By Tracy
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| Jo with some of her children in the late 1960s... |
My mother passed away last night at age 84, so we are all feeling very sad just now, & John has written the poem below in memory of her, because she loved birds (something we all share!) and early this morning a huge flock of galahs and a flock of '28s' (ring-necked parrots) came into Jam Tree Gully -- in fact, the largest flocks we have seen here. The poem below draws on that.
The form continues to fascinate me (I have done a book of villanelles, Brimstone, that stretch back to the early 1990s though they are mainly of the last decade), as it has since first reading William Empson’s ‘Missing Dates’ in my late teens and memorising it. I have my problems with Empson these days for a variety of political reasons (mainly to do with his ‘monarchist’ tendencies, which seem so at odds with his anti-imperialist socialist attitudes), but as with Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, the rhythms of his ‘Missing Dates’ (much more than ‘Villanelle’) are residual for me. But even when a faint echo of Empson's ‘remains’ occurs in one of my villanelles (as in ‘space remains’ in the villanelle entry a couple of postings below), it can only exist as a critique of the/his figurative, of the abstraction, because of the real-time necessities of poetic protest and activism. Poetry always needs to ‘do work’ for me, even at its most subtextual and ‘implying’. The new villanelle included here is of an interstice of physical harm — to forest, and literally to myself. The pastoral as literary stylism devolves into acts of presence and responsibility, with rhythm always slightly disrupted (or ‘ruptured’) and repetitions making a declarative as well as ‘haunting’ iteration.
Villanelle of Pastoral Vertigo: growing block universe?
after seeing yet more forest turned to individual house plots down in The Hills
I am recovering from injuries
accrued while working now on the block (replant/de-‘block’) —
next year, for me, its labouring and saving trees.
But tree-deaths have outrun theories,
tree-deaths have outrun plantings and root-stock,
and I am recovering from injuries.
In a half-baked etiological spotlight that frees
developers to carve up and insert domestic
roots — contrarily, next year its labouring and saving trees.
It’s as if a house was and will be always,
but only last week it was forest full of its offspring — last week —
and here I indulge myself recovering from injuries.
This vertigo that comes on fast lays
a course through mixed-use zones that leak
into next year as we labour to save trees.
The urban pastoral visionaries reach deep into varieties
of rural demesnery — see bush and grow dizzy! — tall tree = haystack —
I am recovering from injuries,
next year its labouring to save trees.
John Kinsella
Assuming the respect of social distancing (in the forest!), just bringing to people's attention what is still going on unabated in the forests of the southwest of Western Australia. See here regarding those who are still trying to save what's left of the native forests. And for an 'industry' view look at this incredibly propagandistic piece of pseudo-journalism in a trade publication. I will let readers unravel its contradictions and misleadings: it speaks for itself. I might point to the irony of dieback spread when the 'industry'/government nexus was responsible for a road being put through the forest to a new coupe which would have been horrific in terms of pathogen dispersal, let alone other devastations.
Below is a poem that speaks, I hope, for the forests, the wildlife, their peoples, and those who act as protectors and guardians against this unnecessary destruction of habitat which is not replaceable, for all the claims of 'sustainability'. Species extinctions are accelerated in such 'industry' situations, whether they are regrowth old forests or 'intact' old growth forests. All native forest that remains needs protecting and plantation should be the way, if there is to be a way, and should only be on already cleared land, not on land deliberately cleared for 'timber products'! Jobs? Protection rather than exploitation; planting and genuine renewables rather than devastation. So little of the pre-colonial forest cover remains: this form of forestry is ongoing colonialism through and through.
Villanelle to Help Protect Helms Forest (near Nannup, Western Australia),
August 2020: an address from the biotic to the abiotic
Remember that road the industry pushed through a dieback area to open the ‘coupe’
and now have the gall to claim ‘strict hygiene management practices’ and resilience,
as they log the diminishing forest and claim sustainability regen recoup.
And the dystopic irony of calling protesters ‘vandals’ in the face of swoops
and lock-ons to stop deletions of tree-stands to arrest the erasure of species —
remember the road the industry pushed through a dieback area to open the ‘coupe’.
On land managed by a government acronym and surveyed by officers who stoop
to a worn-out low of ‘conservation’, a ‘family-owned business’ suffers an inconvenience,
lost days as they log the diminishing forest and claim sustainability regen recoup.
This entangling of biospheric fate with an industry that predates on biota-scapes
of forests and whose workers could be supported via plantings on damaged places,
remember the road the industry pushed through a dieback area to open the ‘coupe’.
Little thought is given to the country-knowing families who lived in or near the loops
of these forests for millennia, beyond ‘products’ — rather ‘family’ is equated with business
as they log the diminishing ‘merchantable’ forest and claim sustainability regen recoup.
Not far away the Jamarri Black Cockatoo Rehabilitation Centre near Nannup
is closing down and endangered birds will flock into an agitprop stress of ‘forest industries’,
calling, Remember the road the industry pushed through a dieback area to open a ‘coupe’?
Well, now the industry logs a diminishing forest and claims sustainability regen recoup.
John Kinsella
