Poets and “their" Words?

By John

Another fine day in the central wheatbelt. Winter. Further north, farmers are direct-drilling into dust. Hoping the rains will come. Wrote a piece on drought today. Thinking about land and ownership, I came across an incredible poem by Norman Cameron, entitled “The Invader”. The last stanza goes:

Invader-outcast of all lands,
He lives condemned to gorge and crave,
To foul his feast with his own hands:
At once the oppressor and the slave.

Born in 1905, Cameron was a propagandist for the British military during the Second World War. Prior to and after the war he worked in advertising and this poem is (ironically to me) so effective because of the neat lines that accumulate, compile, like advertising slogans. What I like about it is its universality: could equally apply to the British and others invading Terra Australis and dispossessing the indigenous peoples, or to an invasion in, say, wartime Europe. There’s also the resistance of the invaded, that no matter how hard the invader tries, they can’t access the identity, the spirit of those robbed. This brings to mind issues of hybridity and, I admit a little obscurely, copyright.

As an anarchist, I see copyright as a defensive reaction of the State. To own and control words, no matter whose those words are, is to control reception and usage. As a writer, I make my living in part, and sometimes entirely, from selling my words. This is complicit with the state and capitalism in a variety of ways, though one always argues that it’s better than other ways of feeding the State-capitalist system. I guess, depending on what your words are intending to do, and what they are actually doing (impossible to say, really). In terms of “umbrella” anarchism, you can turn this process against the capitalist State – writing against it, and at the same time managing to feed yourself and your dependants. It becomes a subversion of the means of production. As I said to a correspondent today, referring to a portal where people might access poetry free unless they wish to download it for anthologising, academic and similar purposes:

“i am not one for copyright as an absolute (or as such), but i am one for poets making a living! so, on that level, i think it's very positive that poets get some reward for their efforts. textual piracy doesn't bother me, but i do like the idea of poets being fed!! ... i particularly like the fact that people can access free - then, if they wish to profit from the work, the poet gets something back - that seems ethical to me.“

Intellectual property seems like another way of staking claims when all the land has been stolen, “used up”, staked and demarcated. But in the end, what’s being discussed in the case referred to above is the issue of “work”. For me, work not property is the vital variable. Work doesn’t mean one should have more rights than any other to something (an object, a space, an idea), but that appreciation and respect should be given for that work. “Work” is not merely labour in the obvious sense; it is not only value-adding, sustaining at best and fetishising at worst, but a sense of belonging and participation. This can be cultural work. This can be spiritual work. It can be preparing the meal, or growing food, or seeking to “protect” a piece of vulnerable bushland against the profiteers of the capitalist State, or of the State in general (communist states are just hyper-controlled and cartelled versions of capitalist states — the corporation is the Party, rather than the oligarchy of business interests).

Which brings me to think of land owners in the nineteenth century around here. One prominent family, the Slades, owned a property known as Glen Avon out near Toodyay on the Avon River. We often drive out that way, and visit a small church off an elbow of the river where the Slades are buried. I have written a number of poems about the place. The Slades interest me, as they were the parents of a very great Western Australian poet, Elizabeth Deborah Brockman (for some of her poems, see this online anthology I edited). There is an essay on Brockman’s poetry and life in my book that’s launched next week — Contrary Rhetoric: Lectures on Landscape and Language. I have been fascinated by Brockman's slim oeuvre for many years and would go so far as to say that she is one of the greatest poets in English of the nineteenth century. She is basically unknown, even in Western Australia.

For the last few years I have been preparing a book of Deborah Brockman’s work (I am told by a family member met at a literary function in Perth that she preferred to be called just “Deborah”, and not Elizabeth Deborah), with help from my mother Wendy Kinsella, and more help to come from Tracy. It’s a major task. I feel there are many undiscovered poems, and trying to track them is not easy. Almost everything we have of hers is from her book of poems published posthumously by her uncle in Scotland, Poems (1915). Those poems were collated from Western Australian newspapers and journals, especially the Church of England Magazine. What makes it more complex is that Brockman often published under the name “E”, and quite a number of poets did just that throughout the colonies. I believe some of the pseudonymous poems carried by other colonial newspapers in Australia may have been her work. I know she corresponded at least once with Henry Kendall, and swapped poems. Anyway, Tracy is going to do a few days' research soon in various archives and hopefully we can unearth a few more pieces to include in the book.