Ross Donlon was born in Ashfield, Sydney. He has performed at festivals and other readings in many parts of Australia and Europe. His books include 'The Blue Dressing Gown other poems', 'Sjovegen - The Sea Road' and Lucidity. His fourth book, 'The Bread Horse' will be published by Flying Islands Press later this year.
ROSS
I'll try to respond
but I'm not sure how I think about this - but I'll try in the time of
Covid 19.
My love affair with
Norway in particular and Scandinavia in general goes back a long way. I read
Ibsen in my teens attracted by the covers in Penguin by Munch. Loved the plays
and it was natural for me to love Munch having been drawn to Van Gogh, like
most are - all those Van Gogh prints on the walls of my primary school. I also
read Sigrid Undset and Knut Hamsun's 'Hunger' - and saw the movie then I think
- 'Sult' (Hunger) and read Pan. I was nuts about Ingmar Bergman. You can't
watch 'The Seventh Seal' and 'The Virgin Spring' at 17 and not fall over..I
think I read some of the sagas then but maybe my memory is making that up. I
read them young anyway. Njal's Saga was the first and most memorable. Skarp
Hedin!! skidding along the ice to cut someone's legs off.
So I had some innate,
underground attraction. Maybe it was a sense of Nordic artistic depression.
My high school poetry
reading was selections from the canon but I discovered the Beats myself. Mad
about Kerouac, who changed my life.
Through a series of
happy accidents, two years or so in PNG and being barred from the UK (not
enough landing money) I travelled by train through China and the USSR hard
class sleeper. Looking for work in Europe in Hong Kong and getting knock backs
until the Norwegian Consul told me oh yes, there's plenty of work in Norway, so
I hitched from Helsinki to Oslo via Stockholm and arrived on May 17 to a blaze
of flags and happy Norwegians after the friendly but sombre Swedes. People
braking hard to give me a lift and I was in Haraldsheim Youth Hostel in no time
and stayed there on and off for over two years, along with an apartment and
hitching around Europe and boat to Iceland where I was 6 months working at
various - cod trawler, fish factory, on the roads. Thirty odd years later a
poem came out of that, 'Trawling in the Arctic' - about my father.
I'd written had poems
published in The Bulletin in my late teens but then nothing for 33 years. I
know because I checked lately. Long story why.
So I always wanted to
return to Norway and by another happy accident tripped over Messen about 10
years ago when it was not long starting up. They were probably a bit surprised
and charmed that someone from here would apply. So I came for 3 months and met
everyone. I hadn't read Olav Hauge until then, but did there and went to his
museum in Ulvik, explored the fjord and made friends from other guests and
locals, especially of course, Bjorn Otto.
I was reading a lot
more poetry by then and was active in the Melbourne scene and festivals. But
the effect on my poetry? Put neatly, I guess it's enabled me to write two long
sequences of tanka - in 2014 Sjovegen (The Sea Road) 50 tanka for Alvik,
which, amazing and happy coincidence and connection once again, became a
translation project with the local skule thanks to a teacher, who then go the
school, parents, local businesses and the kommune, everyone except the bloody
factory, Bjolvefossen (sic?) who wouldn't give her a kroner - and illustrated
by the children - and launched on Labor Day, May 1, 2015.
So that was also a
kind of gift from me to Messen and Alvik, dedicated to BO. You know I think
I've written song lyrics for him and directed a music video. Sweet man.
And last summer I
completed another sequence of 50 (cut from 73) called, 'Writing Wild Water'
about swimming in the cold, sometimes very cold water of Hardangerfjord. I
wanted to know what was in my head 5 years after Sjovegen and it was
interesting to see the changes. I'd hoped to
Betweentimes, I wrote
'Midsummer Night' after being there for that night - and it being not at all
what I expected. No night, for one! And there was a conversation with BO and a
drunk ex sailor and factory worker in the 'pub' about witch burning in Norway
in the seventeenth century and why he wasn't a Christian. Some research led to
writing 'Midsummer Night' which won the MPU prize that year.
I've otherwise
written a rhyming poem about Trolltunga. Fei, a Chinese-American artist made a
little video about one of the tanka that mentions Olav Hauge.
And being around
visual artists has meant I've made poems from work of Wim, Judith, Simone and
Dutch painter, Paul Dikker, one for Felieke and Jan, too.
So yes, I have a lot
to be grateful for and I am. I went 8 times, and who knows may go again. The
place and the people are very important to me and I made a number of friends
from the international artists who I keep close. And of course, you and Carol
were there last summer. I'd met you in passing at Carol Jenkins place in Mosman
one time and very happily now have a pocketbook coming out with your Flying
Islands and all being well you'll visit here and read once the curtain lifts
again. Happy co-incidences
This wasn't a
conversation, I know, but - hope it will serve for something. How about you?
How did you find Messen and come to have Poor Man's Coat (good title)
translated and published? You have a happy connection with Wim and Judith, too
and she took a number of your poems in translation for the show in Spain with a
couple of mine
All good wishes to
you and Carol. And yes, I continue to swim. I think I am about the last
one standing and swimming sans wetsuit at the mo. It's 12' about the same in
and out tomorrow.
KIT
Well I’m sticking with my wild claim, Ross, that people who swim at 12
degrees are maniacs… you and Joanne were quite the phenomenon in the fjord at
Messen last year… I did manage to make it to one minute once as I recall… and,
while I’m sure I’m wrong, it definitely feels life threatening to me …
I think this is exactly what I kind of envisaged in terms of
conversation… except throw some poems in
… I think you should write up yr wild Nordic youth in a memoir, Ross…
maybe haibun style… I wrote my hitchhiking and beetle adventures in a piece of
juvenilia in the late seventies punks
travels
… but I’ve been revisiting a certain amount of that mind material of
late, perhaps as a result of making my way through my dad’s (enormous, unpulblished)
autobiography … it’s New Year’s Day, 1939 in Rio … but actually it’s the 2nd
of January already because he got so drunk on New Year’s Eve (a dare with a
bottle of scotch) that he slept through the whole of the first… it is quite an
adventure!
Yr Olav Hauge made me think of the tiny poem I wrote for him in poor man’s coat
Olave Hauge lived
on an acre of apples
and his old age was ripe
it’s interesting that Ålvik/Messen/Hardanger should boast not one but
two Australian poet devotees … it’s a good thing our approaches and experiences
are so different … I think they complement each other…
somehow Ålvik/Messen/Hardanger connect me with nature and with
cosmic/ontological questions I approach quite differently at home
… I think I put it down largely to walking … walking is so important… homo ambulatio?
But anyway I’m going
to kick off my end of the conversation with the poem I wrote for you (!) there last year when we
actually were both on site as it were:
1272
a whale’s way
for Ross Donlon
(this one’s for your
knees)
mazy trod upwards
in a poet’s June
imagine all that up
gnarl of hoof shone
mountain rooted
leaf green
the berries yet to
come
mist is in us
breathing
*
moss on slate
on ice on moss
on hill
on fjord
climb on
we are in the card
in the cloud
in the breeze
it’s never so far up
as we are
come with me
let’s climb
that’s the way
we are gone
*
no one made
mountains
but fashioned crude
gods
for the sky
from the ice
often to lack
imagination
carved also
boats to go
rain
hard
unfeeling
touches
anonymously Norse
*
how many ways the
water falls!
have you seen the
words blossom on the page
the picture blossom
in the words
the story come to
life in the picture
?
and all in the
mind’s eye
light instances
jewel breath out of
the snowstorm
a season folding
from
*
pine shook
sparkle in
wool wisp
draw deep down
breath
be sea be tree
a wing over
look up
gossip of gull
shine like a face in
this world is ours
if only
never to understand
*
they’re leaning in
windows for memory
trees and clouds and
hewn rune sun
polished to hold
before the sail
stood
gulls ancient
over fresh hewn oars
backs bent
under the skin of
night
stars steady
coursing
clouds between
as all have come to
image it
*
while I sleep
the ancestors
and you’re the
waking ice
kraken snapping at
the frozen toes
(birds provide the
lice)
*
we can all be
mountain, king
troll tunnel out of
summer’s blind
keep damp, drip
it was better here
when the whale’s way
was the only way to
go
*
there are no signs
but things themselves
and these are not
the words
we are the thing lit
you won’t see
but must have dreamt
so far
a sunstrip on the
other side
may I be the
vanishing man
.
In
fact I’ve not worked on any of the material I developed at Messen last year…
but I have a feeling is probably better (at least, with work, potentially
better) than what’s in the book … but there are many pressing projects between
me and it…
.
and
yes looking fwd to getting down to Castlemaine later in the year AND I’m quite
confident we’ll be able to hold the next annual poets’ picnic here at Markwell
in December as per the usual plan… one does worry Trump might start WWIII as a
last ditch re-election strategy, but such prospects as that aside…
ROSS
Hi Kit,
and thanks for your friendly and generous reply. And for the poem.
I've read it and will again to take it in, Climbing and walking. See Krake
attached from a walk with Felieke, Jan and young Felix. I was walking and
climbing then no trouble. I had the second complete knee replacement last
October, so that's two since I walked with them that day. I like Felieke very
much but I like Jan very much. We have some good laughs and once played a mad
round of golf at a course in the hills outside Oystese. To say it's a goat
track is an insult to goats. I am walking again and playing tennis sort of and
will play golf soon as the restrictions lift. They aren't like having 17 y.o.
knees but they'll do. No pain.
I was sorry we couldn't have hung out more in Alvik.I thought we
might, but you were walking and are close to Wim and Judith. Joanna became my
buddy. She was adrift before I arrived so having our two swims a day in the nip
was great for us both. I missed her when she left and the month after wasn't
much fun, with Monica taking over as a sort of commandant. There was no
friction just wearying. It can be a bit marooning when it's like that.
Swimming solo was the best part and having the tamka, and a longish poem in
rhyming couplets to work on, The Metaphor Boat. It was published in Ireland in
Skylight 47. Island in Australia knocked it back. BO was busy building a garage
before the weather changed.
And yes, it is good we both have Messen and no doubt very
different paths to get there. And yes, different approaches to writing. I like
the idea of our being complimentary. What was yours and Carols discovery of
Alvik/ Messen?
Still swimming. We are three sans wetsuits. Today the water was
about 11.5'C and air temperature 5'. It's not a 'thing' for me. The science is
in as much as the anecdotal. It's good for my mental and physical health.
That's it. And useful if you have a buddy, like Joanna. She just said to us all
one day, 'Won't anyone skinny dip with me?' So it was very easy. She's an
excellent writer too, with her 'Dog Dance'. She's been working with male
inmates of a prison since she went back.
I've just finished watching 'Mystery Road' and 'Killing Eve.' I
think they're both excellent and the latter genius stuff. I have to track down
Series 1 & 2. Terrific characters and beautiful writing.
But here are: Trawling in the Arctic, Midsummer Night and Krake.
Rousing
Cheers to you and Carol,
Trawling in the Arctic
Sometimes we trawled with the midnight sun
a gold bullet hole in the horizon,
sometimes in sleet, the cod masked in ice.
Once we trawled in the tail of a cyclone,
the stern under wash, sea slashed
black and white into spray.
You got to the galley by counting waves,
Sliding and crashing across the deck,
and I thought of the seafarer
in the Old English poem,
a peat bog man, offshore in a storm,
caught by cold, raw wind wracking,
ice biting, as he hunted for home.
Still young, I watched a coast creep by
While the ship rode waves like a surfer,
Then rucked my oilskin around my ears
and ran, regardless of wind, spray
and counting.
At
such times, looking out
from my own tightrope, I trawl for my father
in a ‘Frisco dive, rain ramming, his walk home wet
lit only by neon, and nobody there.
I reflect, like someone watching the sea,
how he waited for ships in the Ferry Hotel,
the irony tolling across the Pacific
to a war wife and son in Sydney,
one barely known, one never seen
as
he buffeted life towards death.
KIT
Okay,
well I’ll take that as a provocation, Ross …
So
here’s a dad poem of mine
my father
(who art in heaven if you like)
Houdini he
managed a complete escape
chased a ball around the world
and almost home again
not quite
he escaped all kinds of things
words stick for years
but he got free
he ran out of his own head
he got away from words
found words
he actually escaped from himself
you can give one away you know
a country
a language
a tribe
a class
vast estates he was freed of
so much history he shook off
my father forgot
who he had to be
he was like Jesus
and did it for me
and he forgot to tell me too
he remembered to forget
comes to me in dreams
he tells me all kinds of stories
in heaven if you like
there's an art to being there
I’m
finding Mystery Road more annoying
over time … I enjoyed the first series … but the violence is getting to me …
and with Killing Eve the trailers put
us off … once again, too much violence… I do love Silent Witness though and lots of Nordic noir, so not claiming any
kind of consistency here …
ROSS
In
Water on a Still Morning
When
I swam in the fjord at seven a.m.
the
water was barely breathing
a
time between tides
and
air so still
you
could hear a wave break – but none did
and
quiet – so quiet – not yet deathly quiet, but not life-quiet either
a
time between times of life and death
every
bird must have thought, ‘Who’ll chirp first?’
But
none did
I
entered by a way that leads to a rock covered spot
suddenly
hit by a spotlight –
an
ingénue who found himself on stage
via
a side entrance - merely there - clambering down – stripping – wading through
low tide weeds
then
swimming into life-dead calm
neither
aided nor impeded by wash or tide
and
so swam what I liked to think was the first stroke
oaring
arms and flicking feet
as
though there were no water or air - merely space
I
moved through it calm and amazed
the
first human who ever woke and moved through a morning
then
swam on the first day of the world
KIT
Very ‘Fern Hill’, Ross…
Let me reach for some firstness:
aubade
as
for the firstness
I
think it had a stale shoes smell
or
it might have been earth
rain
so far it fell as sweat
you'll
recognize the ache as day
it's
lit to edge
and
sometimes stands in stockinged feet
as
if another age
spell
cast
could
otherwise be yet
it
lasts till we dissolve in it
keep
the fast and the firstness lasts
roll
like a ball along
all
before the music
but
one bird sings to find
and
so a chorus comes
some
trumpet for a date, a time
come
like planets through this
do
you think we'll fit into the day?
no
rooster ever told so far
keep
under a skin, still kissed
then
the leaves come all alight
so
see how far we are
the
firstness was a garden
and
sprinkled dust of stars
it
lasts till we dissolve in it
.
Can you please send just in the body of an e-mail…
our internet is very crappy here and we sometimes have a lot of trouble opening
attachments…
ROSS
After
I wake before I should
To quiet in the kitchen
Too many being quiet
All dressed at seven
Mum Nan Aunty Uncle
Cups and saucers ticking
Exposed in cold pyjamas
In being eleven, in being
An only child once again
The women look away
Ritual drum roll
Before a coming of age
Beater-of-children, Uncle Wid,
The uncle I fear,
Nods me to my bedroom
Sits with me on my bed
Opens a seam in my head.
Mate, he
says, your grandfather is dead.
I’ll leave you now, he
says. And does.
Saving my memory, all that’s gone now -
1956. My room. Flat 4 in Bland Street.
Ashfield. Sydney. The 1950’s
And the decades since, all gone
Through the same empty door
KIT
the true misfortune is the one
without witness
poking around at Yad Vashem
I think the ones who knew grandfather's end
must have gone with him
my grandfather was spared, in a
sense
the names are all laid here
he’s not
no record of a vanishing
I think the ones who knew
grandfather's end
must have gone with him
there has to have been a day
though
a certain kind of weather
(won’t you imagine the damp –
two great cities are almost a
river)
in the right light for a
disappearance
there’s someone at the end of the
gun
would never have known grandfather
I never knew him either
the laws of time make sure of that
I would not have been able to pick
out the voice
would not have known the words
must guess now
this is the little fire I light
time has a certain weight up close
pools and flows
then you're humbled with
here-we-are
one has to have slept through this
wrong
through all others
slept through all the days before
me
I only ever knew those eyes
from the one picture
I never find his name in the lists
grandfather wanted out of the
tribe
or was it his father before him?
for somebody’s sins
they didn't march him far
and the good fairy
was the one we called God
or else you don't say
my lost family –
will you help to see them in my
eyes?
do I keep a little fire?
would the dead be speaking
had this not been done to them?
weren’t we always hard of hearing?
and one more trick
did I walk here once?
Ozymandias blown about
am I father to the man?
there had to not be a place
what was left of him was left
my father wished nothing
in the way of mortal remains
was that so the river would take
him
as time once took his father?
I never find the one I lost
it mustn't be me who is here
ROSS
Our never having met,
I only ever refer to you as my
father,
yet I sometimes wonder what I might
have called you
in Louisville, Kentucky, your home, or
in Sydney, mine.
And since father has
no currency in my class,
forever unused and unsaid, Dad,
Pappy, Bill
are words which taste like copper on
the tongue.
Even now, what to call out on that
continuum
where I follow over seventy years
later,
never to meet, never pass by or so it
seems,
always in the slipstream of your spell
in light,
ever in the wake of that last voyage
and sad ironic end in The Ferry
Hotel, in ‘Frisco
where you tried to come back to us or
die.
My ship ever in the wake,
is so self-consciously poetic
I smile to think of the recurring
symbol
I’ve carried like DNA from my kindergarten
locker
(circle sun / trim white sailing boat /
rippling blue sea)
into the abyss of tonight.
So I sit writing another ship
poem,
pitching into a sea of stars,
hauling and trimming the sail of
poetry,
peering from the bow for a man both
ghostly
and god-like as the Flying Dutchman.
And I wonder if in eternity, should
there be a landfall there
If I will see you waiting with a call
and a name for me
I can find some way to return.
KIT
Back to dad again—
ping pong
I remember your
remembering
snow from Great War
winters
a father’s
Austro-Hungarian great coat
presents for the American
prisoners
and the first car come,
your first typewriter
… you’re gone ten years to
my dream,
still cameo regular, a
star
you chased a ball around
the world
now far off in the heavens
first gone you were in
orchard eddies
I remember that quiet time
in the morning
– closed door gave God
space to imagine you
our superstition has no
named community
just puts things in
perspective
for instance I think of
you when a digital clock
shows me your birth year –
then I go back
to time elapsing – what
worries me now
may well not tomorrow – I
hear you say
‘don’t let the bastards
get to you’
in the dreams I never hear
your voice
sometimes lately you could
be a ghost
can neither confirm nor
deny
we talk it through
wordlessly
so much I’d like to show –
a poem like this!
if I were Chinese I could
burn it to you
or there’s a window of
clouds here – each shaped
with no less care – is
that what it’s like not to be?
ten years and you’re more
than a hundred –
good innings even when
you’re out –
we’ve still got the ashes
– cause well
we don’t know what to do
with you, with them
with memory – you fell
asleep watching Bradman bat
in the guests’ box at the
MCG – you’d just arrived
and you thought they must
have been
‘tuning the instruments’ –
‘play gypsy play’ you’d say
or ‘gone a million’,
‘drongo’, ‘buckley’s’ – I learnt
Australia from you – and
that there’s nothing like
the love of a country
you’ve chosen for yourself –
that’s courage
what a rock you’ve been
for me, these visits
but it’s too many years
since your voice
you didn’t want a stone at
all
but the army gave you a
plaque, without asking
it should be our own words
survive because for us,
words are deeds
I think of your war
sometimes –
your part for which I’m
grateful
not like the wars we make
these days
on an oily whim or a lie
a century of snow to see
through
you won’t believe it but there
are idiots partying
for that mad war where God
went missing
‘we’re a nation because we
walked into the canons’
‘just following orders’…
actually you would believe it
but you’ve got somewhere
better to be
following that celluloid
ball through the stars
and hey I’m keeping up, I
bounce the ball back
tethered to this only
planet we the living have
like a meadow walk because
the sun says
sleep is that forest I
inch in through to be with you
fitting you’re the hermit
there – where you go
past everything – better
than home but you
have to believe – I’m
coming to your conclusions
with God – prayer is the
question – God’s there
as long as there’s no
answer –
as long as word’s yet to
come
ROSS
Winter Poem
Air still as ice
As many leaves on the ground
As in trees, all leeching
Scarlet-Autumn to Winter - White.
When they die and drop,
Gravity still demands a last,
fluttering waltz,
So they spiral down,
The smallest of birds.
Two eastern rosellas playmate
Scarlet-blue on skeletal branches,
An aberration in the dark
(An ‘aboration’, I think darkly)
And transform the line of trees
Into grieving angels.
Raven commands a neighbour’s chimney,
Legs braced, wings raised, dressed to
kill,
The Bird in Black
Chanting spells fit for apocalypse.
If this poem were a gothic tale
That family would be in a lot
of trouble later tonight.
A shadow would rap an unpleasant
pattern
On their claw-scratched door, and
tomorrow morning
There’ll be four dead leaves on the
ghost bark birch
Ready to fall.
KIT
a winter piece
(not quite as cold)
winter piece
further further
into the dark
and worst foot forward
cling to this line
as a life buoy
foot after foot
won't see through this smoke
and then the fire's cold
rain in earnest then
and it could be forever too
shapes, colours - only
memory
and what if morning doesn't come?
then night will be deeper
into the dark
cursed awake to know
this wind between the ears
all thoughts away
black dream
and down
huddle
naked in it
chilled to bone
the moon goes
and the stars are bung
forever night
as at a pole
darker and darker
you do it yourself
you can wake up dead
from winter
you can do this on a clear blue day
will you cosy up with?
do you think you can eat your way out?
and another winter one for you, Ross - this morning’s
passing the
shortest day
and bring the things to burn
(empty autumn’s bin scraps)
make hearth breath vastness
first of bright
we set fire to all other seasons
wool up
pull over ears
few fly
but
skate the frozen heights
cold comes through everything now
and settles on us
leafless
stay dreamt
become the blanket
be the dance
stay in
take lowest notes to heart
stare out the fire
it’s full of flowers
and someone lit to tap the window
a little bird called Spring
And one more winter one
pinch and a
punch again
a winter
middling
when the world finished turning
this is the stillness come to
eyes wide
other seasons expire here
middling months
something ancient in winter
I’m woolly mammoth
beany and tusk it
some think a discontented thing
twitch of the witherbirds
catch kindling, flame
collect the sun
so warm to
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