Brett R. Dionysius was born in
Dalby, Queensland (1969). He is the Director of Fringe Arts Collective Inc., a
non-profit arts organisation promoting the work of emerging, developing and
established poets. With Melissa Ashley, he coordinates the Subverse: Queensland Poetry
Festival, the major, annual, literary event for poets and poetry in
Queensland. With Paul Hardacre, he edits the papertiger CD-Rom,
international poetry journal.
In 1995, he collaborated with
printmaker, Danny Yates to produce a limited edition artist's book, The
Barflies Chorus, published by LyreBird Press, Townsville, Queensland.
In 1997, he was awarded an Individual Project Grant from Arts Queensland to
write a collection of poetry, Bacchanalia.
In 1997/1998, he collaborated with
Sam Wagan Watson and Liz Hall-Downs on the Blackfellas, Whitefellas and Wetlands,
Brisbane City Council, 'Brisbane Stories' web-site project to produce a virtual
gallery of poems exploring the Indigenous, European and natural heritage of the
Boondall Wetlands. In 1998, he was awarded the Harri Jones Memorial Prize for
Poetry,
for poets under the age of 37, granted by the University of Newcastle.
An audio CD of the poetry from the
Blackfellas,
Whitefellas and Wetlands project was released in
2000. In 2000, his first solo collection of poetry Fatherlands, was
published by Five Islands Press, Wollongong, NSW - in the New Poets Series 7
program. In 2000, he was awarded a project grant from the Literature Fund of
the Australia Council to write a verse novel, Universal Andalucia.
He lives with his wife, Melissa
Ashley and his daughter Rhiannon in Annerley, Brisbane.
Work in Progress
Universal Andalucia
1. The
Mad Cow of Time
Across the freeway from the last
soft-serve BP petrol station before
the Bosphorus, not far from where
the Great King cum dominatrix, Xerxes, gave its waters 300
lashes for impudence,
(Circa 480 BC), Baldwin (our
obese hero -
a
hereditary problem not one from over eating)flops down in a small
triangle
of scale-rough medusa grass, decorated with the fallen
milk-teeth of Attica.
These seven cyclopean ribbed condoms,
with the ultra-opaqueness of exited spermatozoa ring the
Western traveller.
Murmur complexes for their lost Parian motherlode. Here is
Baldwin. Bull-necked.
A delta of sweat fans out, waterfalls down his Aswan High
Dam love-handles
as he perches on Byzantion's juicy marrow. The Athenian
settler-city
ground into bonemeal for the new
Attaturk International airport.
A German built fighter/bomber salutes
his arrival; the jet's metal skin rigor mortis resplendently
embedded in 1970's
concrete shoe-stand. Its' Mighty Mouse
nose-cone, snooty with uber
alis
ingenuity; this model airplane aficionado's recurring wet
dream.
Baldwin tries to get his head around
the mad cow of time. Constantinople
powdered the sieve-lips of merchants, concubines, astrologers & con-artists
smooth as hashish. Now the Ottoman
stucco flakes off too.
The West is Best (right
Jim-boy?)
The Lizard/construction King shows
the East how to cut costs - stuffing polystyrene nuggets
into chick-dumb mouths of cement building blocks.
Only a mosh-pit, 7.4 on the Richter
scale delivers a Doors
concert sized death toll & 40,000 Riders
on the Storm.
Nowhere, the comforting red & green
of a steam engine or a Bofors
AA gun;
the centrepieces of sacred Australian,
Rotary & Lions parks. Only a Delian journeyman's pre-pubescent
marble-work,
scattered around this open-air museum.
Baldwin gazes up the shit-laced strait
to where the Black Sea colonies grubbed
for the universal glory of the Greek city-states.
Thinks of a jungle-gym of reasons
why the earth could not stay flat
& the limp phallus of history
could not get it up all night.
2. A Four Hundred Room Harem
The hair of the beard of the Prophet
is hard to see behind 3mm of bullet
proof glass, but Baldwin scrutinises
all of Mohamed's eclectic DNA samples -
fingernail clippings, footprint cast;
has a fit over the ornate lacquered
box said to contain Islam's big toe.
Baldwin squeezes in beside arrow
slits of black wool & Jean-Paul Gaultier wrap-arounds,
as he tries to catch
the eye of the cleric (also
with beard) reciting Koranic verses over the PA
system from inside his miniature
wooden jump-castle. He is oblivious
to the core meltdown of inter-cultural
courtesy; of the mostly male Italian
tour group's think-tank on the geometry of Roxanne's gym
body & her bleach
blonde curls sending the Turkish army
guard into a frenzy of groin scratching
with the butt of his submachinegun.
Baldwin grabs his wife's arm, spins her
around to face a wall hung with antique swords, daggers
& battleaxes.
"Look,
do you see the size of Mohamed's scimitar? Isn't it huge?"
"Yes
darling, a fine piece of workmanship - probably of Persian design, from Susa or
Babylon."
"Have
a thing for big swords do you?" leers a doctor from Naples, his
group confidence snug as a latex glove.
"Only
if they don't snap on the first thrust shithead - now fuck off before
I shove a
copy of the Koran up your greasy arse!"
Outside Tokapi Palace - ancestral home
of the Ottoman sultans, Baldwin, head down, the Turkish army
guards paid off, finishes his sceptre sized snow-cone.
"I
don't care about seeing the 400 room harem Rox - it cost extra anyway."
"I'll
give you 401 reasons why we're not seeing it now or ever- my little
sultan."
Baldwin, noticing the emerald glint
in his wife's pommel-stone eye's
does not respond.
Watches instead, the miraculous pool
of salt & melted ice-cream at his feet, fraternise a
colony of eunuch ants.
3.
The Boy
Cupid of the PKK
The boy cupid of the PKK armed
with his quiver of polishes; not
the ruby & diamond inlaid cavalry
piece of Sultan Ahmet II - just
the black & brown smear of dubbin slavery, asks Baldwin
for a coin
for his 'collection'. This neutered cherub from Kurdistan on
'holiday'
with his cousin in a seedy hexagonal square adjacent to the 6th
century
ruins of a Byzantine hippodrome.
Asking Roxanne for Queen's money,
a cigarette & a shoe shine.
His twelve year old anger - another
lingual road hazard to dodge,
when Japan Tobacco Inc. fails
to satisfy a Mild Seven mis-communication. The Grand Bazaar
of his mind thumbs through
a labyrinth of insults flushed
from a bluestone gutter memory.
"Fuck
You, then",
is now coca-cola universal
in the Hittite tongue.
4.
Who is the
Hero Here?
Baldwin - he is the hero here;
Meets his life long idol & mentor -
Alexander
the Great in an open market
on the back of silver coin & leaves
dejected that his hero's noble frieze
is only a cheap alloy imitation.
Is there a
true weight to history
he ponders? A purity
of fact
as he rejects the 4,000,000 lira
asking price for a dog-eared,
cockroach chewed & overpriced
Bullfinch's
Mythology.
5. Who the
Fuck is Baldwin?
Is a question Baldwin asks himself,
as he squats on the steps of the Blue Mosque shooing away
postcard sellers;
their accordion squeezed photographs multifaceted as the face-masks of
blow-flies. Who exactly is he, he
muses?
A married, overweight (big-boned
his mother always reassured),
thirty-something, first world, middle-manager who takes far too long to come
according to his wife, Roxanne, & who thinks he's an
expert on ancient history.
To such an extent, that he's worked
out the itinerary of their 2nd honeymoon based on
the same route that Alexander the Great forged through his thirteen year
conquest of Asia Minor.
Now, how fucked up
is that, dear reader?
6. Maybe
it's His First Time Around?
Back in the Arsenal
(arsehole)
Youth Hostel in Sultanahmet, Baldwin,
face flushed, is still livid over
the shoe-shine incident, over being
pursued halfway back to the hostel
by the Kurdish kid. Takes out his frustration on their dirty
clothes, pulverising cotton into the cracked geometry of bathroom floor tiles.
"Did
you feel that, honey?" enquires Roxanne poking her head into the Midnight Express sized shower cubicle.
"No,
what was it, Rox?"
"Nothing
dear, just a tremor."
"An
earthquake, you mean?"
"No,
just a tremor. Remember, I'm from New Zealand - I know the difference between a
tremor and an earthquake."
"Nah,
didn't feel a thing, Rox, didn't feel a thing at all" replies
Baldwin,
watching beads of soap slide off
his shiny new, Blundstone skin.
7. Free to Air
From inside the Pudding
Shop, Baldwin
puts down his pide & watches the little Turkish boy
raise his toy army tanks -
one to each ear like twin, khaki,
mobile phones. The boy connects
free to
air to his big 'M' culture -
not the golden arches of McDonalds,
but the even more inyourface
social
camouflage of militarism & machismo.
On cue, a Western woman with hair
red as the Turkish crescent moon,
shunts her way into the café, hotly
pursued by two teenage boys, sleek
& fixated as greyhounds.
"Why
else do you come to Turkey!"
the first one disgorges at her.
"Don't
you want to fuck me?"
adds the second, hands on hips,
his mouth cocked like a revolver.
At the bar, Baldwin senses Roxanne
rise out of her seat before he turns
& sees her deliver two thunderous
blows that sonic boom through
the stunned, tourist clientele.
At a secluded outdoor café, Baldwin orders two, huge, Efes
beers & thinks
sultanate thoughts all afternoon;
massages the chamber of Roxanne's
swollen, right hand faintly,
like a heartbeat slowed down.
8. Narrated & the Narrating
What has Baldwin
got to do with anything?
everything & nothing;
narrated & the narrating.
9.
The Efes is having
an effect at last.
Baldwin can only be
sure of one thing -
even without cheap beer
time will still pass.
10. A Generation of Men
On the six hour trip to Çanakkale,
Baldwin alternates between the 80's Turkish, slapstick,
action comedy
(with stereotypical,
evil Nazi treasure hunters) & his universal window-seat
through the Camel Koc
looking glass.
Fields of sunflowers drape both sides
of the bus in funerary garb; cast-
iron, 1920's depression go-kart wheels, still hurl
themselves before Demeter
& Ahura-Mazda, the Persian God-King.
Their depleted plutonium heads pierce
the heavy armour of the earth's tank skin. Tapping Akol, the
retired civil engineer from Bursa on the shoulder, Baldwin asks,
"What
are those cement sheds
dotted all
over the fields? Silos?"
Akol sighs as he leans over, keeps
his voice grave as if relaying
a tragic, family secret.
"Not
silos", suggests the make-shift,
contemporary, historian.
"Bunkers,
from the war."
Baldwin, his ignorance of 20th century conflict
at risk of developing
into a severe complex, hesitates to ask, which war, but Roxanne jumps head-first into the delicate vacuum.
"The
First World War was fucking horrific. In four years of fighting,
a
generation of men were obliterated.
If mustard
gas didn't turn your lungs inside out, or you didn't develop gangrene from
shrapnel wounds - you
could look
forward to trench fever, influenza, cholera & dysentery.
A quick,
clean death on the end
of a
machinegun would have been
a fucking
godsend. Over 20 million perished. At Gallipoli, the kill ratio was about 10 to
1. In the six-month campaign, we lost 6,000 diggers - the Turks lost over
60,000. They celebrate
it on the
18 March each year, as a great national victory."
Baldwin, silenced by Rox's grip on historical detail, snaps
a young girl
defending herself against the attack
of a leghorn rooster; captures
a new generation of violence through
the aperture of a November sun.
11.
The Cult of
Zeus-Ammon
Baldwin counts among his many love-trust possessions (DVD collection, Stars Wars figurines,
original Steve Austin/Bionic-man doll still with working telescopic eye {who
always fought Stretch Armstrong - his evil, rubbery doppelganger} et al.)
the bronze statuette of Alexander
the Great as Zeus-Ammon, (given to him three days ago by Roxanne who dug it
out of
Instanbul's Grand Bazaar)
as his favourite, post-industrial lińgas.
The ram-horned, diadem wearing,
Jim Morrison flowing locks sex-symbol,
of the Egypto-Grecian fusion
of the cult of masculinity.
(in your eye Robert
Bly
birth a
god from your thigh!).
'Iron John' Alexander - the 5'4" inheritor of Achilles
mantle;
the bad-tempered, uncut, wine-drunk
of the West, balancing gods, budgets
& Greek fatalism in his pudgy hands.
The (re)Hellenisation of Asia Minor -
efficient as the Turkish bus system
that drops Roxanne & Baldwin outside
the Just Looking Café,
Eceabat.
"Yes
Sir, Madam, this way please.
What would
you like to order?"
"Nothing,
we're just looking,"
chant the dynamic duo in strangled unison, leaping up the
oxidised stairs
of the car ferry before an agent
from Yellow Rose
Pension can accost
them with his Gallipoli tour spiel.
Baldwin, who never had a great- grandfather fight in WW1,
cannot work
out where the hell Anzac Cove is anyway -
sticks the eight-inch Zeus-Ammon
& the god's curved sneer of horn,
(ala Red Hot Chilli Peppers)
into the front pocket of his chinos,
& snaps at denuded peninsulas; compound splinters of
cliff jutting out from
the green bone, pine forest. Protects
his interpretation of travel guide cartography, with a slip,
slop, slap she'llberight/goditssofuckinghot
syncretism.
12.
Song of
the Australians in Action
Charging inside the Anzac
House backpackers, Roxanne & Baldwin interrupt
Peter Weir's Gallipoli
on 24-hour video loop - just at the pivotal moment when Mel Gibson (does anyone remember the name of the blond
actor?) tries to get the no-go message to his company, but fails,
the diggers going over the top (courtesy of an extreme
close-up on Bill Hunter's trembling whistle fingers).
"Ah
no……not GALLIPOLI. That film's a piece of crap. Apocalypse Now is a much better
war film - Duvall, Brando, Sheen, now those guys can act. Mel Gibson should've
stuck to making Mad Max films not that Lethal Weapon shit," Baldwin
exclaims a little bit too loudly - turning heads away from the freeze-framed,
tickertape of bullets ending
Mark Lee's (that's him
right?) grand,
WW1, boys own adventure.
Roxanne dumps her pack on the floor,
ignores the death-stares from fellow Australian travellers
aimed at her husband's Marlon Brando proportions.
"I'll
admit, the Jean-Michael Jarŕe soundtrack's a bit corny & dated, you
know, Oxygene, but otherwise it's still
a great
Australian movie. Anyhow, you've never seen it in Turkey before!"
Baldwin gives this homespun shrine
to Australian national identity, the once over, spies a
t-shirt with some lines
from a Banjo Paterson poem etched
in blood red dye, crucified
over the main office door.
For the honour of Australia, our Mother,
Side by side with our kin from over sea,
We have fought and we have tested one another, And enrolled among the
brotherhood are we.
"I
didn't know we had a brotherhood in
a
motherland, Rox. Did you? Geez, give me Clancy of the Overflow or The Man From
fucking Ironbark anyday! Individuals excelling against all the odds. Like
Colonel Kurtz & Breaker Morant. Besides, Breaker Morant is the best
Australian film ever made, you know…… RULE 303."
"But
they were both nutters dear, executed by the establishment!"
"That's
our problem isn't it, Rox.
Caught in
a meatgrinder over Britain & America. Torn between hip-hop & the Queen
as our head of state. Shit, we can't even
get it
together to become a republic!
We may as
well be in the fucking wasteland with the Lord Humungus -
the
Ayatollah of Rock n' Rolla!"
Baldwin pauses, perhaps aware
of the many cultural heresies
he has just committed & takes
a swig from his water bottle.
Roxanne pushes him up the stairs,
warden-style, a dorm-room key
prised like a knuckleduster over
the brotherhood of her fingers.
"Darling,
take a leaf from the Road Warrior's bible to survival in the motherland. 'If
you want to get
out of
here…….talk to me!'"
La Brecha de Viznar
Jose Guerrero
________________________________
What Does An Editor Really Do?
This is a
story about editing that has not yet begun.
Where does a writer begin? Where
would an editor begin? The story has
begun, but not the editing process. In
this story, there is a manuscript that has been worked on for three years, a
collection of poetry. The collection
has a title - Fatherlands. That is a beginning. An editor might begin there too. It has a title because writers are very
efficient at naming things. Fatherlands, is its name, its
title. It has never had any other.
Writers
create stories; give them substance, an existence. Act like gods most of the time.
They use raw materials of rhythm, association, character, narrative – to
forge representations of history, truth and time - discarding them as they see
fit. As the gods mistakenly left behind
fire on the battlefield; so these elements are picked up, their secrets
unlocked, drawn out and hammered anew by the “lessor beings” who edit their
legends.
There are
no clean slates. No blank canvases
anymore to work from. Writers have
constructed their death-beds on the bones of the past. Ask editors to rearrange them, when they
need to get more comfortable. The
scented candles of their lives are lodged in the crumbling eye socket of
tomorrow’s polished skull. Meaning,
drips like wax over the edge of their existence, hardening into frightening new
forms.
Editors rub
this same wax between thumb and forefinger.
Do the writer-gods turn in their despair to the “lessor beings”, to the
edited versions of their myths and fables for guidance? Do they now seek a structure for their
creations?
Sometimes
when a finger passes through a flame, a black film of smoke residue is left on
the skin, like an aura. This is what
catches the editor’s eye. A layer of
new meaning, greasy with possibilities.
The writer asks; “What did it feel like?” The editor asks; “What will the finger do now with its new,
doppleganger?”
Is there a
legitimate fear, writers’ have when confronted by the editing process? Losing control of their ability to create,
to name for themselves? Or having the
means to alter their interpretation of the past and their predictions for the
future, wrested from their dominion?
Are the gods afraid of being edited out of their own stories?
In this
story there is an author too, a poet, whom to quote from Monkey, “time and the pure essences of heaven, the moisture of the
earth, the powers of the sun and the moon”, all worked upon so he could become
“magically fertile”. It wasn’t quite as
divine as that, but the poet became the author of a manuscript of poetry. It has a name, a title; Fatherlands.
Is there a
reason why he became a writer, a poet?
Death is always a good motivation.
Perhaps there was a death once, long ago, when he was only a young god.
(read Sometimes He…..)
By
naming things, people, events, maybe he thought he could control the
interpretation of their meaning, the construction of their history. Maybe the poet thought he could create an
alternate universe of character, narrative, and identity, where he could
analyse what had happened to him in the past and what was being repeated in the
present. So he chose poetry or it chose
him. Did he have a choice? Does anyone?
(read Wilhelmine Schluter at Fourteen)
He has
been named too. Given lots of names in
his time. Some, more colourful than
others. Henry. Tiger.
Dino. Frog. Poofter.
We will stick with “the poet”.
Other people have tried to trace around the edges of him, or map out a dot to dot of significance. Maybe he tried to blur the edges of memory,
to read the number sequences in a new and unique order. To create patterns that make no sense
whatsoever? A Rorschach pattern of
words. Do you see now, how he, the
poet, the creator of this work, has not even considered the editor?
The editor
of the manuscript, that developed from an egg of thought, from a candle, a
skull, a name, a title - Fatherlands.
This story
has an editor and also a publisher. The
poet cannot name them. In this story
not yet begun, he does not know them well enough. Does not know how they will edit his poetry. The poet has not considered the implications
of his manuscript being edited, until now.
Until three days ago, he did not have to. But circumstance too, can be
shaped, edited like a line of poetry.
This is what the poet had been doing for seven of his last thirty
years.
“dear poet/we are a first publication magazine/so we
regret that we cannot use moment of truth for publication/but by all means send
us more of your work for consideration/thank you for sending us this poem/but
I’m afraid we are not able to use it/we liked the implied comparison/that runs
through the poem/but we feel there wasn’t quite enough/happening in the
language/so that at times it feels a bit flat/we didn’t feel that it had enough
new to say on the subject/.”
He wrote
and he submitted work for publication.
The publisher we should call publisher x. The collection, Fatherlands
was submission number four to publisher x.
The poet did not really like submissions one, two or three, although
three was at least technically competent.
The poet was not entirely unhappy that these manuscripts did not get
published. The poet sent publisher x,
forty pages of Fatherlands – from a
manuscript of seventy-five pages. This
was his first edit of the book. How did
he choose the best forty pages? What
were his requirements? Did the poet
consult anyone else?
No, not
even people familiar with his manuscript.
And what was included? Forty
pages that he and no one else thought
were the best. But he was afraid the
collection would be rejected again because it was too themed, the poems too
similar. Does anyone know where the
beginnings of the seeds of doubt are found?
Or why they sprout from the ends of bones and flourish, choking the life
out of past confidence?
(read How the Man Became A Flower?)
But now,
in the present, the poet stands on top of two skulls, drinking beeswax as if it
were cheap cask wine.
The poet
might ask; “Will the editor be both gardener
and tree surgeon?” “Will they add essential nutrients to the
soil whilst removing the cluttered, dead wood?” “What will the editor think of these forty, frail leaves of
thought and what will they do to prevent them from withering?” “Do they know how to prune to encourage the
best growth?”
This is
what the poet, standing at the bottom of his garden thinks, as he rakes dead grass
onto a heap, ready to burn. For, as long as you burn brother, you belong
to this world.
If
the fourth submission hadn’t got up, the poet would have chucked it in, written
advertising jingles for Raby Bay, got his own TV show or dressed up in a koala
suit to dangle a bucket of dreams over a silty, brown river, in some polluted
Western city somewhere.
But
publisher x has this scheme to publish new, emerging poets. This is the only program of its kind in
Australia. Six poets, chosen each year
from approximately one hundred and forty applicants. All these poets attempting to stand on skulls too, desperate to
share the secrets of their death-beds, their histories, their experiences with
an audience, with the wider world.
They
would definitely make more money if they wrote comic novels named after streets
or months, airport bestsellers named after natural phenomena or feature
filmscripts named after bodyparts. But
they chose poetry or poetry chose them.
The poet wishes there was the market to publish more of their stories,
these versions of events, these small truths, but fate has edited out the space
for them in Australia’s literary present.
The manuscript you have tried to publish has not been accepted – please
try again!
This
question, “What does an editor really do?” intrigues the poet. Publisher x has set up an annual, ten-day
editing workshop/seminar program, where the six soon-to-be published poets plus
thirty fee paying poets, hone their work, their collections, all with names and
titles. Here, the six poets and their
(multiple) editors must decide on the best thirty-two pages from the submitted
forty. This is the second book edit.
This
is where the poet has to edit Fatherlands;
this personal and lyrical collection about the construction of masculinity in
rural, urban and psychological landscapes.
This is where he must listen to criticism, not only from his editors,
who are yet to be named, but also from his peers. The poet does not mind this at all and looks forward to the discussion
and to the feedback.
He
knows constructive criticism will only make his manuscript stronger, yet isn’t Fatherlands effective as it stands? Aren’t the questions the poet raises in his
book, his to answer? Didn’t he light
all the candles himself? Dig them into
the eye sockets?
Maybe,
just maybe, the role of the editor will be to find more questions for the poet,
instead of trying to provide all the answers?
Has the poet considered this from where he stands at the bottom of his
garden, balancing on a pair of skulls, watching two, red dragonflies disengage
on the death-bed of grass?
Maybe
the poet believes that the editor cannot share his vision and will not be able
to occupy the same, intense space in which these poems were constructed. There is a fear of process. A fear of the unnamed. Can this be avoided by working with an
editor of similar experience, with similar direction, similar stories? Or is the mark of a good editor, their
ability to rise to the occasion of each poem based on its own merits? Does gut reaction cut it anymore? Where does the editor place their feet in a
field thick with broken skulls?
What
bone fragments will they have to disturb, in order to piece together the poet’s
text?
(read
Not to Be A Poet)
This story, which has not yet
begun, is at an end.