Kill Your Darlings

[Stephen Whiteside]

Has anybody seen Kill Your Darlings? It's a new film based on an incident in the lives of Lucien Carr, Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.

I really felt like I was in the enemy camp. Carr and Ginsberg in particular talk about releasing poetry from the prison of rhyme and metre. They especially have in their firing line Ogden Nash - one of my favourite poets!

My recommendation? See the film, but don't take it personally!

[Terry]

Hi Stephen

I'm almost ashamed to admit I rarely go to movies; can't see this one enticing me either, although as you say it's probably worth going just to see and hear another point of view.

Cheers Terry

[Neville Briggs]

I really felt like I was in the enemy camp

I don't understand ?? is art a matter of drawing up battle lines ? I hope not.

[Stephen Whiteside]

Yes, they most certainly made it sound like that.

I think in truth, Neville, art is often about drawing up battle lines. Each art movement - or revolution - is inspired by its perceptions of the inadequacies of the previous one. Entrenched opinions and tastes are very hard to overcome, and it takes that sort of white hot intensity to get anything new off the ground.

[Neville Briggs]

I know there was a time in Australian poetry when the stuff coming from New York was considered true modernism and everyone who didn't follow suit was slated. This was the so-called culture wars of the sixties, I think.

Les Murray's response to the culture wars was to declare himself a party of one. He doesn't really fit any neat category. An example to follow I reckon.

If the writers of this film that you refer to, think that Ogden Nash is conservative conformity, I think that they don't know or appreciate Ogden Nash.

Entrenched opinions and tastes are very hard to overcome, and it takes that sort of white hot intensity to get anything new off the ground.

Excellent observation Stephen. Do you think this applies to " bush poetry" as well.

[Stephen Whiteside]

I don't think the writers of the film necessarily have an opinion one way or the other, but they were telling a story, and the characters in that story most certainly believed that Ogden Nash was inferior. There's nothing unusual about that. Every revolution tries to crush the establishment. The passage of time usually sorts these things out. I think Ogden Nash was a wonderful poet, but I can quite understand Ginsberg reacting as powerfully against him as he did, and I'm glad he did.

It most certainly applies to bush poetry, Neville. I was thinking back this afternoon to a time when I was invited to perform at the Montsalvat Poetry Festival. I think it was 1984. I wasn't invited as an individual, but I was a member of a cheerful gang of anarchists that called themselves the "Street Poets" (they handed out poetry broadsheets to office workers in the Bourke Street Mall every day, amongst other things), and they had been invited to be part of the show.

It was very much a 'free verse' event, and the organisers were a little naive, I think, asking the Street Poets to be part of it all. The SPs weren't pro rhyming verse or pro free verse, they were just especially inclusive. It is probably fair to say they enjoyed gathering outcasts to their fold, or anybody that was something of an artistic misfit. They also had plenty of musos, and the odd ex-con. They restored my confidence after I'd been rejected by the literati, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

Anyway, I took to the stage and did my 'rhyming verse thing', and the audience proceeded to hiss at me. This was not entirely unexpected. The Street Poets had filled the front row of seats, which was something of a political act in itself. I stood it for a while, but couldn't see the point of staying on stage beyond a certain point, as the hostility showed no sign of letting up. It was all rather amusing, really, though a little traumatic.

These days I seem to have found my 'niche', writing for children. One thing about children is they do like rhyming verse, and they are not susceptible to changing fashions, though parents and teachers are, of course.

[Neville Briggs]

Anyway, I took to the stage and did my 'rhyming verse thing', and the audience proceeded to hiss at me. ....... I stood it for a while, but couldn't see the point of staying on stage beyond a certain point, as the hostility showed no sign of letting up.

That's disgraceful behaviour Stephen. To think that in our society there are people so small minded and despicable. Probably the same people would gladly take part in a protest against racism, by doing that they would condemn themselves.

[Stephen Whiteside]

It was a bit over the top. I know rhyming verse is still very much on the outer, but my own feeling is that antipathy to it has actually softened considerably over the last thirty years.

[Stephen Whiteside]

I should add that I always felt I got the last laugh. The event ran over two days. "The Australian" sent a journalist on the Saturday to interview the poets, and a photographer on the Sunday. I was there on the Sunday. I was wearing a 'funny hat', and was the only poet to get my mug in the paper! I think a few people might have got their noses out of joint about that!