Duncan Richardson
Corinda, Queensland

(Ed: Short fiction is welcomed by magazines such as Overland, Meanjin and Australian Short Stories, which are able to offer much more space for fiction than ABR. Extracts from works-in-progress and forthcoming publications – of course, both fiction and non-fiction-seem to me to be valuable reading while also playing an important role in alerting readers to coming titles. You will, by the way, find more of Michael McGirr’s work in Picador New Writing 2.)

Dear Editor,

The proper response to Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s answer to my letter of complaint against his review of Les Murray’s Collected Poems is to urge both Chris and your readers to read the text of the review, and compare what it actually says with what Chris claims it says in his letter.

My objection to the Auden comparison is concisely and sufficiently stated toward the end of the long fifth paragraph of my earlier letter.

I did not discuss what I make of the character of Les Murray’s poetry because the subject of my letter was Chris’ review and my dissatisfaction with it. I have writen about Murray’s work at length in an article entitled ‘Les Murray’s Fair Field’ which appeared in a recent issue of the magazine Antipodes.

With regard to being a Leavisite, I am not. I take from my reading of Leavis what I find to be true and useful in understanding works of literature. I do the same from all the literary critics I read, including some who profess anti-Leavisite sentiments.

I’m intrigued by the ‘Hooray/Fuck School’. They sound wacky.

Alan Gould
O’Connor, ACT

Dear Editor,

A brief correction to the publishing details of Oodgeroo: A Tribute edited by Adam Shoemaker and reviewed in ABR (February/March issue) by George Papaellinas. The publisher was only partially given from the title page, UQP being listed but not the biennial journal, Australian Literary Studies. The publication was a joint venture of a dual book-cum-special issue, Oodgeroo being the October 1994 issue (vol.16, no.4) which subscribers received as their second for that year, as well as its being distributed separately as a book. Adam Shoemaker was guest editor for the occasion.

Laurie Hergenhan
Editor, Australian Literary Studies
Brisbane

Dear Editor,

In his review of my critical study of Peter Carey (ABR Feb/March 1995), Andrew Riemer suggests, no doubt kindly, that I was constrained by my publishers to write in a less adventurous and more conventional way than I might otherwise have done.

Honesty obliges me to confess that whatever limitations the book has are entirely of my own imposing. The University of Queensland Press does not require contributors to its Studies in Australian Literature Series to write to a formula or to observe a predetermined format. Editorial discretion is vested in the General Editor of the Series, a role I also fill for the SAL Series.

UQP has continued to publish Australian literary criticism in difficult times and, far from constraining their authors, has given them and their editors a commendable degree of freedom to write as they think fit.

Tony Hassan
Townsville

Dear Editor,

Australian expatriates it seems are still fair game, especially if they live in the good old UK. John Tranter’s review of Peter Porter’s new poetry collection, Millennial Fables (ABR/April), is more an exercise in rapping the knuckles of the expatriate Australian writer than a response to writing.

He bothers to list Porter’s use of ‘recondite words and phrases’ after informing us of Porter’s failure to take a university degree. He speaks of the poets and thinkers utilised by Porter, their commonality being that ‘they’re all old dead white men’. Of course, it is not fashionable, nor is it politically correct, to admit to admiration for, never mind the influence of, the likes of Shakespeare, Auden or Yeats. We must take care not to single out anyone; excellence is elitist, or at least has a new modern definition yet to be clearly defined. We must wander in a maze of amorphous text dissociated from its predecessors, especially if they’re dead and before this century. Forget building blocks, cultural or otherwise – science certainly couldn’t effectively do this! Write what you know now. Of course, everyday subject matter and ‘now’ can be brilliantly evoked and worthy of poems, but need that preclude use of the other?

In the Australia of today, England, sometimes Europe, and certainly the pre-twentieth century, are passe. It is quite all right if it’s Asia-Pacific and ‘now’.

Tranter discusses some of the poems he likes and in doing so at least gives us an idea of what the book contains. But in essence this review is an opportunity grabbed to lambast Peter Porter for:

* living in Great Britain
* writing about what he is most interested in (which is not exactly an unusual thing to do, whether it be antiquity or the streets of Melbourne/Sydney in the 1990s).
* using some language that we might, horror of horrors, have to consult a dictionary about (in contemporary times of course that means it’s no good because it’s not ‘accessible’).

John Tranter commences the review mentioning Porter’s adoption of Great Britain. Towards the end of the review, he allocates two paragraphs to discussing Porter’s absence from Australia. At the end he mellows slightly on the subject of Porter’s predilection to the past by saying that ‘it could be answered that it is one of poetry’s duties to cultivate the past because it gives us an understanding of the present’. ‘Duties’ in this context bothers me. I suggest it exposes Tranter’s problem rather than any Porter may have. Does a poet necessarily write with ‘duty’ in mind? Should she/he? Is it Peter Porter’s duty to live and write in Australia? Is it his duty to write on certain topics, perhaps approved by his contemporaries, the State, his country, John Tranter? Is Tranter himself hamstrung by the left-over residue of the old English Protestant value system of aligning action to concepts of duty?

Oh, that this review had been tackled with a response less encumbered by petty parochialism.

Lyn Kirby,
Lower Plenty, Vic