poetry

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Rochford Street Review was saddened to learn of the death of poet and activist Kevin Higgins on 10 January in Galway, Ireland. Kevin was a great friend of the Review and we had maintained a regular correspondence over the past few years. His poetry combined technique with content and his biting political satire provoked impacts far beyond the poetry community.

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Michael Dransfield was a prodigy whose life was cut short. When he died at 24 he had already published three books of poetry, since then another five volumes have eventually been published. By the time UQP released his Collected Poems in 1987, Dransfield’s reputation had grown, his poetry had been discovered by a broad readership, and his Collected Poems became the best seller in the entire series.

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In 1960 Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry appeared and promoted the influence of the Black Mountain poets worldwide. I bought a copy in Sydney in 1968 and discovered Robert Duncan’s poetry and poetics . These poetics were like nothing I’d ever come across: for example, to read a poet from the second wave of modernism whose style seemed free from a contemporary sense of fashion gave me a sense of liberation

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Things that inspired me were experiences that created an “opening of the field” to use a phrase from Robert Duncan who was one poet who inspired me, both by his poetry and his example. I learned to write by reading poetry and then seeking by out these poets whose work inspired me. Certain teachers have appeared along the way, though they weren’t always the regular kind of teacher. They appeared in many guises, a primary school teacher, an old fisherman, a fishing writer, and a master pastry chef, a priest and a minister, painters and photographers, professors. The others were my eternals: William Blake, Shelley, Emily Dickinson, Mallarme, Rimbaud, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop and several others whose books travel with me everywhere I go.

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