Ye Olde Bush Ballad

[Rimeriter]

AusBloke.jpg

" Onya " the ol' bush ballad.
Jim.

[Stephen Whiteside]

By the way, David, what exactly is the purpose of the 'encryption', do you know? To me it smacks of elitism and exclusion, which I would have thought is the very antithesis of good writing. Sales figures tend to support this, too.

[Rimeriter]

An Extraction from a previous post.

In the June issue of Writers Voice,
the quarterly magazine of the
NSW Fellowship of Australian Writers,
the Poetry Editor, David Berger, wrote the following:

“A good poem should show something and not tell it.
Ballads were fine for earlier cultures,
but a modern poem is a reaction to an emotion
which is then linguistically encrypted and transmitted through time.
When this poem is unpacked,
the reader should be able to feel that original emotion: the anger, the fear, the joy.”
***

Well, David -
linguistic encrytion is code for making it impossible to understand without a code breaker, then it has to be unpacked.

Blimey, far too much work for we average readers.

To ‘see’ the images.
To ‘feel’ the emotion.
To ‘enjoy’ the easily written, easily understood writers work,
is far superior to having to decode it.


Understandably, linguistic encrytion is vital to an item which is to be a limited publication, then cloistered in the bowls of academia,
rarely if ever to see the light of day.


Writers will earn a much more handsome income, writing to suit a larger, wider, understanding and appreciative audience.
***

Jim Spain – the Rimeriter.
A Writer of Rhyme.
A backward poet who writes inverse.

[Neville Briggs]

Very good points, Stephen.


I would argue that Paterson, Lawson, Dennis, etc are still highly regarded; as evidenced by the fact that they are published in at least four recent anthologies, edited by modernist poets and published and marketed by substantial publishing houses.

I think the best response we can make to any challenge of relevance is to work at producing stuff, based on traditional forms, that could be as enduring as the work of the Bulletin bush poets. A big ask in the modern world. But is it impossible ?
I think the key is not attention to how Lawson, Dennis et al structured their works, or even their themes, but how they brought to their work an acute observation of their time and talked about it in just the right words to make their voice a communal expression.

I sort of hope that this Hunter Bush Poets Fest at the end of October will be a pattern for the sort of thing that might crank up the appreciation of the possibilities that can be explored in our bush poetry mob.

[David Campbell]

Thanks, Stephen. David Berger was probably being deliberately provocative (maybe that's where the 'encryption' reference comes from?), but I couldn't let the issue go unchallenged...particularly as the previous poetry editor had said something similar a year ago. And you're right about respect...that comparison with the art world is a telling one.

Neville: No, I'm not saying that bush poetry has to be a ballad and, given that one of the basic elements of a ballad is that it tells a story, I would have been hard-pressed to fulfil that requirement in what was basically a letter to the editor. This was just a reminder to the readers of the magazine that rhythm and rhyme can still be relevant today. I agree that our challenge is to produce work that can endure, but that requires ready access to a wide audience...something that Paterson, Lawson and Dennis had, but poetry, in any form, doesn't really have today. As has been pointed out in another thread, we need to get our work 'out there', where it can be seen and discussed. That's why I write newspaper articles about it and send poems like the one above to literary magazines. And why Stephen has been writing and promoting poems about the logging in Toolangi.

Cheers
David

[Bob Pacey]

I can not see that it is something that we need to stress out about. There are a multitude of opinions out there and the old story about pleaseing some of the people all of the time comes to mind.

We can only defend our cause ( If you could call it that ) whenever the need arises as we have all done and will continue to do as the need arises.

You will always get people of different opinion stirring the pot as I call it from time to time but that is just the nature of the beast.


Bob

[Stephen Whiteside]

Thanks, Marty. I've read something like this before. The difficulty I have is that when you read these poets, they're not actually writing rhyme and metre at all - it's something else again.

[Stephen Whiteside]

What you say is true, Bob, but I still think it is interesting the way David is taking it up to academia in the way that he is - and also the way they are responding. It seems to me there is a softening of the traditional literary antagonism to rhyming verse. Twenty years ago there was a 'right' way and a 'wrong' way. There is now more tolerance of variety. It's the same with footballers' hair-cuts. They used to all have long hair. Then they all had short hair. Now there is no prevailing style at all. Everybody just does their own thing, and nobody really cares.

[David Campbell]

I understand what you're saying, Marty, and certainly don't expect poetry to have the mass appeal it once did. But if poetry in general is a niche market then bush verse is a 'niche within a niche', and I'm simply not happy to accept the status quo. I reckon there are boundaries that are worth pushing, and that means taking different forms of poetry into areas where you mightn't normally find them. Of course it may well be ignored, but as long as there's a chance that some will sit up and take notice, then it's worth doing. If the poem at the start of this thread makes even one reader of the magazine stop and think then I'll be happy. If we only cater for our niche markets then that's exactly what they'll remain.

Cheers
David