Magdalena Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer and interviewer, and is the Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader, a literary review site that has been running for some 23 years. Her interview podcast, Compulsive Reader Talks, has over 150 wonderful interviews with the likes of Maria Tumarkin, Ben Okri, and John Banville, to name just a few. She has been widely published in literary journals, anthologies, and online, and is the author of several published books of fiction and poetry. Her Flying Island book, High Wire Step, was published in 2018. Her most recent publication is Unreliable Narratives, published by Girls on Key Press in 2019. A new poetry book, Density of Compact Bone, is forthcoming from Ginninderra Press in 2021.
JEAN KENT was born in Chinchilla, Qld, in 1951. She published her first poems in a literary magazine in 1970, while she was completing an Arts Degree (majoring in psychology) at the University of Qld; her first collection, Verandahs, appeared twenty years later, in 1970. Since then, another eight books of her poetry have been published. The most recent are The Hour of Silvered Mullet (Pitt Street Poetry, 2015) and Paris in my Pocket (PSP, 2016).
Awards Jean has won include the Anne Elder Prize and Dame Mary Gilmore Award (both for Verandahs), the Wesley Michel Wright Prize, the Josephine Ulrick Prize and Somerset Prize. She has been a runner-up for the Newcastle Poetry Prize and winner of its Local Section, and was a judge of the prize in 2013. She has received several writing grants from the Australia Council, including Overseas Residencies in Paris in 1994 and 2011.
As well as writing poetry, fiction and (occasional) nonfiction, Jean has worked as an educational psychologist, counsellor in TAFE colleges, lecturer in Creative Writing, mentor and facilitator of poetry workshops.
With Kit Kelen, Jean was co-editor of A Slow Combusting Hymn: Poetry from and about Newcastle and the Hunter Region (ASM/Cerberus Press, Flying Island Books, 2014).
Her Flying Island pocket book is The Language of Light (2013), a selection of her poems with Chinese translations by Iris Fan Xing.
In 2020, Kit Kelen invited her to converse with him by email for his blog spot, The Daily Kit. Their conversation over six months, covering a lot of topics, including poetry, but also COVID19, the deaths of their mothers, gardening … and some very recent drafts of poems, can be read here:
Jean lives at Lake Macquarie, NSW. Her website is jeankent.net.au
Views from the desk, Kilaben Bay
Some Poems
A PLATFORM FOR LEGENDS
On the verandah of my grandparents’ house,
the day falls asleep around me.
This is the roof of my childhood.
And this, the floor. Tin and wood:
silver-grey, sibling corrugations.
Like platforms for family legends
they wait, rehearsing allegories
as if it is always the end
of a sun-limp day, the lucerne cut,
wheat bagged and a needle in the hessian
beckoning its tail of string.
In the fragrant dusk, soil settles.
Crickets, ants and unseen lives
team over cracks in black earth’s surface –
years are strung like tales of Min-Min lights
along this world of roof-creaks,
board-sighs, a home paddock barracking
for the far-off calls of dinner plates,
falling tablecloths, cutlery and relatives.
Time melts here. Ghosts with glasses of Scotch
catching the last day’s light in their hands,
bend their knees, ease back
into squatters’ chairs. I wake.
A cool breeze is balancing
beside the verandah rail, roping it
and ruffling off, up into wisteria leaves:
sitting tenants now, under the roof.
Time melts. On the ends of long wooden arms,
ice, moonlit, hugs the air.
JEAN KENT
(From Verandahs, Hale & Iremonger, 1990; reprinted Picaro Press, 2009.
Also in The Language of Light, ASM/Flying Island Books, Macao, 2013.)
(The verandah of the old family home, Weeoomba, Qld)
QUARANTINE CAMP, 1919
After the tents of war, now the tents of Wallangarra:
one last quarantine before the unfamiliar family
can escape to what they hope will be a home.
Seven days—seven and six a day—
under the sheltering granite ranges, fires
heat drums, the coats of the women skim just high enough
to escape the frost, the men in their new civvie uniforms
stand stiff as saplings, not happily transplanted, yet.
On the bare ground by the railway,
they should be thankful prisoners. So many huddles—
and in amongst them, this trio who will step away from here
into my family history: one man, his wife …
and a two year old girl, confronting this stranger, her father.
Just beyond the wahlenbergias, the shy native bluebells
at the camp’s edge, are the Pyramids of Girraween:
bald monoliths, made by volcanoes, not men.
Half a century later, I’ll try to climb one …
But it is too early for a returned soldier to brave
that skyline—better to bivouac here, picking bluebells,
waiting at dusk for a wallaroo in its shaggy greatcoat
to do a reconnaissance of this temporary invasion—
negotiate with it for peace.
After the certain attacks of war: now world deaths
from Spanish flu. In this border camp, learning to speak
with the wary trust of the child, what can my grandparents do
but hope they have outrun the final assault?
In training for a domestic truce,
trust there will be a tomorrow soon, flinging over them
only a tent of sky—as wahlenbergias, those fallen-
sky flowers, cheer the edges of the last road home.
JEAN KENT
(Published in the Weekend Australian Review, 12th Sept 2020)
THE LANGUAGE OF LIGHT
Weekends, Paris walks. Something shifts
underground. Like a Rubik's cube
slightly twisted
the lines of colours realign, the harmony of humans
gently shudders the city’s symmetrical grid.
Like the still spaces we enter when music
moves us, weekends separate us from the deafness
of habitual days. More so than ever
here, on the other side
of our usual world —
here, where we live lit up
like cymbals always on the verge
of being struck. In the Luxembourg Gardens
I am one small vibration in the shivering of the city
toward some Sunday song. The babble of all the world
is being quietened here —
Poles and Italians, Australians and Africans,
small boys and motorised boats all blend into a buzz
swarming from under the acid-yellow horse-chestnut leaves
toward the end of summer’s silver
hived within the lake.
Weekends, Paris talks with less tension
accelerating its tongue. Even the tourist buses —
clattering to halts like the abruptly dropped snakepods
of bauhinia trees —
release people who become, after a little time here,
as calm as seeds
waiting to be planted. We almost believe
we could all belong — as we settle briefly
on these wrought-iron chairs with their ringletted arms
and verdigris-barred backs. We subside
on seats tattooed all over with holes
spraying sunlight onto the crushed white gravel below.
How many faces
have fallen here —
waiting for Paris light to persuade them
to float back up, to lift
towards it their first foreign shoots?
Weekends, Paris walks. It stalks us — as gently
as the grandparents we never knew, those ghosts
who passed through a war here
eighty years ago.
Like the nano-shifting of volcanic plates now,
something in us shifts. Whatever homes we thought
we had brought with us
settle like hidden pockets
in our winter coats — and we join the long lines
of stilled people in black swivelling towards
the slightest caress of sun. The light,
as it negotiates peace settlements
within this temporary country
of cold shoulders,
is speaking everyone’s ancestral tongue.
JEAN KENT
(From Travelling with the Wrong Phrasebooks, Pitt Street Poetry, 2012;
also published in The Language of Light, ASM/Flying Island Books, Macao, 2013.)
she
taping people from her village
The Peloponnese in an agrarian past
collecting voices that will disappear forever
then standing on this edifice
to look backwards
and then deeper, into the 18th century
now like a roaring train, a novel
the history of Greece, so tragic
she says
another she
doing genealogical research
first the family
the migrations, then back
back to the island
becomes
becomes a whole history
Ithaca
the Venetians
the Turks
the Byzantines
very different, she said
we had war
in one of her windows
the mandarin tree stands
in the centre of a brick paved yard
on another window
the lace curtain
shields the lemon tree
180° of glass
the vlita, the horta in the garden
this beautiful peaceful space
In another window
Skype video
I see them
doing genealogical research
and he also doing genealogical research
and the search on our name
a Byzantine tangle
a clan under the radar
maybe secret Turks or secret Jews
escaping the Inquisition
they had records, you know
the Venetians
so Ithaca is a different matter
I hold up the page of the book
to the Skype camera
this proves there were Couani’s on Kastellorizo
a page from this old book
strangely printed in landscape orientation
with the list of boat owners – Κουανης
and he
on video Skype
an English life
reaching back to France, Egypt, Africa
finishing an autobiography
I sit in her living room
a window opens
I see him
Sky
the fairy story effect
the magic of childhood
Sydney in a snow dome
possible because of its
bowl-shaped geography
ringed with mountains
girt by sea
its foamy cliffs
the sublime
people
miniature
the sky
so vast
the clouds so high
and puffy in the southern sky
the higher one, gleaming white in the sunlight
whiter than white is
is it so big
or are we so small?
showers coming and going
humid, then a shower
from above
the land is full of water and sunlight
a shower falling on one small area
shadows and sunlight
Reminiscent of Blackheath in The Blue Mountains and its fabulous summer alpine climate, air constantly washed clean by afternoon thunderstorms, sublime mountain vistas. The 19th century children’s novel, Heidi, set in alpine country. The snowy white bread rolls wrapped in crisp cloth and Heidi’s little gingham swag with her belongings in it. Heidi, so lucky to be an orphan.
people swim in the rain
raindrops cool on their skin
in the pale aqua water
The fact that it’s aqua because of the chlorine feels irrelevant, especially on sunny days. It’s not unlike the colour of the water around the Mediterranean islands. The pool, in the park just next to Broadway.
Broadway, Sydney’s busiest intersection, just erase the traffic and the noise and you’re left with a perfect landscape. I’m dreaming of turf being laid over Broadway like they did on the Harbour Bridge for a day, except permanently.
a flock of corellas
with their pretty call
circling
and doubling back
Broadway is like a bowl or part of a bowl that empties into the harbour at Blackwattle Bay.
Sublime, the depth
of the harbour
a mirror of the mountains
valleys that continue
downwards
but now, into murky depths
Is childhood magical? What is the temperature of the sublime? How we loved Caspar David Friedrich in the early 70’s! Before we were ravaged by Conceptual Art, that is. That’s when many of us stopped painting, when painting died for us, replaced by the minimal gestures of others, requiring no effort and almost no thought. Somnambulist Art. Work they did between hangovers.
The whispering quiet of the
valleys from the cliff tops
transcendent, individuating
rupture in disguise
the sublime thing
I could have gone that way
with feminist representations
some did
that’s where I was wanting to go
drawing female figures falling into chasms
so much like
classic Romantic images
it was men who dissuaded me
but 10 years later
similar images were
visible
in the art galleries
Vivienne Shark LeWitt etc
but then with the
imprimatur
of some art world bureaucrat
incommensurability
that was the problem
between them and us
I met people who understood why you’d want to rail against the parochialism of your peers
Australian Art
it’s a joke
and in Australian minds
it’s all happening elsewhere
distance creates the sublime
not that there aren’t fabulous artists here
but don’t tell me they’re Australian
So my work became
what was possible
maybe constraints help us
to map the unknown
aesthetic unboundedness
rupture
I made small drawings using pencil and aquarelle. Some like an abstract Reg Mombassa, some hyper-real. Learnt the Chinese method of watercolour painting. Wrapped up in teaching art to people who didn’t want to be artists. I took a holiday from history.
thinking
Communism, Utopia
group projects
where every offering
is valued
and adds
another element to the lexicon
The haunting
the bamboo pen
the ink well
vintage glass thing
with its pressed pattern
and three wells
the paper ready
the concertina book
carried around for weeks
where the practice drawing
will occur
also
the sketchbook
the real thing
started
cover done
title chosen
first poem
printed on tracing paper
and glued in
with spray adhesive
photos of all the objects
taken and uploaded to ipad
there
accessible
waiting
all the preparation done
the pen haunts me
I think and dream about
picking it up
I can feel the sensation
of moving the bamboo
across the paper
think about it constantly
imagine the black ink
sitting in the ink well
and about two other colours
as yet unchosen
I mentally scan the box of inks
think about the beautiful
senegal yellow
thick and glowing
everything is ready
and yet
the series consists of drawings
of objects from my parents’ houses
both parents now gone
so objects are not objects
it is essential to choose the colours
at least for the first drawing
the amber cigarette case
and think
is this a gestural exercise
or will each drawing
take on some complexity
become a painted image
become watercolour
water
always there
at the ready
to sooth
now that we’re really alone
Christopher (Kit) Kelen is a poet and painter, resident in the Myall Lakes of NSW. Published widely since the seventies, he has a dozen full length collections in English as well as translated books of poetry in Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Swedish, Norwegian and Filipino. His latest volume of poetry in English is Poor Man’s Coat – Hardanger Poems, published by UWAP in 2018. In 2017, Kit was shortlisted twice for the Montreal Poetry Prize and won the Local Award in the Newcastle Poetry Prize. In 2019 and 2020 Kit won the Hunter Writers’ Centre award in the NPP. He was also shortlisted for the ACU prize in 2020. Kit’s Book of Mother is forthcoming from Puncher & Wattmann in 2021. Emeritus Professor at the University of Macau, where he taught for many years, Kit Kelen is also a Conjoint Professor at the University of Newcastle. In 2017, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Malmo, in Sweden. Literary editor for Postcolonial Text and Series Editor for Flying Islands Pocket Poets Series, Kit has mentored many poets and translators from various parts of the world, and run a number of on-line communities of practice in poetry (most notably Project 366 [from 2016-2020]). Kit is a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW. You can follow Kit’s work-in-progress a the Daily Kit. Kit is the Co-ordinator of the THESE FLYING ISLANDS community blog.
Here is a little selection of poems from Kit’s book a pocket Kit 2, interspersed with some paintings and drawings:
let everything grow wild today
embrace the poem
squander the soul
sleep to dream and wake to play
let everything go wild today
let the spirits call our names
let us requite
only the words
to bear
from my door
nowhere but the way
everything green is reaching for heaven
for light and for love
squander the paint
set afloat in a poem
only words
to be borne
to bear on
let everything go wild today
wake to play and sleeping dream
so we may work the miracle
set God and godly things
all free
today
let everything grow wild
A Sociology of Paradise
First I came through a hoop of flesh.
I didn’t jump, I swam. There was an endless
mud plain and another storm coming.
Rain beat the rice shoots green from the soil.
Millions were huddled round the still ether.
The century dragged on. I missed the boat
swam out to the island. And the air was still
in the sun’s quarter and the half a sky where
waves could have been. The moon washed
up where the tide rusted into the sand.
Cars came out of the twentieth century.
Coca Cola came ashore, lapped on
the hard live shell of paradise. A coconut
fell out of nowhere onto my child’s head.
I didn’t stumble. There were stars and bars
everywhere. I could hear the West
crackling through looming shadows of bliss.
Back country, hills were dense with trees,
Dissidence, notches for climbing up.
And curled into a noose of straw
the disappeared hung, swaying – invisible
burden of paradise. I jumped through a hoop
of gold. I had the ring of confidence then
and a flag colour of mud.
Helicopters filled up the sky. When the noise
came, birds shifted in a line, black, palm to palm,
fifty metres. Then when they came back
there was nothing the wind could move.
Trees clung to a rock in the sea.
On dry land a had a good steady job
in the fly-spray factory. They paid me in cigarettes
so naturally I took up smoking. The mist
from the nozzle formed up a halo to martyr
the very air. You couldn’t call it a leak.
It was more like missile testing.
Each day here proud of the fallen, brainless
slaughters to glory in. The earth makes up
a place for each. The new rice sings from the earth.
The colour of the mud in our veins is a flag
billowing over a hoop of bright gunmetal:
the welcome mat. I didn’t jump, I swam.
the priming of a painter’s canvas
like night come
colour no matter
skins are under skin
and skies too
shade patches, dapples take the tune
soaks pigment where the eye was caught
canvas is linen really
like a tent clouds abide in
there are rats have your pants
vultures all sorts
one lies down in it all
till the rags make ladders
next beanstalk’s got your name on it
next stop is the stars
Views from Pinchgut
Picture a track, not one of ours
but lower, maybe inches only off the scrub
and winding from that height
into a tangle water fits to a gully.
The mind's untroubled there.
It's all green. It works, birds feed
off it. Trees stand up for themselves.
Even the sky's got a look in.
Roll that gaze out onto a coin
poisoned with flour and blankets.
(The sun smiles over my gumboots and I
driven on by greed and luck. For the sake
of a good feed we murder our way across borders
unseen.) It's dirt cheap so we buy a big block,
sea on three sides, sit in a corner
count up the tides. Flog some sense
into the trees and ringbarking’s a miracle
of endurance but we go at it like there's
no tomorrow. Thumbs hammered flat chat
to the milking pastures. Wattle
and daub, brickwork entangles me.
Rains come and go, mares eat oats
where the dam rots down and does eat oats.
Water loafs around all day and little lambs
eat ivy. Prosecute those who trespass against us
as we forget our great wronging of them.
Why bother crops out of the ground
when the hill sits still against geology's
dull blade? That's how we live now
– frontier alchemists making money
of the dirt. It's lonely here so we stretch
a thin wire out over the desert, build
a million miles of rabbity fence.
Out of nowhere the radio speaks to us
and the air vibrates into atoms.
Let's tote all up. Boundless pasture,
our coal will burn for a thousand years,
this sun blots reason out. A nation now,
we speak with one forked tongue.
Three anthems but no lyrics we remember.
No flag but hoist the washing. Nostalgia
overwhelms me. Transport me over a farcical sea.
Feed me salt biscuits, flat booze that gets me drunk.
Chain me in old fetishes, punish me
with ocean views. I'll re-enact the lot.
I'll be a stripling on a small and weedy beast.
I'll send the flintstones flying. I'll go on
quiz shows in black and white. No test pattern
now to stump the wits. It's a one-day invasion.
The pitch shrinks. The flesh is stupid, the mind obeys
and crimes committed drunkenly dementia
soon forgets. Let's take a cake knife
at this hill, make out a white man's house.
Can't say fairer than that. So robber kings
cheer on, their harbour full of hobby canvas.
Give us each day our dusty cup,
temptation delivers from boredom.
Give us the hundred tracks to go down,
a freeway looming behind. The sun
built out, we vote for the greenhouse.
Time slips its old noose over our necks.
Stars and stripes wave above. Just
show us the way to the next little dollar.
Oh don't ask why. Everybody's happy.
A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't
you bet your life we are.
my flag
is a beach towel, heavy with sand
whole tribes tangled in it
involuntary sky – heart’s refuge
in the true of dark
mind’s refuge in the heart
the flag
must be all things to all
a mirror aloft, reflection unfurling
that should make everyone happy
in a room with queen you’d see the queen
and she’d see you, her subject
one among the many flags
in the bush would be magpies to fly in and tangle
catch them like that when they get territorial
on the front of the big boss’s car
more of chrome, dark tarmac
in the night you’d choose the stars
bright pinpricks from another sky
in which the true flag must fly
be windblown, limp
from the accustomed pole
a square cut of heaven
and so strings attached
a calling
the same words
summon me often
because – to put it simply –
they know what I mean
the bush
1
which is the wild out-of-order
snakes hunting under tin left lie
garden too thick for weeds this un-naming
it chorus birds commonly bright
2
minds its business we make ours
yields to spirit its sustaining
best model from democracy
dark wordless turn, self tending, ruthless
absent of law it breathes to burn
this one tree left cut down to size
so when it’s mine it is no longer
flimsy instinct joins logic to one wish
the guiltless having of all this
3
another sun spun, a next dicey sky
of maverick opinion, told you
inscrutable polysemy
song between the cityfolds
come clumsy in its own confiding
all unfinished business
all neighbouring and all horizon
the bush is a trap sets camouflage
falls in and all it catches bush
4
blade hailing the forest legend made failing
memorabilia: smug of stockwhip, blanket
gathers as a blowfly to what was once meat
takes no convincing – its job to go nowhere
team of madmen tied to one tune
a tidemark shows where we retreat
5
midst of limits, most natural of histories
gospel uncut in the wood
a waste of pages cash scrawls down
the bush beside my means as such
pack up but where you come from’s
as gone as what was here
so we among all animals are party to
take down each sky made out in ribs
a cross hangs bright above
6
one species relieving the others of hope
barks at the edge of night a dog burning
the hinge of sentience it mourns
much admired the passage of rites
because once you were my besotted
a frightened face to rouse such love
leaves tracks to run a course paws take
this shallowest of burials
the bush is an animal gathering home
and our great Ark unmeaning
Blokes
Blokes are always coming over, in their droves
or in their ones. Wear thongs in summer, boots
for weather. No one says mind my clean floor love.
Arriving in their utes and vans, they’re always
round here, day and night, courting our Penelope.
They know what’s next, what’s what, when, why.
Blokes know what to do and what you need
and even if you can’t decide. Blokes’ll sort your
trouble out. If it aint broke it’s easy fixed. Take
care but not responsible. They’re always late
and rude and wet. Blokes like to be outside
the best. They dare the ozone at their backs.
Sleep with someone else. They say things you
wouldn’t. Feel less, do more. You’ve got to love
them though. Hide in their frothy beards to weep.
You feel for them, the camera shies. They won’t
be tied, won’t be predicted. But cuddle them
and know they’re bad. Take them all for granted.
Blokes won’t take hints. Needn’t tell them.
They slink away to shed when glum. Grow darker
in the moody scrub and shed their lacks among
the fauna. They won’t be caught, they get away.
Get down to pub and dob and dob, until they’re
almost in the clink. They tell their temporary
comrades. Blokes tell the truth and when they
don’t they’ve got the story all worked out.
They know the pecking order. How to fit, not rock
the boat. Blokes make a play for the affections.
Trust the passing moment, loathe permanence
of plans. Blokes are slaves of circumstance. They
can’t help being rough with stuff, have to give it
all a test. See if it’s well made or not. It’s not
their fault the way they are, was done
to them as blokelings.
Blokes are mates or so they say. Won’t let
a bastard down. The blokiest are your best mates.
Your mates are blokes if you’re a bloke. Women
can be mates or ladies. Can’t be blokes. Mate
with them to make new playmates. Blokes or no.
If you’re a bloke you mustn’t mate with other
blokes. It doesn’t work. Dreadful thing.
Unblokemanlike. Besides, how could
you tell your mates?
Some things are better left unsaid. And out of
earshot of the nagging blokes won’t need
your looking after. Dinners tabled, washing done.
Blokes go lean in filth and glue their rotting jeans
together. They know it’s bad luck to speak
when gesturing would do the trick.
As insects lead the faster life, they’ve lost a leg
before you’ve finished telling the precautions.
They’re enemies of labour saving, scoff at
ingenuity. Do a thing the hardest way. Clog noses
and their ears fall off, eyes are full of filings.
Drown in beer to build a gut. It shows what
blokey blokes they are. They suffer beef to have
the dripping. Sneak from the ward at last
for fags, and curse their curtailed freedom.
That’s with a final breath.
Bloody this and bloody that is what your bloke
ghost says at last. And when the dirt’s all spread,
well sifted – where are those blokey souls all fled?
They’ve gone to blokeland – hellish spot. The
Shed Celestial. Dim or Bright to their deservings.
Still, there’s more. Never was a drought of blokes.
Not since the war. No – blokelings grow to
blokehood’s full bloom. Bloke’s abound and pull
their weight. Show some leg, offer beer.
Call for blokes – they will appear.
When all else fails no need to fear.
Just stir him up. Your bloke is here.
