Poets in the making

Anthology earns students praise from professionals

Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

Two Australian poets have praised work by Avondale College students appearing alongside that of established authors in a commercially published anthology launched this past Thursday.

Martin Langford and Anthony Lawrence speak of the honour of appearing with students from the Creative Writing class in Wording the World and, reflecting on their own experiences, of the opportunity it presents.

Returning as an 18-year-old from working as a stockman in the Riverina, Anthony tells of worrying his mother “because I was writing all the time.” She finds the Poetry Society of Australia in the White Pages, dials the number and Robert Adamson answers. “He published my first poem in New Poetry in 1979. . . . It gave me supreme confidence.” Anthony has now published 12 books of poems and a novel. His advice to the students: learn to be unfiltered without being gratuitous and never harness language into the service of subject matter only. “Write with the rhythms of your body and not just your head.”

Co-editor Judith Beveridge’s capacity to “draw what matters” out of the poems impresses Martin Langford. “That’s where all art starts, from your own responses as opposed to an anxiety about looking like an artist,” he says. Martin has published six books of poetry. “I’m a believer in practicalities. We often say, ‘I could be this’ or ‘I could be that,’ when simply going through the practicalities makes us this or that.”

Writing for Wording the World has given the students an understanding of what Martin describes as the process of “utterly giving yourself over to poetry.” Kerry Arbuckle’s “Black Dog,” in which she reflects on her experience with depression, is a good example. “It helped me realise you can’t just write a poem and expect it to be good,” she says, “you have to work on it.”

Others reading their poems during the launch included Michelle Cahill, author of The Accidental Cage, Jean Kent, author of three books of poetry, two of which are award and prize winners, and Mark Tredinnick, former Newcastle Poetry Prize winner and author of best-selling writing guides The Little Red Writing Book, The Little Green Grammar Book and The Little Black Book of Business Writing.

The idea of inviting these poets to donate work to appear alongside that of the students and then to commercially publish the anthology came from senior lecturer in communication Carolyn Rickett. She wanted to give the students an authentic learning experience, which they also provided in kind. “You have taught us to not only enjoy the silence of poetry but also the conversation of poetry,” said Carolyn during the launch.

Wording the World is the second project on which Judith, a lecturer in the Department of English at The University of Sydney and poetry editor of literary journal Meanjin, and Carolyn have collaborated. They also edited an anthology as part of the New Leaves research project, which examines the relationship between writing and healing. A New Leaves participant, the “beautiful and courageous” Michelle Witt, who died from uterine cancer in 2008 and to whom Wording the World is dedicated, links the two projects. Sister Louise attended the launch with Michelle’s daughters Annika and Sophie, who each received a bouquet of flowers. The two, who have framed “Ribbons of Love,” a poem published in New Leaves that Michelle wrote for them, are developing a growing appreciation for poetry, “especially seeing how much effort and emotion Mum put into it.”

Judith and Carolyn received the 2010 Avondale College Learning and Teaching Excellence Award for their commitment to establish links with industry through projects such as Wording the World. President Dr Ray Roennfeldt, who presented the award to Carolyn during World Teachers’ Day Breakfast two days earlier, congratulated the two for encouraging their student poets to become published poets. He then reflected on his pilgrimage, describing the perception of the process of writing poetry as “only for those who were abnormally talented and abnormally sensitive. Wording the World shows us the writing of poetry is for the normally talented and normally sensitive as well.”

Wording the World, published by independent Australian publisher Puncher & Wattmann, is available from Sheri Skene at reception on the Lake Macquarie campus for $20.

Links
Pick up the pen: Andrea Shotter reflects on the launch of Wording the World.