Hugh Tolhurst was born in Melbourne (1966) and attended Deakin University and
the University of Melbourne. His first
collection, infamously titled Filth and Other Poems, was published by
Black Pepper Press in 1997, and his second collection of poems and
translations, Rockling King
(August 2000), is yet to be published.
Currently working freelance as an editor and reviewer and engaged in
language studies through Melbourne's Istituto Italiano Di Cultura, Hugh hopes
to find more time for work on his own poetry in 2001.
Publications
Filth and Other Poems Black Pepper Press 1997
Rockling King forthcoming
Unfaithful Translations, Roman Women Vagabond Press forthcoming
Anthologies
Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets Paper Bark Press 2000
(eds. Peter Minter and Michael Brennan)
Catullus in English Penguin Classics 2001
(ed. Julia Haig Gaisser)
Poetry
Lamentable
dancing
It's good fun to speed one last time,
ignoring what the doctor said about a ten foot pole
and touching the stuff with a ten dollar note.
It gives your legs extended play in clubland,
to leave with the dawn, sober,
almost devoid of a philosophy.
Not to share that chemical pulse,
not to get laid in the startled morning
where sleep would be delirium in Spades.
This stuff is not the death of philosophy
but speed will injure your struggle with class,
as you skid down an icy road
bent like an ampersand around the beat.
Fly Culture
I don't sit in cafés much, my friend,
the flash of love has fired me to a different place;
I have the ceramic loneliness of a flat
for people to come around to.
I wonder about the something or other,
slow thoughts, two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.
As for my literary tastes, there are few poets
that I have liked, I begin to like them less
as time enlarges the space between lines
I have fleetingly been excited by,
and these lines become things that excited me then
in a way that seems terribly final
but is probably cousin to the thought
that only your own poetry is exciting.
At other times I fish about the city in my face
and understand it less than I might.
I like the way I no longer like Ashbery,
as if he had made a fool of himself or those pages
I once thought memorable had been air-dropped
as small single paper balls from a passing plane.
Rockling
King
Going crazy is quieter for me these days,
it's more the fear of psychosis, more my fear
than an inflicted fear, though it creeps
into dealings, like an edge to the evening
more dark than suburbs I have known.
There are little blue pills in a particular drawer,
and I thought of them today
but preferred to cook spicy fish,
demonstrating discipline in just how much White Burgundy
I gave the Rockling to drink
without diving in after them.
The manic drink like poets you know,
and I'm a charming drunk but I'm not sure about him,
the Rockling king sat baffled this afternoon
but if my love goes back for more potatoes,
well, I can add them to the lemon lonely on her plate
without the slightest shake to the hands,
without more than a hint of chilli under the nails.
It's still a far less than regular sort of thing
but then to be sane ninety nine per cent of the time,
however human, is still less than rock solid.
Returning to therapy, I find I'm playing the role
of Leonard Cohen's 'baffled king composing Hallelujah',
a grateful acknowledger of my adviser's loyal insights,
but one for whom the sceptre is heavy.
The fatigue of mania is deep as the tiredness of the Gods,
and the baffled king sleeps on things
that justify the hellish oil in his scalp.
Almost half my friends or peers know something of this,
writing about it isn't so much therapy
as making something with truer words
that says I want to be well and that's what
half my adult life has humbly requested,
this ship would sail but know safe mooring.
Watching the Arts
Minister
after John Forbes
for Alison Croggon & Daniel Keene
As jackhammers chirrup in the distance,
he shortlists love for The Premier's Literary Awards.
And the ghost of a tunnel is arriving
behind the Premier's pale blue eyes -
a hail fellow, well met,
that carries the tang of concrete.
His vision is solid for 10 a.m.
smooth as his image on the internet
('Look, Jeff is everywhere', says Clare)
yet more determinedly cheerful.
The architecture of his blow-wave signs its own cheques
and these make all the children stop crying.
Holiday in Kosovo
in memory of Jello Biafra
Some people still suntan, some people still
commit atrocities and do it well.
Bill says it's not time to go tank busters,
the Adriatic fleet just sees the cruise
missile cruise the beach then video kills
Red Star Belgrade at NATO HQ,
no Adriatic sailor views the screen.
The boys are looting late in Kosovo
and forget to ring home letting young kids
smoke dope at unity rock gigs in clubs
where no bombshell gets around the bouncer.
The cruise missile is very cigar shaped
and they do not watch your television.
Some darkling mohawks play Dead Kennedys
in barking English in a Belgrade dive,
"It's a holiday in Cambodia
where people dress in black,
a holiday in Cambodia..."
Your three minute punk classic raw and right
to back the rolling credits
for a sly, superpowered, twentieth century
fashioned between hairspray and the ironing board.
LI
Ille mi par esse deo uidetur,
ille, si fas est, superare diuos,
qui sedens aduersus identidem te
spectat
et audit
dulce ridentem, misero quod omnes
eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,
Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi
[uocis in ore.]
<>
Lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus
flamma demanat, sonitu suopte
tintinant aures geminae, teguntu
lumina nocte.
Otium, Catulle, tibi molestum'st:
otio exsultas nimiumque gestis:
otium et reges prius et beatas
perdidit urbes.
Catullus 51
To me he seems charmed as a god,
or, if legal, charmed above gods,
seated by you repeatedly
gazing, getting
your sweet laugh. Unhinged by love
his senses fly: on seeing you,
Lesbia, my voice loses power
(can't think to speak)
but my tongue lies flat, subtle fires
break burning down my limbs, my ears
ring deaf, at once two pitch black nights
close down my lights.
Easy, Catullus, your demise;
easy your excess, your desire.
How else do great cities, kings, fall
but easily?