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| 101 Quads (Puncher & Wattmann/Thorny Devil Press) |
101 Quads: A book worth your money and time.
I imagine an event. I’m an archaeologist. I’ve just opened a tomb in – somewhere in the Middle East– and in this tomb which I am the first to enter (Yippity dooo) I find 101 clay tablets inscribed with neat geometrical patterns of letters. I take them back to the University of Euroa Ancient Languages Department and leave them with my good friend, the renowned anthropologist and linguist, Professor Kenneth Slessor.
A few weeks go by. He invites me over for roast beef, a very expensive red wine and to explain that this was the poetry of a little known tribe, the Berryana. He tells me the poems were composed by a Chris Mansell and that she was one of the more prominent and well known members of the South Coast Poets school. The structured layout is called a Quad and was the invention of Mansell herself. He explains that poets of all persuasion have sought a discipline to heighten their language, their message. He throws a loose quote from Thom Gunn at me:
You keep both rule and energy in view
much power in each, most in the balanced two:
Ferocity existing in the fence
built by an exercised intelligence.
(Poem: For Ivor Winters.)
He explains how the technique of these poems forced some words together to make more powerful expressions e.g swordgore (16th tablet) or slipsimpossible (51st tablet); and how the line breaks would tease the mind and suggest multiple avenues for it to proceed along until it found the one the poet intended e.g. in the 43rd tablet: glorious that t / hought that cap / in hand that ca / pacity for thin / king that justi / and so on.
There was a lot to take in. We rested for a while savouring his famous roast beef and a private label red. “Drink slowly young David,” he cautioned. “Both wine and poetry, I assume.” “Got it in one mate,” he said – a little out of character I thought.
“But what of the red bits?” I asked. He pounced straight in. His theory was that they just added to the visual appeal, or maybe were a poem hidden in the poem but he couldn’t really figure that out: a subtext language, a tribal variation. I suggested, somewhat tremblingly, for this was Kenneth Slessor and I held him in awe, that red was the colour of blood, of life, of sunrise and set and visually its presence added extra life to the presentation like the dappled light effect when sunlight breaks through a tree shadow; thus the red sprinkles and spreads life around the words.
He seemed impressed with my interpretation (as was I). He suggested there were many good poems in the collection but he was particularly fond of tablet 20 when two people rescue a baby bird fallen out of a nest. He was impressed the way the description of the nestling changed from ‘an asphalt coloured thing’ to the more lovable ‘little grey’. Here the universal act of human goodness is expressed in a single act of human goodness.
I wondered aloud if any of the poems could be lifted from their ‘cages’ and would work as conventionally set out free verse poems. He was wary of this, suggesting that the disruption to reading and subsequent series of ‘aha’ moments were part of their effect, and indeed their meaning: a bit like the fun you have deciphering an e e cummings poem.
What?, I asked, in the same way that James Cagney and Greta Garbo belong in a square black and white screen. That’s where they have their meaning, their genesis. That’s where they live forever. He nodded, conceding, but not totally happy with the analogy.
We could have spent a lot more time on it but the hour was late, the bottle empty and so I headed home. As I was leaving I suggested to him that it would be a great pity if someone had produced such a clever, inventive, original collection; had taken the trouble to compose so many lyrics, so many moments that sparkled but due to the plague of 73 BC had been denied a celebratory launch party and that all those speeches of praise, balloons and streamers, sparkling mead etc. never happened.
He suggested I write a brief note about it and urge people to buy the book of the tablets now called 101 Quads and published by Puncher and Wattman in collaboration with Thorny Devil Press. And so, at Slessor’s request and my own volition, I have. The book contains many references to peculiarly Australian things such as Ned Kelly which may escape overseas readers but it’s mainly universal. And, while the scans presented here [on Facebook] are of diminished quality, the actual book is a first class print job. Poem 20 about the baby bird; poem 52 about nursing home rockers!
You can buy it, with my endorsement, recommendation and encouragement here:
Facebook, September 2020 (101 Quads will come out officially in 2021)
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