Skip to main content

Les and I


I don kno much of the Australian language: a little bit of cricket commentary and the Fosters ad (Australian for Beeeer) : kind of sums up all I know of their parole. So when at Les Murray’s poetry reading, the lady did “bum chairs” instead of a “head count”, I had to hear her say that again. She whispered it to me.
Ever thought of doing a body count that way? It is much more interesting! I fell in love with the language instantly. It is so cool.

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever?

I got to meet Les, the Poet of the Outback considered as “ Australia’s National poet, the voice of Australia”, and he is definitely a fun poet. As a student he had the gall to say balls to Keats and the rest of the English Poets who were taught in the Universities. A thing of beauty ……and all that stuff. “English poetry is irrelevant to us. We are another nation and we have our own poetry. In fact one of the finest Australian Poets was Frank McNamara- a convict. And he is not being taught in the schools or the universities.” He said waving his mehendied hands. (It was obvious that he was touched by India.)

His take on intellectuals is interesting: “It is a new aristocracy of Marxism.” And then said he on poetry, “In poetry, our human consciousness, body and dreams are fused. If we accept the notion that human beings are fundamentally poetic, rather than rational or irrational, it has some interesting consequences.”

A civilization run on poetry

Les is much influenced by Aboriginal ideas. “In my country poetry ruled for over sixty thousand years before prose came with the settlers in 1788. I like the penetrating Aboriginal ideas about dreaming and their idea of running a civilization on poetry. For them poetry is religion. And they don’t like to call their stories mythology, they just refer to them as dreams-which they believe to be true. And the sacred laws, which govern the lives of the traditional Aborigines are in poetry.”

Yregami

One of Les’ poems is titled so and I wanted to know the meaning of it, wondering aloud if it was the language of the Aborigines.

With a twinkle in his eyes he told me that it is English. What a silly question! Les definitely knows how to have fun. So figure this out for yourself- it is the language of poets: Yregami
Here is a poem by Les. He said “Nature understands itself and gets on by being itself. Whenever we try to understand it we get it wrong.”

The Meaning Of Existence

Everything except language

Knows the meaning of existence.

Trees, planets, rivers, time

Know nothing else. They express it.

Moment by moment as the universe.

Even this fool of a body

Lives it in a part, and would

Have full dignity within it

But for the ignorant freedom

of my talking mind.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: An Autobiography Of A Sex Worker by Nalini Jameela

I am 51 years old. And I would like to continue to be a sex worker.” This is how the candid and defiant opening statement in Nalini Jameela’s autobiography in Malayalam, Oru Lymgika-thozhilaliyude Atmakadha, goes. It at once throws a challenge at society’s double standards — harsh on prostitutes and soft on the clients. Nalini Jameela, who is the coordinator of the Kerala Sex Workers’ Forum, reveals her sordid story with no trace of compunction. Nalini was a 24-year-old widow when she entered the profession to feed her two children. At that time she did not think about the repercussions of her act. She writes, “I was earning Rs 4.50 at a tile factory near Trissur. My mother-in-law served me with an ultimatum to either give her five rupees a day to look after my children or leave the house. I recounted my woes to a friend, who introduced me to Rosechechi. Rosechechi promised me Rs 50 if I spent time with a man. The first thought that came to my mind was that my children would be looked...

SnooTea: Just My Style

(Photographs by Minu Ittyipe) It began on a lark to spiff up my morning cuppa. Oh well, I just wanted a change from what I had been drinking all my life. I am not complaining about the faithful brew that I stir up with tea dust, it does merrily improve with two extra spoonfuls of sugar but I was just plain bored with the regular. My concept of a cup of tea was corralled in the traditional Indian style- coppery coloured liquid topped with plenty of milk and sugar but now there was in me this undeniable thirst for a more delicate bouquet. Tranquilitea, Coonoor Curiously, though grown in our own backyard, few of us have heard of the orthodox leaf tea, forget the Silver Tips, Golden Tips and the White Tea etc.. that quietly find their way to the export market. To make a foray into this relatively unknown terrain, I headed for Tranquilitea, a tea lounge in the Nilgiris, for a cup of “Tippy” tea. On a sober note, you are cautioned not to confuse “Tippy” with the more commonplace “Tipsy” for...

At 17, V S Achuthanandan joined the Communist Party

Born on October 20, 1923, VS Achuthanandan joined the Communist Party in 1940 when he was just 17 years old. Abject poverty and deprivation were the only things that flourished in Punnapra, Kerala, in those days. My father had a grocery shop close to our house so we did not suffer too badly when we were young. He was a social activist and a SNDP Yogam leader and respected by all.  He had leased some land from the landlords in Vendhalathara and cultivated it. He built a house there too. In this way, along with the grocery store, we could make ends meet. Punnapra school had only up to class three, so I joined Kalarkode school to do class four. It was in an area where the upper caste lived and one had to walk past the temple to go to school. The elite would ridicule the less fortunate, beat and chase them away. Many children discontinued their studies. I was once attacked by the well-to-do students and they asked me. “Who are you to walk this way to school?” I tried to st...