John Mateer was
born in South Africa (1971). After
spending part of his childhood in
Canada and after returning to South Africa in 1979, he moved to Western
Australian with his family in 1989.
Since 1998 he has been dividing his time between Melbourne and Perth.
He has been
invited to read his work at the 62nd Congress of International PEN,
at the Teater Utan Kayu in Jakarta, and at New African Perspectives: Africa,
Australasia and the Wider World at the End of the 20th Century. In 2001 he will present his work at Poetry
Africa in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa.
Publications
Burning Swans Fremantle Arts Centre Press 1994
Anachronisms Fremantle
Arts Centre Press 1997
Barefoot Speech Fremantle Arts Centre Press 2000
The Civic Poems (performance poems) sleeping chamelion editions 1998
(ECHO) (pamphlet) 1998
Mister! Mister! Mister! (pamphlet) 1999
Spitting Out
Seeds (pamphlet) 1999
Literary Criticism
Michael Heald. “ ‘Talking with Yagan’s head’: The
Poetry of John Mateer.” Australian Literary Studies. 19, 4, (2000):
387-398.
POETRY
To Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela!
Dalibhunga!
Creator-of-Negotiations!
Child-of-Blood!
Thembu Prince!
I am not Thembile Mhlangeni at the opening of Cape Town Parliament!
I am not Zolani Mkiva praising at your Inauguration!
My line is not iimbongi!
My line is Jewish-&-English-&-Polish-&-Irish-&Tristan-de-Cunhan-&-Scotch-Unknown!
and now an Aussie voice!
Like Hintsa’s head on the huge island the void of Yagan’s!
Your praises I can sing as my memory only!
Mandela! in my childhood your name appeared graffitied on a suburban wall
Mandela! your Voice was Silence and your Face incredible Space
Mandela! you could not be quoted and how many photos of you were destroyed
Mandela! you led a march that my father could remember
Mandela! he said you must be a great leader and was frightened of you
Mandela! when I first saw you tears poured from me like words
Mandela! I was afraid of offending you with my poem A New South Africa
Mandela! Frank-the-Ghanian told me you would probably like that criticism
Mandela! Coetzee-the-Critic said he really loves you
Who is the poet and can speak the truth here?
Who can speak and not offend the people in their jubilation?
The poet as I must address the needed!
The poet as I must shout out for all creatures!
Mandela! you were like Jesus on the cover of Time magazine
Mandela! at the Sydney Opera House two girls touched your hand and said it was like God’s
Mandela! on Donahue you were a dignified Being
Mandela! in those secret meetings with PW what did you say?
Mandela! what did you do when you took the helicopter to Big Business?
Mandela! and what about the crimson Merc the car the workers gave you?
Mandela! and of all those famous and unfamous who’ve grabbed at your robes?
Am I speaking! am I writing here? the pen is not in vain –
You stoop to speak to the small boy calling him ‘a big man’
Mandela! when the soccer World Cup was won they reported
Mandela! you danced on your old legs like a young man meeting his bride
Mandela! what will Mhlabuhlangene do without you?
Mandela! will the hyaena eat the vulture?
When your bones have gone to meet the Ancestors
and the Europeans’ descendants have forgotten who you were
and you are only present in children’s names
then I will have prayed your wisdom flowed on like a river of genes
I sing this in good faith.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela!
Dalibhunga!
Creator-of-Future!
Careful-Child-of-Humanity’s-Cradle! Amen
I disappear!
Talking with Yagan’s Head
1. Colloquy: After Reading
Drawn (?) down the sulphur-yellow sand embankment,
down from the sticky bitument of the parking area out the front of
the new tent-shaped shopping center, across
the road and down into white limestone sand;
I was in a secluded ditch, freed from being myself, that human.
I didn’t feel like Allen V, who looked at woodchips,
felt himself fragmenting. I watched the trees:
Like derelict people, cracked by living, par-charred
by bushfire breath. I kept describing this
to myself, The balga – ‘grass fountains’
The mooja – ‘like elephant trunks’. I
wanted
to dig down for the parasitic encirclements around other roots
(reputedly they taste like candy). I wanted to crack open
a balga, look for bardi in case I’m ever
lost –
Then I was thinking, talking, ‘See that giant banksias there,
that huge beauty that looks like a dinosaur’s friend?
Bull banksias, Mangite – ’
and I was walking around see benevolent flames atop
balga spikes, on the banksias cones.
I knelt down and found a seedling (‘Marri’) and a softening
banksias finger patterned like plaid. Between my four thumbs it crumbled.
A brown fibre. Looks and smells like snuff.
‘Looks and smells like snuff’ I tell myself, asking
who I told.
I told myself: ‘In this place you’re talking with Yagan’s Head.’
2. (The City’s Heart)
The brown speckled jellyfish silkstocking-smooth
pulsed at the river’s edge. The still beating heart of an
invisible scavenger. I look back up the
sand embankment hoping no one’ll take my bag.
As you approach the river from inland,
trees hooking their branches low
have rootsgrasping the earth, squeezing the clay like food
in infants’ fists, spreading the soil over every
surface, smearing black on faces. Beyond me
is the glittering (the shadowing, ghosting) of our shapeless
river.
Humid; now the breeze. Leaves inhale, meditate.
My mind, panoramic, now – (then) seeing
night’s void river. Sees in the lava-slow water, deserts
red with marnta blood, tongues knobbly with
pejorative names reclaimed for meaning. The CD sound of
Pintibi voices through my shell, Then – ‘I’
want to say ‘boong, white man as boong / Kaffir’ but
the city on the other side of the hill won’t look at me.
3.
(To Sing Outside)
Karark!
black cockatoos
you are the same sight I have always seen
from storm clouds
like shadows carillioned out, a
fly-passed
in warning
Karak!
I have seen yous
streaking into the wind
shrieking all
together, like a sheet metal
shack tearing at
the gale’s throat
Kar-rak!
like a feathered god
whose face is not expression
whose voice is not
this (distance) counting between
electrical crack and
thunderclap
Koorak!
Four Images
1. The First
Every evening that jamu woman passes my window
on her creaking bike. Under her bamboo hat, blouse
and black trousers, her movements are rhythmic and slow,
like a Tibetan monk performing the mudras. Every evening
she clicks out her bike stand to wait across the street
for her sole client, the exhausted man in torn clothes
from the scrapyard next door. Every evening he buys a glass,
gulping it down quickly. She speaks to him, but appears
wordless, silent. To the accompaniment of clinking bottles
and a glugging throat she is the ancient image of grace.
2. The Dream
She has full, soft lips and is beautiful.
How he knows she is beautiful who can say?
She may be the image of the Malay bride on the travel guide cover.
But she is faceless, not frightening,
and her bones curve with notional time.
He is kissing her. They are naked. The she is singing
in the only African language he can understand.
Her voice is a young woman desiring a child.
She is singing the lullaby or nursery rhyme with an elusive melody
that he has heard before, years ago, in another dream.
The traces of her song could deconstruct him if allowed to,
but before he can summon a word they are inaudible again.
3. The Last
Is the voice that calls out Mister! Mister! Mister!
a memory separate from the images of the beggar
with withered legs whose arm reaches through the grille,
who grabs and grabs at me across the space of my mind?
4. The Film, circa 1920
The unweened plantation child turns from his mother’s breast
to suck forcefully on a small cigar.
ACROSS THE YARRA
this Ern Malley landscape opens its funpark mouth
but all I am seeing are painted images, expressionist presence.
Although the streets are cornered by Koories and speak Mandrin
the city is thought, sounded, not yet words: psycho-acoustics,
Void. Listen, this land was sold for mirrors…
I think: Deep verdure of eradicated giant cycads, an enormous Ice Age river.