About 60 people, including poets, editors and academics, attended a very successful launch of Agenda‘s double Australian issue, kindly hosted by the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kings College, London, 28 Russell Square.
Dr. Ian Henderson warmly greeted everyone, including H.E. the Hon.Richard Alston, High Commissioner for Australia, and the Cultural Advisor, Anna Nieuwenhuysen. Patricia McCarthy then introduced the exciting issue which, she said, proved that Australia is a vital, unique and highly energetic force in its own right. She quoted the Australian poet, Judith Wright, matriarch of modern Australian poetry who wrote:
When all the living’s done
it’s poems that remain.
She said that the poems had been chosen not because they were specifically ‘Australian’. Though many are deeply rooted in locality, they transcend time, place and nation and give that extraordinary shiver down the spine, standing as impressive international works in the English language.
In Agenda‘s long publishing history of international issues (along with Special issues and general anthology issues), she commented that there had never been an Australian issue. Scripsi (a highly regarded Australian poetry journal no longer in print) had invited Agenda to supply a whole section for one of their issues in 1987, and, of course a few individual Australian poets had appeared over the years in Agenda ‘s pages. She quoted poet John Kinsella (described by Martin Dodsworth in this issue as a ‘genius’) who said: ‘A literary journal culture is integral to the vitality of poetry and language itself. Literary journals are the crucibles of the word.’
She hoped, then, that this Australian issue would indeed be a ‘crucible of the word’ for poets and readers alike, introducing, through both poems and essays, voices bound to echo importantly in the future. That has always been what Agenda is about, she explained: discovering and promoting important, authentic voices and, as in this issue, giving space to long poems when they deserve it. A newer concern of Agenda, initiated by her, is the promotion of young poets via the online Broadsheets, with one or occasionally two chosen poets given wider coverage in each issue of the magazine. Two young Australian poets had been chosen for this issue: Petra White, born in Adelaide in 1975 and living in Melbourne, and Joanna Preston, a thirty two year old expatriate Australian currently living in West Yorkshire and studying for an M Phil degree at the University of Glamorgan.
Patricia McCarthy referred to the poet Barry Hill‘s prizewinning biography: Broken Song: T.G.H. Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession (Vintage, 2003) in which Strehlow was quoted as saying of the Aboriginal Songs: ‘ “If everything is vitally interconnected, then the whole world is a poem, an enchantment simply awaiting notation, or indication”.’ She suggested that the poems in the pages of the issue encourage the thought that the whole world is, indeed, ‘an enchantment’.
Clive James then gave an entertaining homily, talking about the making and the publishing of poetry, about his own poetry and reading a highly evocative poem on his own childhood.
The Australian contributors who had managed to be in attendance read first: David Brooks who read a very moving elegy and love poem, leaving readers to treasure those poems of his actually in the issue; Katherine Gallagher who read three of her four fine poems from the issue, ‘Entente‘, ‘Graffitist‘ and ‘Hybrid‘; Sandra Hill who also read her two poems from the issue, ‘Intersection‘ and ‘A Melbourne Autumn‘, and Clive James who chose to read two poems other than his ‘Literary Lunch‘ in the issue. A surprise reader was Philip Neilson who read his poem ‘Crusoe Revisited‘. It had arrived too late to be included in the issue but will appear on the website. Peter Porter unfortunately had had to cancel his reading the day before because of family matters, Alison Croggon had been unable to change her plane ticket and so missed the launch, sadly, by two days, and Barry Hill, likewise, had intended to come but had been unable to change his ticket.
Katherine Gallagher and Sandra Hill who read their poems from the issue.
Steven O’Brien, an Agenda poet of Irish descent discovered by Patricia McCarthy whose first collection Agenda Editions will publish, Michael Venditozzi whose first poems also appeared in Agenda, and who has kindly agreed to help running the Agenda website, Patricia McCarthy and Colin Wilcockson, the well-known medievalist and poet from Pembroke College, Cambridge, a new trustee of Agenda, all read chosen poems from the issue to air voices of Australian poets who could not be there.
The occasion was rounded off by the resonant voice of Steven O’Brien who sings, like his father and grandfather before him, in both English and Irish in pubs in England and Ireland. His powerful, unaccompanied rendition of the an Australian ballad ‘Ben Hall’, prefaced by a fascinating personal anecdote, received much applause.
Patricia McCarthy and new trustee of Agenda, Colin Wilcockson, Medievalist and poet from Pembroke College, Cambridge.