Friday, August 5, 2022

Andrew Burke : TRIBUTE TO PHIL HALL

from Report from the Hall Society, Vol. 1 No. 1

 

 

 

 

Some of my best poems were written by Phil Hall. Here’s how come …

          In 2009 I was living in Perth, Western Australia, when a Canadian friend rang and asked me to his place for an informal gathering to welcome a fellow Canadian, a poet by the name of Phil Hall and his wife. The poet was from Perth in Canada but that was all we had in common. I had met and liked Earle Birney and George Bowering when they had travelled Australia in years gone by so I was interested and went along.

          We met and got on famously, as they say. One of our touchstones was Bernstein’s book Poetics. Someone quoted ‘Poetry is like a swoon / with this exception: / poetry brings you to your senses.’ Others drank wine – we talked poetics and various poets. And our friendship began.

          Some weeks later, I had a heart attack necessitating open heart surgery – but, as a public patient, I had to wait my turn. Phil had travelled on but by email correspondence we decided to deepen our friendship (and keep my mind off the operation) by co-writing a poem. Andrew was thinking of renga and the Japanese poet Shikibu. Phil was thinking of Ornette Coleman’s two jazz quartets improvising together. So we started trading 5-liners to be shuffled and written into 10 liners. I can pick out who said what in our first hand:

          Whistling without charts

          I praise all swoops and calls

          old red-throat has come back
         
gentle violin-maker to the countryside

          a left footer’s choir
         
all language metaphor

          I air my tongue
         
and dream placid jaws

          bawdy songs once belted 

          grace

… but when we had finished 15 we had meshed so well we couldn’t hear our own voices but a minichoir of two-as-one.

          A perceptive publisher saw the complete SHIKIBU SHUFFLE and liked it enough to publish it as a chapbook: rob mclennan of above/ground press . Phil wasn’t finished with his creative input! So for a run of 200 copies Phil stuck individual art pieces on each copy! And, because he had them, he stamped each individual copy fore and aft with rubber stamps – on my copy there’s a seahorse and four trapeze artists – each copy is a collector’s edition!

          I’ve since acquired some of Phil’s titles and read them with more understanding than when we first met! I love some more than others and have tried to ape his style – but came a cropper. Here’s one I quote from as guide to Phil’s stance –

first – my first language – nonsense – over-hugged my second language – sense
later my first language – sense – dampened my second language – nonsense

on the first day of deer season i rode a cock-hearse

until an actual poem came brandishing its turret key – but no language 

… and it finishes with this indicative line so I had to find one

from page 15 of WHITE PORCUPINE (book hug; Toronto 2007)

Phil Hall has taught me so much by his example and his productivity that my lazy bones must salute him – and, I might add, his publishers.

Andrew Burke (MA, pHd)

If you want an influence in Burke’s poetry, it is probably more the concept than the syntax, etc. For example:

THE WHEELIE BIN NOVEL

As domestic duty would have it
I went outside with the recyclable rubbish,
staring down at how many newspapers,

cereal boxes, tissues and cosmetic containers
we chuck out – and all the words with them.

There’s a good novel in there, I thought, as I threw more
into the wheelie bin – nouns, adjectives, adverbs,

prepositions, conjunctions, weights and measures,
imperial and decimal. It’s a variety show or

a beehive of human communications, mixed up
with a denouement - a dollop of yoghurt

and some dregs of wine.

 

 

 

Andrew Burke was born in Victoria in 1944, then moved to Western Australia as a toddler. He was educated there, then hitchhiked (in the ‘60s) to further his education at factories, etc, in Sydney. After work at radio stations in Perth, he went on to be a Creative Director in advertising agencies, all the time writing stories, plays and poems. In middle-age he went into academia, studying and lecturing in writing and literature. Burke has published fourteen poetry collections, one novel and a smattering of short stories, book reviews and literary criticism. In 2020, Burke published a NEW & SELECTED which Geoff Page said in The Australian was “a well-judged summary of a life’s work ...”

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