Article
Interview with Gig Ryan
June 07, 2011
Michael Brennan: When did you start writing and what motivated you?
Gig Ryan: In my early teenage years poetry and songs seemed the most interesting things to pursue.
MB: Who are the writers who first inspired you to write and who are the writers you read now? What’s changed?
Gig Ryan: Poetry was just part of one’s education for my parents’ and grandparents’ generation – so I had lots read out to me – Lawson, Paterson, as well as Shakespeare, Byron, Coleridge, the whole English tradition up to Auden, Eliot – these books were always there. I had the odd teacher at school who would lend me poetry – Dylan Thomas, Plath. As I was finishing school, I was reading Baudelaire (a present from an English teacher) and Judith Wright, neither of whom I really understood or appreciated then. I then read Dransfield, Maiden, O’Hara, Ashbery and other contemporary poets, anything I could find. Later, studying writers in other languages – in particular some Homer, Aeschylus, Baudelaire – made me more aware of what English could do. Have recently been reading some Catullus, Anne Carson’s Oresteia, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Francis Webb’s Collected Poems, Rilke, Tranströmer, Whitman, Berryman . . . a lot of 20th-century men’s poetry I find unreadable because of its sexism.
MB: How important is 'everyday life' to your work?
Gig Ryan: I don’t see poetry and life as separable entities. To quote Ashbery on Rimbaud, “absolute modernity was for him the acknowledging of the simultaneity of all of life, the condition that nourishes poetry at every second. The self is obsolete: In Rimbaud’s famous formulation, ‘I is someone else’ (‘Je est un autre’).”
Though I interpret “Je est un autre” to mean that subject and object are, inescapably, the same.
MB: What is the role or place of subjectivity in your poetry?
Gig Ryan: (See above.)
MB: Do you see your work in terms of literary traditions and/or broader cultural or political movements?
Gig Ryan: Everything around us goes into poetry (see question 3), so I see poetry as necessarily political and of its time, but all art is, implicitly, revision and criticism of earlier work as well.
MB: What reading, other than poetry, is important to your work as a poet and why?
Gig Ryan: Everything one reads feeds into the work – philosophy, fiction, history, biography, parking fines. Poet Martin Johnston (1947–1990) used to say that the most interesting writing in newspapers was to be found in the Sports section.
MB: What is ‘Australian poetry’? Do you see yourself as an ‘Australian poet’?
Gig Ryan: In theory, Australian poets should have an advantage, as we tend to be more informed about UK and US poets than they are about each other; but other times I think a lot of Australian poetry is insular – that is, there seems to be quite a lot that is somehow unaware of the past 50 years. There are also some younger poets writing witty and volatile stuff but I can’t see “Made in Australia” tattooed on their arms. The only sense of being ‘Australian’ is that one’s everyday poetic colleagues probably live in the same country.
MB: Don Anderson once described Australian poetry as Australia’s only “blood sport”. More recently critics have seen Australian poetry in terms of a “new lyricism” (David McCooey) and “networked language” (Philip Mead). What is the current state of play in Australian poetry? How do you think Australian poetry and discussions about Australian poetry might best develop in the next ten years?
Gig Ryan: Specialists in any field are always the most critical of what they perceive as work badly done. Non-specialists are less able to see the faults, the clichés, and if they did, they wouldn’t perceive them as crimes against humanity. There’s always Shakespeare’s “with what I most enjoy contented least” ringing in one’s ears.
MB: How is poetry relevant or valuable to contemporary society and culture in Australia or at an international level? Is it after all a defensible form of cultural practice?
Gig Ryan: Using one’s brain to its maximum capacity – doing what one enjoys – is its own defence. Poetry is the vanguard of language.
Gig Ryan: In my early teenage years poetry and songs seemed the most interesting things to pursue.
MB: Who are the writers who first inspired you to write and who are the writers you read now? What’s changed?
Gig Ryan: Poetry was just part of one’s education for my parents’ and grandparents’ generation – so I had lots read out to me – Lawson, Paterson, as well as Shakespeare, Byron, Coleridge, the whole English tradition up to Auden, Eliot – these books were always there. I had the odd teacher at school who would lend me poetry – Dylan Thomas, Plath. As I was finishing school, I was reading Baudelaire (a present from an English teacher) and Judith Wright, neither of whom I really understood or appreciated then. I then read Dransfield, Maiden, O’Hara, Ashbery and other contemporary poets, anything I could find. Later, studying writers in other languages – in particular some Homer, Aeschylus, Baudelaire – made me more aware of what English could do. Have recently been reading some Catullus, Anne Carson’s Oresteia, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Francis Webb’s Collected Poems, Rilke, Tranströmer, Whitman, Berryman . . . a lot of 20th-century men’s poetry I find unreadable because of its sexism.
MB: How important is 'everyday life' to your work?
Gig Ryan: I don’t see poetry and life as separable entities. To quote Ashbery on Rimbaud, “absolute modernity was for him the acknowledging of the simultaneity of all of life, the condition that nourishes poetry at every second. The self is obsolete: In Rimbaud’s famous formulation, ‘I is someone else’ (‘Je est un autre’).”
Though I interpret “Je est un autre” to mean that subject and object are, inescapably, the same.
MB: What is the role or place of subjectivity in your poetry?
Gig Ryan: (See above.)
MB: Do you see your work in terms of literary traditions and/or broader cultural or political movements?
Gig Ryan: Everything around us goes into poetry (see question 3), so I see poetry as necessarily political and of its time, but all art is, implicitly, revision and criticism of earlier work as well.
MB: What reading, other than poetry, is important to your work as a poet and why?
Gig Ryan: Everything one reads feeds into the work – philosophy, fiction, history, biography, parking fines. Poet Martin Johnston (1947–1990) used to say that the most interesting writing in newspapers was to be found in the Sports section.
MB: What is ‘Australian poetry’? Do you see yourself as an ‘Australian poet’?
Gig Ryan: In theory, Australian poets should have an advantage, as we tend to be more informed about UK and US poets than they are about each other; but other times I think a lot of Australian poetry is insular – that is, there seems to be quite a lot that is somehow unaware of the past 50 years. There are also some younger poets writing witty and volatile stuff but I can’t see “Made in Australia” tattooed on their arms. The only sense of being ‘Australian’ is that one’s everyday poetic colleagues probably live in the same country.
MB: Don Anderson once described Australian poetry as Australia’s only “blood sport”. More recently critics have seen Australian poetry in terms of a “new lyricism” (David McCooey) and “networked language” (Philip Mead). What is the current state of play in Australian poetry? How do you think Australian poetry and discussions about Australian poetry might best develop in the next ten years?
Gig Ryan: Specialists in any field are always the most critical of what they perceive as work badly done. Non-specialists are less able to see the faults, the clichés, and if they did, they wouldn’t perceive them as crimes against humanity. There’s always Shakespeare’s “with what I most enjoy contented least” ringing in one’s ears.
MB: How is poetry relevant or valuable to contemporary society and culture in Australia or at an international level? Is it after all a defensible form of cultural practice?
Gig Ryan: Using one’s brain to its maximum capacity – doing what one enjoys – is its own defence. Poetry is the vanguard of language.
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