Growing up inside poetry

Summary version by Philip Harvey things said in his reading to the Oblates and Associates on Saturday the 24^th of May 2014.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

The life of poetry is often arriving at such places, though T.S. Eliot in ‘Little Gidding’ is talking of our own lives. It is right to reflect on this poem in the context of the Community of the Holy Name, because Little Gidding was an English religious community itself, operating according to a simple rule, between those two disasters for such spiritual possibility, the dissolution of the monasteries (1536) and the Civil War (1642). Eliot writes that “history is a pattern of timeless moments,” something he found necessary to say in the context of the poem’s composition during the Blitz. Little Gidding was a place of retreat and restoration: “History is now and England.” I quote the poem here also because it was the kind of thing my father read in his study when I was young. We would hear such lines in sermons on Sunday, though it was only later that I would learn the truth of ‘History is now and Australia.’

Eliot was not the poetry I had read to me at that age. There was Norman Lindsay, ‘Banjo’ Paterson, A. A. Milne. Everything was thoroughly Anglo-Australian, one might say. 

The King asked

The Queen, and

The Queen asked

The Dairymaid:
”Could we have some butter for

The Royal slice of bread?”

Everyone in that poem was a capital person, even the Alderney cow. Meanwhile, there was another kind of poetry I heard every week not in the bedroom, but next door in the church. It is extraordinary to consider now: “O come, let us sing unto the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.” Every Sunday we prayed and sang words like Psalm 95. This was worship, it was also an education in poetry and how it works in public. The rhythms, vocabulary and meaning became part of my permanent experience, a very concrete way of seeing the world. The Bible itself is a treasure house of poetry, the Psalms in particular serving as models for poets as well guides for how each of us prays.

We each have favourite poems and memory of lines or whole poems, works of value we carry around with us. Not everyone though needs to start writing poetry themselves. This compulsion started up in me quite early, inspired by such people as Dylan Thomas and a poem like ‘Fern Hill’:

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green…

I memorised such lines. It was the way he captured the mood in his amazing choice of words, but also in the timing. He got you to feel what he was talking about, which is one of the gifts of poetry, of any kind. University expanded awareness of the intricate and vast array of English poetry. Literature was a logical subject for me and I was blessed with many great teachers, including poets like Vincent Buckley, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, and Peter Steele. They affirmed this way of talking and listening and thinking as essential for living. All of experience could potentially be spoken of and recognised. Poetry is a form of shared experience.

Literature offers narrow scope for work prospects, so after mucking around for a couple of years (nowadays they call it a gap year) I decided that as I spent much creative time in libraries, I may as well work there too. This is why you will find me on Mondays at the CHN Library, where I have been since taking over from the good stewardship of Leigh Oliver. My other four days are spent running another library of spirituality, the Carmelite Library in Middle Park.  This still gives me plenty of time to work on poetry and other writing projects. I am fortunate too to have the job of Poetry Editor at Eureka Street, the Jesuit online journal which many readers will be familiar with, a job that keeps me in touch and in tune with other poets, as well as testing my listening ear.

There is a common wealth of good poetry written by Australians. It was a treat, for example, to hear Gwen Harwood read aloud a poem like ‘Night Thoughts’:

‘Hell is for those who doubt that hell exists.’

One of the elohim, with whom I fight

from 4 a.m. to cockcrow, told me this.

He hit me in the thigh for emphasis.

Is it a dream? If so, the dream persists.

These are words that will not ignore the personal challenges of existence. We read them aloud, but we may listen to them at length in our own solitude. The meaning grows with re-reading.

While we enjoy hearing words read aloud, say Eliot when he talks about cats:

Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw –

For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.

He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:

For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there! 

We know from experience that the majority of our reading is a private matter. We wish to take time over the multiple meanings and in-depth meanings of good writing. There needs to be time for reflection, questioning, understanding. Public reading is valuable, it instructs and entertains, but in poetry as with other reading, we gain by working over time, our own good time, on what someone is telling us with their words. This is certainly true for me. While first impressions can sometimes be accurate, it is familiarity with the person and what they say that tells me if I feel at home with them, or not. 

So I can feel equally at home reading Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Hopkins, Auden or, when time comes around, reading someone like Christina Rossetti to a child:

What is pink? a rose is pink

By a fountain’s brink.

What is red? a poppy’s red

In its barley bed.

What is blue? the sky is blue

Where the clouds float thro’.

What is white? a swan is white

Sailing in the light.

What is yellow? pears are yellow,

Rich and ripe and mellow.

What is green? the grass is green,

With small flowers between.

What is violet? clouds are violet

In the summer twilight.

What is orange? Why, an orange,

Just an orange!