In this chapter excerpted from his novel-in-progress The Poets’ Stairwell, Alan Gould presents a fictionalised version of the inception of the verse satire he co-authored with Kevin Hart, The Harrowing of Balmain, which takes as its subject the Australian ‘Poetry Wars’ of the 1970s.
Chapter 10: The Poetic Experience
Henry’s advice was that it would do us no harm to get invited to the odd poetry conference. ‘It’s the beauty-parade part of the business,’ he gave me an apologetic smile.
So in the August of his third year we contrived to attend ‘New Directions ’74’ at Dunmore University in Sydney. Here we sat high in the back row of an auditorium listening to the dispute of a panel of experts who sat behind a bench in the well-lit pit of the chamber. Some speakers were poets, some were junior academics, and the New Surge view of the art of poetry — ‘Go on your nerve, man, to hell with the rest’ — was well-represented. In the alternating waves of vehemence and derision that rolled upward from their light into our dark, I had affirmed for my understanding of the vocation of poetry, just how sectarian a matter it was.
And suddenly the discourse had become very operatic indeed, for a mousy fellow had leapt onto the bench with the agility of a chimp, and he appeared to be very upset.
‘Kill me, then!’ he yelped.
It seems there had been a severe question from someone approximately in the middle of the auditorium.
‘I’d rather not, Peter,’ the voice from this mid-point demurred.
‘Kill me now, go on! Do the business in a one-off! Finish me here!’ Peter had produced a small penknife from his pocket.
‘I decline.’
‘Better with this, than the slow poison-drip of the reviews you write about my work.’
‘I have the law to respect, Peter, if not the masquerade of art you call your poems.’
‘Gutless bastard!’ Peter spat back at him. ‘When it’s face-to-face, you’re gutless, like all them professors.’
‘I am not a professor, Peter, and you are not a poet. You are a hysteric,’ replied this voice from the audience equably. Whatever had been his original provocation, the audience person seemed to court rather than deflect the dangerous emotion he had unleashed. I looked at the chairperson who was using her hands in ineffectual flattening motions, and whose expression suggested this contretemps was too predictable for words.
‘Finish me!’
‘No.’
‘Rub me out,’ insisted the agile Peter who, in his progress, had knocked over the carafe of water set for his fellow panellists. For our chairperson the water emergency was a useful distraction from the human crisis and she set about mopping the water up with paper from her notepad.
Was this the ‘beauty parade part of the business’? I watched fascinated. Was the common interest here really poetry, that very same uncertain substance I was prepared to share with Henry but hid from the eyes of the Mudda and the Pa? It was indeed. And yet the scene, upon us with such lightning, seemed more like a cockfight from the era of Swift than a symposium on modern poetics. Should we have been provided with a set of spurs and a wad of betting slips at the door? Outlandish! Yet also delicious. I turned to Henry and we both made eyes at how preposterous it was.
‘Do it! Wipe me! Think of the ink you’ll save!’
‘Take a sedative, Peter.’
The slanging proceeded. Ah, but now, with unnerving speed, Peter had leapt from the bench and, penknife in hand, proceeded up the aisle toward the row where sat his critic. It was clear he wished to present the fellow with the clasp knife and there offer his life. It should be said Peter had magnetised the attention of the audience as nothing in the combative chatter of the symposium had so far done. Was this not a poetic experience?
I tried to match what I observed here with what I had read on the planet’s present poetry scene. There had been a paperback called Poetry And Edge; suicide had been discussed, along with larceny, drug use, systematic derangement of the senses and other measures for ‘going on one’s nerve’. Was this present extremity part of what had been meant? Did authenticity in the life of poetry require some actual slash and stab, here and now, in this auditorium where, more usually, Dunmore University’s chemistry students came for their instruction?
I heard Henry sigh. ‘Confusion of the life with the art. This whole “Go on your nerve” distraction starts with Villon.’
Well, it was impressive to have the unfolding drama placed securely in a literary context. Indeed, Villon had been mentioned in that Edge book, though the Peter person reminded me more of the lean horror that W.H.Auden’s Alonzo perceives flapping and hopping toward him with inhuman swiftness….
…because now Peter had attained the mid-row of seats and commenced to push past people’s knees toward where his serene critic awaited him. The row was a long one, with many protruding knees to negotiate, though the audience participation in stopping this lean horror’s progress had so far been, to use the literary term, powerfully restrained.
‘Maybe the confrontation is a good thing’: I leaned across to Henry with the suggestion. For was it not more honest to have these direct challenges to personal safety between poet and critic rather than the remote slash and stab of the weekend review columns? From my days of rage and protest I recalled we had often gone more often on our nerve than our reasoning powers. Here was the spirit of the age. Here was a veritable enactment of the conference theme.
I could now identify the critic, a fellow in crumpled silvery suit and red bowtie who continued to sit, his legs crossed, for all that Peter was now within twenty knees of reaching him.
Ah, an intervention.
Disappointingly a man with a beard and a bald forehead had stood up to bar Peter’s progress. With his free hand, the New Surge poet had pulled undone the buttons of his shirt in readiness to offer his flesh and was making noises not entirely comprehensible. Now he tried to make himself visible around the intervening presence, who was making soothing noises in a North American accent. His long face suggested the prophet Moses. Twenty knees down the line the red bow-tie sat on, interested, entirely passive.
‘You are asking me to be a lawbreaker, Peter,’ he said reasonably.
The soothing noises from the American were like those one might use for a startled horse. It was difficult to follow exactly but the quiet American vowels appeared to abate Peter’s fury. The penknife had been taken, folded and returned to Peter’s pocket, the buttons refastened, and Peter was being escorted back to the bench with a gentle hand on his elbow. Here the poet subsided into his swivel chair, much as the waters of a geysir subside to their crater. Most impressive to me throughout, had been the serenity of the critic. Go on your nerve.
When the symposium resumed, I glanced across at Henry’s notepad and saw there a single heroic couplet in the emphatic Henry Luck scrawl.
Of arms and tears we’ll sing, and poets who
Invite an audience to run them through…
Henry’s pen was poised like a kestrel above a field of corn. I returned my attention to the pit where the subsequent speakers glanced nervously at Peter who, in turn, sat eyeing the audience with a crooked smile. I believe we had disappointed him. Perhaps twenty minutes elapsed, then I looked back at my companion’s notepad and saw the page had become black with couplets and crossings-out. In their density, they seemed coiled with energy and this was infectious. I meditated for some moments, then put some lines down on my own pad.
…His Chainsaw Angels rode into the church
Where, high in rafters, Peter took his perch.
A thousand chrome machines were made to roar.
They thundered through that church and out its door,
Neutered the nation’s poetry for evermore.
Pleased with this, I passed my pad across to Henry who read the fragment. Our eyes met, quickly Henry scribbled an addition to my offering and, the session ending shortly thereafter, we repaired to the bar where we elaborated a storyline from our scribbles. Here would be recorded a poetry Armageddon. The combatants were these Chainsaw Angels and a group of approved poets we nominated The Choir. The names of our contemporaries were promptly enlisted to either side, the setting of the poem would be backstreet inner Sydney, its manner would excoriate New Surge and restore proper poetic values.
On the train back to Arden and during the weeks that ensued, our lines swarmed gleefully onto respective notepads. These we reconciled into a common typescript, conferred a title — The Choir And The Chainsaw, sent its six hundred lines to a weekly journal notorious for its provocations, were accepted and published over four weeks. At the same time Henry and I began to have our poems appear in annual anthologies. The beauty-parade part of the business had brought with it, as it were, some profile for Boon&Luck.
