of a complete imaginative, h u m a n involvement. It is a W a y , a tao, a state of
being.
INTERVIEW BY ANDREW SANT.
Twelvetrees
Bookshop
247 SANDY BAY ROAD, SANDY BAY. 341951.
TRADITIONAL BOOKSELLER AND QUALITY
BOOK STOCKIST.
THE SHOCK OF THE NEW
by Robert Hughes. $39.95
AFGHANISTAN
five years work to produce this
fantastic photographic essay.
$59.50
CHINAMEN
by Maxine Hong Kingston. $4.95
THE OXFORD BOOK OF SATIRICAL VERSE
$29.00
THE OXFORD BOOK OF VERSE IN ENGLISH
TRANSLATION $43.00
PENGUIN BOOK OF WOMEN POETS $5.95
These and many more . . .
TWELVETREES BOOKSHOP
Proprietor: Clive Tilsley.
VOL.1, No. 6/7: Peace, T h e Nonviolent Alternatives — also inciudee -
SOCIAL
AL1
Christian Bay Acquisitive Liberties tot Some; Mark Plunhett Queenslsnds Nonviolent Campaign lor RlghV»>Majch; Doug Evermgham Wortd Citizenship. David Biggins Einstein vs the
Ideology of Science; H.C. C o o m b s Aboriginal Treaty; Glenn D Paige A Nonviolent Political
Science; M J Saunders Peace Movement and Australia s Withdrawal from Vietnam; C Rootes
Living with Terrortam; B Martin Mobilizing agalnal Nuclear War, Reviews by Dennis Altman
and Tony Stephens; also poems and ahort stories
VOL.1, NO. 8: City & Citizen — also Includes Hugh Stretton Alternative Road Maps;
Tow Hayden The Decline of the American Frontier Jim Ward Homeieeaneea In the City; Paul
Stange Mysticism. Moya Costello Women's Occupational Health and Safety; Dennis Phillips
An Alternative View of American Security; also Reviews, Short Stories, Poems as well as
Photographs, Drawings and Cartoons
V.OL.2, NO. 1: includes Ivan lllich Shadow Wort; Barry Commoner Energy, Profits and
People; David Burch Development through Appropriate Technology; Dawn
Margetson
Secretarial Studies and Sexism; David Campbell Franklin River — damned? Jack Mundey
Socialism; An Untried Social System; Margaret Smith Interview with Humphrey McQueen; also
Reviews. Poems and Short Stones
SUBSCRIBE!
$10 lor 1 year
$20 lor 2 years
I wish to begin with Issue
Individuals:
(please nominate clearlyi
Institutions
Vol 1 No (3) (4) (5) (671 <S)
and Libraries
$14 tor 1 year
$28 lor 2 years
VolJNoMj
TEAS, pensions, dole. $8tor1 year
Single Copies. $2.75
Subscriptions cover the cost ol surface mailing ol four issues — Overseas air mail, add $3
The International Magazine Focusing on
Social Change and Alternative Strategies
ISLAND MAGAZINE20
The Editors, Social Alternatives, Department of External Studies,
University of Queensland. 4067.
AUSTRALIA
Cheques and money orders (SAUST) payable lo SOCIAL ALTERNATIVES.
