Said
the Rat!Writers at The Water Rat 2000-2003 Jennifer Harrison and Phil Ilton (editors) a veritable who’s who of writers Famous Reporter Jennifer Harrison and Phil Ilton deserve congratulations notable not only for its diversity but also for the general assurance and interest of the selections Brian Edwards, Australian Book Review |
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Book Description
The readings at the Water Rat Hotel at the edge of the city in South Melbourne lived in interesting times. They broke the lull. Writers responded to September 11, Tampa and paused to watch Cathy Freeman run. Audience and readers came from all over: country Victoria, interstate and overseas. Said the Rat! celebrates those nights.
ISBN 1 876044 44 6
Published 2003
221 pgs
Said the Rat! book sample
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Foreward
Introduction
Andrew Zawacki, Fermata
Maurice Wirth, Last Dinner In Winter
Lauren Williams, What the trees stand for
Sean Whelan, Elvis Tears
Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Reading Smoke With Orpheus
Dimitris Tsaloumas, The Grudge, To The Poet
Hugo Toonen, Horizons
Hugh Tolhurst, Rockling King
Patricia Sykes, iron
Jennifer Strauss, Living in English
Maurice Strandgard, The Chaos Theory
alicia sometimes, living with an editor, the library
Sarndra Smith, Trip to Vegas, Last Detail
Steve Smart, Living in oblivion
Alex Skovron, Dreams Of Dead Poets, After The Future
Jean Sietzema-Dickson, Journey
Michael Sharkey, Soap, About Suffering They Were Never Wrong
Andrew Sant, Long Wait at Quick Shoe Repairs, The Beekeeper's Directory
Philip Salom, The Family Fig Trees
Brendan Ryan, Naringal Landscape
Robyn Rowland, Coming of age, Trees
Jacob G. Rosenberg, Mother, Neighbour
Judith Rodriguez, Some Politicians
Pauline Reeve, This morning the blind is stuck
Ron Pretty, Epiphany Perhaps
Peter Porter, San Pietro A Gropina, Away To A Perfect Start, The Man Who Spoke A Hundred Languages
Dorothy Porter, from DEATH sequence VII, Aztecs
Melissa Petrakis, Trouble sleeping, soup of words
K.F. Pearson, The Apparition's Postcards
Geoff Page, The Twelve Apostles
Barbara Orlowska-Westwood, Visit
Suniti Namjoshi, Entente Cordiale
Les Murray, Fruit Bat Colony by Day, Pop Music, The Meaning of Existence
Peter Murk, Rain Elegy
Ashlley Morgan-Shae, Transformation
Alex Miller, from Journey to the Stone Country
Tim Metcalf, These dead in their studied sections, Stages of Dying
Meg McNena, Dozing after the night feed
Sandon McLeod, the spider in you
Lorraine McGuigan, Husk, Cocktail Hour
Patrick McCauley, Untitled
Ian McBryde, Chelmno Villanelle
Chris Mansell, Any map
Garth Madsen, Adventure Holiday with my Stunt-Double, Chelsea, Return to Eden
Myron Lysenko, Sex At The Poetry Workshop
Earl Livings, Self-made, Down Below, Duet
Ray Liversidge, Baudelaire the bricklayer
Lish, Don't forget
Sheridan Linnell, Hysteria
Emma Lew, Man Coming Back as a Bird, Kind of a Golden Girl, Perhaps the Travellers
Joyce Lee, After listening to Messiaen, Minna In My Grandmother's Kitchen
Phil Leask, from Olhovsky, Prince of Hamburg
Doris Leadbetter, Northern Summer
Alana Kelsall, amputations
Manfred Jurgensen, Cockroach
John Jenkins & Ken Bolton, Nutter Thing
Janet Howie, First Date
Jillene Hone, Desk Jockey
Nguyen Tien-Hoang, Homecoming With
Sandra Hill, Salted Apricots
Matt Hetherington, Hieroglyph
Kristin Henry, The Marriage, Burning Letters, First Day of Autumn
Kevin Hart, Finland
Susan Hampton, I do hail my body
Philip Hammial, As Expected
Kathryn Hamann, Pinocchia
Katherine Gallagher, My Mother's Garden
Adrea Fox, Red Felt Hat
Lesley Fowler, Reviewing
Lorin Ford, Like Bees in the Lamplight
Wendy Fleming, Untitled
Tony Fairbridge, Checkmate
Diane Fahey, The Sixth Swan, Macaws
Ross Donlon, The Curse of Alfred Hitchcock
Carla de Goede, Exile
Glenda de Bont, The Felling - One Year On
Charles D'Anastasi, A small amount of story, another map of australia
Fred Curtis, The Queen Victoria Hospital, Melbourne
James Cristina, The Running-Text
Annie Condon, North and South of the City
Sherryl Clark, Waitress
Helen Cerne, Argy Bargy, Happy Ending?
Edward Caruso, Walls, Renegades
John Muk Muk Burke, Pencil Sharpening
Pam Brown, Ultradian rhythm
Megan Brown, Deciphering
Kevin Brophy, Morning, When the gliders collided
Gillian Bouras, from Aphrodite and the Others
Rory Barnes, from Space Junk
Connie Barber, Knot Garden
Ali Alizadeh, translations of Rumi
Jordie Albiston, Press On, Collectables, Loving at the Ending of the World
Adam Aitken, The Fire Watchers: A Memoir (in the Sydney Style)
Biographies
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Said the Rat! Writers at the Water Rat 2000-2002
Ralph Wessman
Famous Reporter, No. 29, June 2004
Black Pepper’s 221 page collection of poetry from the readings at Melbourne’s Water Rat Hotel encapsulates the work of local, interstate and international writers... a veritable who’s who of writers including Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Jennifer Strauss, Maurice Strandgard, alicia sometimes, Alex Skovron, Michael Sharkey, Andrew Sant, Philip Salom, Brendan Ryan, Judith Rodriguez, Peter Porter, Ron Pretty, Dorothy Porter, Les Murray, Kevin Hart, Lesley Fowler, Kevin Brophy, Adam Aitken, Myron Lysenko, Jordie Albiston... and many, many more. The Water Rat’s monthly Monday evening readings quickly became a meeting place for Melbourne’s writers, remarks Jennifer Harrison, with memorable nights too many to single out, adding:
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Past the Itch
Brian Edwards
Australian Book Review, No. 264, September 2004
This new anthology commemorates monthly readings conducted at The Water Rat Hotel, South Melbourne, from March 2000 to December 2002, each of which presented a guest writer from overseas or interstate together with a featured local writer and an open section. The rich variety of the exchanges is immediately evident in this collection, which is notable not only for its diversity but also for the general assurance and interest of the selections. In all, there are 123 pieces of writing, from ninety-three writers.
In ‘The Beekeeper’s Directory’, Andrew Sant presents a discontinuous history through the figure of the bee-keeper, a link across countries and time that is suggested in the common busyness of bees and the golden nourishment of honey. It is a tracery of family, generations and inheritance, an act of mnemonic retrieval that Philip Salom addresses in terms not of honey but of figs (‘these metaphors which took me past the itch / metaphors stand in for’). In ‘The Family Fig Trees’, fig trees are displaced by family trees in an act of recovery of ‘the old Sephardic bloodline’ denied by claims ‘we were English, and Spanish married into Welsh’, designations that, ‘like watermarks’, cannot efface others.
Represented here by three poems, Emma Lew’s writing is hauntingly suggestive. Her spare diction plays between the literal and the symbolic as she explores the unreality of realities - a man struggling with words, a speaker demonstrating her selves, and a traveller in other people’s lives. In Lorraine McGuigan’s ‘Husk’, the metaphor is literalised as ‘she’, reduced, bound in hospital sheets and then unravelled, ‘begins to crumble / to collapse to fall inward / until she is nothing / but powder’. Her poem ‘Cocktail Hour’ is also sharp in feeling as it evokes in carefully measured language a woman’s (‘the poet’s’) loving attention to a suffering man, ‘washing him young again’ with a sponge and with words.
Real or imagined, places are always important, and in this collection they vary from the effective detail of Katherine Gallagher’s ‘My Mother’s Garden’, with its notion of talking to mother ‘through the soles of my feet’ and Doris Leadbetter’s sensuous hymn to the Yorkshire moors in ‘Northern Summer’, to Kevin Hart’s ‘Finland’ as a place ‘I can do without’.
In Edward Caruso’s ‘Walls’ and Ron Pretty’s ‘Epiphany Perhaps’, place expands to incorporate vastnesses of space and time and, in the latter, contemplation of signal moments in the sweep from creation to apocalypse. Kevin Brophy’s ‘Morning’ presents markers of place in a short narrative of family routine that becomes also a meditation on life values and the threat of death.
Among various tributes to artists and to art, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, in ‘Reading Smoke with Orpheus’, acknowledges mortality, debts to the past and the power of art, which ‘for a while, after all, / keeps fingernails of the maenads well away / and a head on your shoulders’. Alex Skovron’s ‘Dreams of Dead Poets’ offers an ironic vision of fame obliterated by thoughts of inadequacy and of what must yet be discovered: ‘like a poet at night, in one last desperate quest: /I must find Milton, Botticelli, Bach. / There are some urgent things I need to know.’ Taking up the old association of madness and creativity, Hugh Tolhurst begins disarmingly: ‘Going crazy is quieter for me these days.’ His ‘Rockling King’ is witty, a well-controlled consideration of the interplay between Dionysiac excess and ideas of security, of ‘safe mooring’.
For humour, there is Michael Sharkey’s modulated satire of television soaps with characters ‘so / Gorgeous in their kitchens’, ‘beautiful in crisis’. Indeed, ‘Where do they all go, when the cameras / Are asleep?’ Given the precious banality of soaps, we can even begin to enjoy the ad breaks. There is a broader comedy in Myron Lysenko’s ‘Sex at the Poetry Workshop’, an amusing short narrative that interfuses workshop and playhouse as poets discuss their metaphors while awaiting the arrival of a love-starved woman who will select one of them ‘for a safe one-night stand’.
Amongst the considerable range of poetry, the collection also includes a number of prose pieces. In an extract from Journey to the Stone Country, Alex Miller presents a compelling short portrait of Annabelle Küen, forty-two, who arrives home to discover unexpectedly that her husband Steven has left her. Fifty, an academic working on biography, he is sometimes held to be dull. He has left a letter on the hallstand and we have only Annabelle’s point of view, her reaction shaped as self-criticism: ‘he would be admired, even envied, for his conquest. He would not need her again to defend him against the charge of dullness.’ It is an astute piece of writing built through an accumulation of deft touches. From Aphrodite and the Others, Gillian Bouras’s sympathetic portrait of Aphrodite depicts a life of routines constructed according to seasonal patterns, religious observations and family matters. She is Greek, old, daughter of a priest and wife of one, a stoic figure caught sharply in photographs.
Jennifer Harrison and Phil Ilton deserve congratulations for the readings and for the anthology. Those monthly readings continue, at Molly Bloom’s, in Port Melbourne.
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Said the Rat! Writers at The Water Rat 2000-2002
Richard Hillman
Malleable Jangle (online), No. 4
Beside the large number of poetry anthologies currently available it might be difficult to find one that makes a point of distinction, stands out from the others, or offers something else but Said the Rat! has done just that and much more. One of the problems with a collation that covers the history of Australian poetry is that it often will confine itself to periods of time and to particular styles of writing. Finding an anthology that showcases a wide range of contemporary Australian poetry has never been a simple thing, often complicated by a focus on established poets with little regard for the innovative and up-coming poets that surround their lives. Said the Rat! offers a mixture of emerging and established writing from all over the continent, providing readers with an opportunity to notice the diversity, originality, and intelligence of Australia’s poets. As with all anthologies there is always that stand out poem or peculiarity of image that captures the heart or the imagination. In this instance I was struck by the creativity of Sarndra Smith’s ‘Last Detail’, reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje’s writing in its use of the eye dropper filled with salt-water to bring the ocean life back to her ex-sailor father on his death bed. An oddity could have been a Geoff Page poem that was not a rhyming poem. I was disappointed in three contrived poems from Les Murray but was deeply moved by the integrity of Ray Liversidge’s elegy for his father called ‘Baudelaire the bricklayer’. Many of the poems from well-known poets come from current collections and, if read before, will not offer the surprise of reading; for those who have not read widely Said the Rat! will generate more than a few moments of excitement and many hours of enjoyable reading.
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Phil Ilton
When Jennifer Harrison suggested to the Executive Committee of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Vic) in late 1999 that the FAW run a monthly poetry/literary reading, I was sceptical it would succeed. The idea was fine; a most worthy endeavour for a writers’ organisation. My concern was that in the immediately preceding years there had been a burgeoning of regular readings in Melbourne. Would there be room for another? My doubt was dispelled on a warm evening in March 2000 when I ambled from the office where I work in South Melbourne to the Water Rat Hotel. Inside, the Lounge was buzzing, packed with about seventy people, including many poets and writers I knew. The two featured readers, Peter Porter and Peter Rose, performed strong sets covering a broad range of styles, rich in metaphor and mood. The crowd loved it. Writers at the Water Rat was in liftoff.
Like many others, I became a regular reader in the Open Section. The blend of high quality featured readers and an opportunity for emerging writers to air their work consistently drew substantial and enthusiastic audiences. Jennifer introduced the innovation that every month one of the featured readers was from interstate or overseas, which was challenging to maintain – no other reading venue regularly included features from outside Victoria. Whereas other readings focussed on poetry, another distinctive feature of the Water Rat was Jennifer’s inclusion of both poetry and prose features and encouragement of all writing genres. Add the intimate atmosphere of the Water Rat Lounge and these readings were in a class of their own on Melbourne’s literary calendar.
About three months into the readings, feeling guilty I hadn’t to date offered to assist Jennifer and my fellow FAW Committee members on these nights, I asked was there anything I could do? I had in mind pitching in to share tasks like being on the door, bringing in more chairs, or whatever. To my pleasant surprise Jennifer suggested I introduce the first set of Open Readers. With her encouragement, this became my regular ‘slot.’ Later that year Jennifer indicated to the FAW that due to increasing hours in her job, she would not be able to continue as Convenor/MC of the readings after March 2001. I was once again chuffed when Jennifer and the FAW responded most affirmatively to my offer to take on the convenor’s role. I continued the traditions Jennifer had established: quality featured readers, one each month coming from interstate or overseas, an inclusive Open Section and encouragement of all writing genres. The readings’ success continued.
In mid 2002 the owners of the Water Rat purchased another hotel: Molly Blooms in Port Melbourne, the walls of its lounge covered with James Joyce memorabilia. This strong literary association, and a much larger room for our considerable audiences, tipped the scales in favour of moving the readings to Molly’s.
To capture a taste of the Water Rat Readings, I thought of producing an anthology of those who read there. The FAW embraced publication of the book and I was joyed by Jennifer’s acceptance of my invitation to be Co-editor, and her wonderful proposal for a title: Said The Rat! The project got another boost when Black Pepper agreed to become co-publisher. Jennifer and I are confident our selection of poetry and prose in this volume reflects the quality of Writers at the Water Rat. Although we both read our own poetry at The Rat (Jennifer when I was MC, myself when Jennifer was MC), neither of us are included here since we believe it’s not possible for one to objectively judge the merit of one’s own work.
I wish to thank Jennifer Harrison, the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Vic) and Black Pepper for their valuable support in producing this anthology. And the Said The Rat! contributors, the Water Rat readers and the audiences, who all made it possible.
Jennifer Harrison
Melbourne is, without a doubt, a writer’s city. Poetry, prose, plays (on the rocks, hybridized, shaken or stirred) can be heard in bookstores, schools, universities, pubs, clubs, on boats, in galleries and in the marvelous La Mama and Trades Union Hall. Some years ago, there were fewer opportunities and, often, the same local poets were the only regular performers. The Writers at the Water Rat reading series began with clear objectives: that each event would feature an overseas or interstate guest writer with a local author in order to create dialogue, freshness, sometimes tension; that each event would have a short open section to provide opportunities for new writers; and that the space was to be intimate and attentive, an atmosphere in which authors and audience were mutually accessible.
The Fellowship of Australian Writers (Victoria) Inc. wanted something new to replace a lecture series that had dropped off in attendance. Clare Mendes and I successfully negotiated the space with the Water Rat Hotel’s co-publican, Tim Rayson, who subsequently remained an enthusiastic, at times bemused, supporter of the ‘rat readings.’ The room’s nautical, fishing décor was salt enough - and the Monday night, monthly event quickly became a meeting place for many of Melbourne’s writers who were assured of hearing the work of someone new in town.
The series kicked off with two of poetry’s finest Peters: Porter and Rose. The room was packed and the teething problems of the space added to the atmosphere. We’d forgotten to silence the bar phone and Chris Wallace-Crabbe obliged as a comic concierge answering the many, unexpected incoming calls. Through the stiff swing doors, the sounds of the pub patrons drifted in. Tiny square tables were crowded together allowing only thin alleys through which readers could reach the mike and lectern.
Although we learned how to manage the bar phone (and Chris was able to relinquish that duty for a superb reading later in the series), the atmosphere at the Rat remained one of conviviality, good humour and respect. Looking back, the memorable nights are too many to single out. Certain images remain strong: Philip Salom under the spotlight in his baseball cap reading the mesmerizing poems from his book a cretive life; Les Murray and Doris Leadbetter in high spirits rocking the house, Hugh Tolhurst reading his marvelous poem ‘Rockling King’ and Jordie Albiston stunning the room with her poem ‘The Fall.’
Others have different memories and many of the anthology’s contributors graciously sent in anecdotes: Meg McNena, for example, recalls the way the light fell on the windows’ wooden blinds. I particularly loved the reading shared by the US Navajo poet Rex Lee Jim and Melbourne’s Gig Ryan. Gig’s sharp urban fables and Rex’s epic folk lyrics shimmered off each other into a profound listening silence, the reading the best I’ve ever heard. Unfortunately, I was unable to trace Rex for this anthology. Some other readers failed to submit work in time; this anthology is only a partial reflection of the period. It’s also important to point out that contributors were invited to preferentially submit work they might have read at the Water Rat. How has this affected the anthology? Certainly, the selected work reflects the spirit of the series: what you might have heard had you been there. The quality of the work speaks for itself. Poetry predominates and this too accurately reflects the breakdown of genres.
I am greatly indebted to the FAW’s Clare Mendes, Marcus Niski and Philip Rainford who helped sail the Water Rat boat throughout and to Phil Ilton who shared the MC role and eventually took over the series in 2001. I thank, also, poets such as K.F. Pearson, Robyn Rowland, John Jenkins, Lauren Williams, the always wonderful Judith Rodriguez and her students and the many more who so staunchly supported the Water Rat Readings. On March 26 2001, The Water Rat was privileged to represent Melbourne as part of the United Nations ‘Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry,’ a week of poetry performances involving over one hundred cities and two hundred readings worldwide. Dimitris Tsaloumas and Jennifer Strauss featured on the night. Others attending wrote spontaneous poems based on the United Nations theme of ‘fostering tolerance, respect and cooperation among peoples.’ Reproduced here is what Judith Rodriguez penned that night
The Buddha with a practised swiftness
but no hurry
leaps the valley where stories briefly
ricochet and tumble