What It Feels Like Brendan Ryan, Recent Work Press 2025, was launched by Ray Liversidge on 2 August 2025 at the Warrnambool Library
Thank you everyone for coming today to help celebrate Brendan Ryan’s latest collection. Any new and selected is not only a recognition of a writer’s longevity but an acknowledgement of a continued contribution to the poetry canon. What it Feels Like is no exception. Congratulations Brendan and thank you for the opportunity to launch this wonderful collection.
As most of you here today would know, the majority of Brendan’s poetry is informed by his upbringing on a dairy farm in Panmure, a small town just down the road from here. I mean, the titles of his books are a dead giveaway, aren’t they: A Paddock in His Head; Smalltown Soundtrack; The Lowlands of Moyne.
Even though he defiantly called his first book Why I am Not a Farmer, Brendan, by his own admission, in the book’s Author’s Note, confesses that “it was only when I began to write about my country upbringings that the resulting poems appeared to take on a life of their own.” He goes on to say that what drove his interest in the early poems was to capture a “realistic depiction of dairy farming from a rural perspective”.
The blurb on the back of the book refers to this type of writing as ‘hard pastoral’. It is what we encounter in those bucolic bards, Seamus Heaney and Les Murray. It is also what we see in that lesser-known Australian Phillip Hodgins, a poet who was taken from us far too young. By Brendan’s admission, all three poets have influenced his writing. The sensibility of these four poets is a far cry from the sentimental evocations of rural life by the likes of Banjo Paterson and CJ Dennis.
In the confessional poem at the beginning of this book, ‘Self-portrait’, Brendan speaks of the ambivalence he feels to being “pulled to the farm I grew up on / walking through paddocks I can’t live with.” Yet, earlier in the poem while he confesses that “These paddocks have made me”, he admits that he feels like “I’m a visitor with a vested interest.” Even though the poet may identify as an outsider, he knows he always will be “walk(ing) ahead / into paddocks and more poems.”
Any reader of Brendan’s poetry would know that there are familiar themes and patterns that repeat in all his collections: the sometime harshness and hard reality of country life; the brutal treatment of animals in the dairy industry; the tender and honest portraits of family. But, as he says in his Author’s Note, this “should not suggest a limited view of the subject matter, but rather that the ideas and prompts to write often mine territories that seem to me, to some extent, inexhaustible.”
Again, in his Author’s note Brendan admits that at times his father “was a presence or voice to rail against.” In his first book Why I am Not a Farmer and the eponymous poem, the poet states “I was raised on questions / my father couldn’t answer.” In his subsequent work Brendan continues to question not only his father, but rural communities and what he believes are their sometimes boring, mundane and grisly rituals. There are many examples I could chose, but one of each will suffice. He bears witness to the boring:
I meet my neighbours at the clothesline
the small talk falls between us
like pegs in the basket.
…………………………………‘Argle St’
He bears witness to the mundane:
A small town’s gift to the world
may be a card night that stops people
from sitting around and staring at themselves.”
…………………………………‘Return to the Western District’
And he bears witness to grisly rituals, of which there are way too many to mention. I mean, there’s a lot of blood and guts and offal in these 250 pages! I have chosen this one as an example of writing of the highest order:
In the poem ‘Eel conditions’ a 14-year-old Brendan and his sibling or siblings go hunting for eels in a creek. They are bought together in a kind of, what he calls, blood lust when they “pull out the cricket bats we’d been carrying / and bash the eel’s head to smithereens.” Just look at what the language is doing here. We not only imagine the moment of the bat coming down on the eel’s oily head, but we also actually feel the violent impact when we read that word smithereens.
But I don’t want to paint too bleak a picture of Brendan’s poetry as you will find humour in his work. Humour which he employs almost as a safety mechanism to deal with committing and bearing witness to unfortunate, unnecessary, prerequisite and required acts carried out on animals. This from ‘The blessing’:
… my father concentrates
on saving this cow
by kicking it in the ribs,
which is a type of country blessing.”
Then there’s moments of acceptance and giving thanks for life’s small mercies. Here’s the young poet finding refuge and maybe composing his first poem in his head.
Mum walks out into the paddock
hurls tea leaves down the drain
we empty the toilet bucket into
some days I lay under the house
listening to the scrape
of chairs on linosome days are rosaries that never end.”
…………………………………‘I know, I know’
And so, we come to the new poems in this collection. Here we have tender memories of growing up with his parents and his nine siblings on the farm. Reflections on being a parent himself and his relationship with his daughters. Observations on dodgy relatives and the boorish rituals of some community folk. As the poet says in wonderfully titled ‘The snaking accuracy of cow trails’:
I’m always returning as if in an endless loop
seeking attachments the Buddhists say I should
release….
However, over a third of the 30 new poems mention his father. Earlier I referred to Brendan’s fraught relationship he had with his father and quoted the lines: “I was raised on questions / my father couldn’t answer.”. In the very first of the new poems titled ‘Distances’ are the lines: “I also learned to translate / the far-off looks of my father.”. So here we note the subtle shift over time from the son demanding answers to seeking understanding.
In several poems Brendan writes about him and his siblings nursing their father during his final days. “This family of ten fills a roster to care for a father” (‘The roster’). The poem captures the family gathered around their father on what will be his last day on earth. It has a line with an exquisite and germane simile which I think will stay with me forever: “Mum held his hand while his breaths gurgled like a tractor climbing uphill”. I challenge anyone to read that poem and not be moved to tears.
What I admire and what shines through in Brendan’s poetry is an unflinching honesty and sincerity in truth and storytelling; a telling that traces the past and embraces the present and ongoing personal and historical exploration and discovery. In an early poem is the line: “These are the histories I’m stuck with.”. In one of the new poems there is: “I walk into the past and write into the present.”.
And well may you keep walking (sometimes like a cow) into paddocks and more poems Brendan, because just as you can’t get enough paddocks – which are “more cleansing than a catholic Mass” as you say in one of the new poems – we can’t get enough of your poetry. And with that I would like to congratulate Brendan on this major achievement and declare What It Feels Like officially launched.
– Ray Liversidge
Ray Liversidge is a poet based in southwest Victoria. His latest book is Riverside: New & Selected Work 2003-2025 published by Interactive Publications. His other books are: …of a sudden; Oradour-sur-Glane; no suspicious circumstances: portraits of poets (dead); The Barrier Range; Triptych Poets: Issue One; The Divorce Papers; Obeying the Call. His verse novel The Barrier Range was adapted for stage and performed as Seeking Fabled Waters at the 2010 Melbourne Writers Festival. He is the winner of the 2010 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize. His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals and anthologies here and in other countries including the US, Canada, UK, Scotland, Ireland and Spain. See: www.poetray.wordpress.com
What It Feels Like Brendan Ryan is available from https://recentworkpress.com/product/what-it-feels-like/
