Noel Rowe interviews Vivian Smith

October 04, 2006 Vivian Smith’s first book of poetry, The Other Meaning, was published in 1956. Kenneth Slessor included the young poet in the 1958 Penguin Book of Australian Verse, seeing in his work a sign that Australian poetry was ‘filled with promise for the years ahead’. Since then, Smith's published poetic output has been astringent but distinguished: An Island South (1967), Familiar Places (1978), Tide Country (1982), Selected Poems (1985), with New Selected Poems just released. Tide Country won the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Poetry and the Grace Leven Prize. Those readers who enjoy his fine-textured work would agree with Bruce Beaver: “His books have punctuated the years with light and sanity, have stimulated the reader with a strong vein of underlying excitement.” Smith’s most recent collections are Late News (2000) and Along the Line (2006).

This interview was conducted at the University of Sydney by Noel Rowe, author of Modern Australian Poets (Oxford University Press).

NR Vivian, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Let’s start with a few warm-ups. If you had to be remembered for one line, one moment of poetry, which would you choose today?

VBS That sounds too much like choosing an epitaph. Something that has pleased me is the way anthologists, critics and reviewers, all pick different poems as my best, or the ones they most prefer, so I haven’t been stuck with just one or two pieces.

NR Do you have a drawer full of unpublished poems?

VBS I have the usual work sheets and note books, but I am not a great hoarder of my own papers. Unpublished poems yes. But years ago I burnt nearly all my early material. It seemed to be getting in the way and I do not have a lot of space to spare at home.

NR Are you one of those poets who has a discipline of writing, who writes for so many hours each day?

VBS When I have a poem “on the go” I keep working at it until I get it right and it is finished, but I do not write verse every day. I have spells when I write more prolifically than at others. I was very interested to hear Tomas Transtromer say, some years ago, that he only wrote spasmodically, only as the mood for writing took him and that he often went for long stretches without writing poems at all. It all depends on one's temperament, one’s nervous system. There is a danger of dissipating one’s poetic energy instead of concentrating it.

NR What advice would you give to young writers?

VBS To read widely — across the centuries — not just immediate and contemporary work — but that as well — and also across the literatures. Start by finding the writers whose work you like and learn from them. That’s how most poets start. When I was a literary editor young writers often wrote to me for advice. I always did what I could to help with particular poems, and I usually ended by recommending Ted Hughes’s book Poetry in the Making, which is I think an excellent guide for anyone writing. It’s very fresh and up-to-date and sound. Daily versifying works for a poet like A.D. Hope, for instance; it can be useful, like exercises for a musician. It is an Augustan notion. Some poets are sparked off by other people’s poems. I need a special feeling to get me going.

NR. You have written that “There is no sleight of hand”. What is your notion of ‘truth’ in poetry and how does it relate to your commitment to craft?

VBS I would like my poems to be absolutely true and genuine — written from the heart as they say, true to experience and feeling and meaning. I know this is a complicated question. Poetry is a craft as well as an art. But I think experienced readers do agree on this notion of truth and honesty in writing — true to art, honest to experience. Whatever the theoretical or critical questions that abound, there are works of art which bring comfort and revelation and benefit too many people still. Art might be the most beautiful lies as Mark Twain said, but some things are truer than others. No one doubts or questions the sheer honesty of Keats’ Odes or the poetry of Rimbaud or Cavafy.

NR Some Australian writers speak as if critics have been seduced by theory and have lost touch with writers. Do you have any comment to make about such issues?

VBS Recent critical theories and cultural studies have opened up whole new ways of reading that can be very enriching. But good poems are not usually written to illustrate theories. My answer to this question is that there is no substitute for intelligence. My regret is that so many Australian poets know and care so little about Australian poetry and what has been written here — I think that is a real loss.

NR What would you say are some of the major developments in Australian writing during your time?

VBS The main development has been the wide-spread acceptance of Australian writing itself. This has gone along with the changing attitudes to Australian culture and a new sense of the past. The women’s movement, multiculturalism, and Aboriginality have influenced the reading of Australian culture in ways that could not have been anticipated even twenty years ago. This shows in all aspects of Australian writing now. There have been major developments in prose and drama, and Australian poetry has an international reach it never had before.

NR You are occasionally represented as someone whose editorial contributions have formed part of a conservative push in Australian literary politics. How do you react to this? How, for instance, do you see your work as literary editor of Quadrant?

VBS My editorship of Quadrant came about for personal rather than ideological reasons. James McAuley was extremely ill and asked me if I would do the editing for him. I had often helped him in the past, I knew the kind of work involved and thought I could fit it into a few hours each Saturday morning. After he died I just continued on until I finally retired as the amount of work was becoming too much and in any case Quadrant itself was changing and undergoing various internal problems and tensions. I considered literary editing a form of public service, one of those chores one undertakes as a writer. I think Quadrant ’s literary record is a good one and compares favourably with that of other Australian journals of the time, both for the quality and quantity of what it published. It came in for a deal of politically motivated criticism. Of course it was a Conservative Cold War journal, but it did good work at the time of the persecution of Pasternak, Solzhenitsen and Tertz. It protested, it sent telegrams. It did a lot of amnesty work. Given the momentous changes that have occurred in the world in recent years, all of this now seems a long time ago. But for me the literary side of Quadrant was always completely separate and independent. I can only say that I published the best work that was available. All the best writers of the time appeared in it. Elizabeth Jolley, Kate Grenville, Robert Dessaix, David Foster, and James McQueen, for instance, appeared in Quadrant before they became better known elsewhere. The literary side of Quadrant was always respected and even admired by people who did not support its political lines.

NR One element in your criticism has been the articulation of an Australian lyric tradition. What are some of the main features of this tradition? Is there a connection between your critical and your creative writing as you articulate this tradition?

VBS Since the 1950s there have been a number of attempts to ‘revolutionise’ Australian poetry. A.D. Hope’s 1956 essay on “The Discursive Mode” attacked the lyrical tradition in modern poetry and asserted that Australian poets should be more ambitious, spread their wings and try the longer poetic forms. It was a most influential essay at the time. I think it was Geoffrey Grigson who once said that every poetic revolution is necessary, every poetic revolution becomes ludicrous. I discussed Hope’s essay in my 1986 Blaiklock Lecture [see Vivian Smith, “Experiment and Renewal: A Missing Link in Modern Australian Poety”, Southerly, 1, 1987, 3-18.] and I had long come to the conclusion that the main achievement in Australian poetry is in the individual lyric, the short poem. This sprang out of my reading of the work of other poets rather than from my own practice. But I suppose the two are connected at some point. (This might be clearer to others than to me.) I should add that I have a great liking for long discursive poems. Hope’s ‘A Letter From Rome’ is one of my favourite poems, and there are many others in the history of Australian poetry — big, newsy, opinionated, chatty sequences and narratives of great interest and appeal. I particularly like works like Letters to Live Poets, The Boys Who Stole the Funeral and Ross’s Poems.

NR You’ve also done a great deal of research on the Palmers. What attracted you?

VBS Vance and Nettie Palmer always interested me. When I was at school I used to listen to their broadcasts on the wireless on Sunday mornings, and in 1950, I bought my own copy of Fourteen Years. This had been published in 1948 in a limited edition of 500 copies, but my signed copy is “No. 322”, bought late in 1950, so it obviously sold quite slowly. What drew me to their work was their commitment to the business of good writing, their unselfconscious devotion to Australian writing and yet their 'internationalism', their sense of being open to the world, to the best that was being written or had been written in Europe and Spanish America. This particular combination I found most attractive. And both, at their best, are fine, stylish writers themselves. Vance’s novels have not worn well but their literary journalism was excellent — very individual in its time and place. A great deal of their work still remains uncollected and unpublished.

NR Has your poetry suffered because of your academic life?

VBS Not that I am aware of. I always knew that I would have to work to earn my keep; I’ve never felt that the world owed me a living, and teaching always seemed to me particularly worthwhile and enjoyable. But, yes, a large part of my life has been devoted to academic work: I’ve spent far more time on other people’s work than on my own and as one gets older one begins to regret that a bit. Poetry draws on special areas of the mind and these can be closed off by the demands of academic work, which is a full time job. One needs leisure (and patience) for writing.

NR What about your training in French? Tell us something about your early career teaching French.

VBS French was compulsory when I went to school. It was extremely well taught. I had native French speakers in my final years, brilliant, dedicated teachers. I did well at it and went on to teach it at University. French poetry has always been a great love of mine. But I did an MA thesis on Jean Giono, the novelist, who appealed to me because I thought he seemed rather ‘Australian’. French and Australian writing were always important to me and in some ways inseparable. I could read Sartre and Camus as Australian writers: they spoke to my experience. As time went on two things happened. The future for French in Australian schools and universities looked more and more uncertain; my interest in Australian writing and culture increased and I wanted to devote more time to them. I found I could do postgraduate work in Australian literature and so moved to Sydney. Australian Literature did not exist as a University subject when I was a student.

NR Has French had a great influence on your poetry? How important are your translations and versions?

VBS I should say very important. There is an extraordinary refinement in French poetry, music and art — an exceptional intensity — and such a rich mixture of beauty and realism — that never fails to move me.

NR You have formed friendships with some important Australian writers. What memories, anecdotes do you have?

VBS I have been fortunate in all my meetings with Australian poets. Douglas Stewart and Kenneth Slessor encouraged my first poems; James McAuley became a close friend when he lived in Hobart; Christopher Koch and I were at school together. The senior established Australian poets, including Judith Wright, were extraordinarily kind and friendly to me. To adequately answer your question would take a book of memoirs. If I live as long as A.D. Hope perhaps I will also write a book of Chance Encounters. But I can say that the Slessor meeting was exactly as I describe it in ‘Twenty Years of Sydney’. Geoffrey Dutton quotes it in his biography of Slessor.

NR Who are the writers who have most influenced your poetry?

VBS I started reading The Bulletin in the late 1940s when I began to write seriously. The writers who most impressed me then were Elizabeth Riddell, Roland Robinson, John Blight, David Campbell, Kenneth Mackenzie and W. Hart-Smith. Elizabeth Riddell had written about Tasmania and the others wrote in ways that helped me to see my own surroundings in a new light. The influences were both thematic and stylistic. Nature and landscape poems with sharp and precise observation; well-made, fresh poems with notions of shape and style. A little later I got to know the poetry of Slessor and Judith Wright, and a bit later still the work of James McAuley and A.D. Hope whose work I took some time to get used to. Hope’s poetry was very monumental and his heavy sexuality and the harshness and abrasiveness of his mind took me some time to tune into. I discovered Australian poetry at the same time that I discovered Keats and Tennyson. Learning French and German first brought me into contact with the work of Baudelaire and Rilke, two of my favourite poets.

NR How important is your Tasmanian childhood? You have poems which suggest that images of sea, memories of wartime, and effects of light are formative. How true is this?

VBS My Tasmanian background is of great importance to me. I hardly moved outside of Hobart until I was 21; I did not visit the mainland until I was in my early 20s. Apart from a year overseas in 1959 and 1963, I lived and worked in Hobart until I moved to Sydney in 1967 where I have lived ever since. But I return to Hobart at least once a year and my contacts with Tasmania are still very close. All my early poems are set in Tasmania and are in some ways about Tasmania and the experience of growing up in Hobart — an old colonial port with an extraordinary history. The Hobart I grew up in was a very 19th century place. People used to talk about the shadow over Tasmania — that is, its convict past and the destruction of the Tasmanian aborigines. Hobart seemed to be a haunted town with memories of the whaling days and the old sailing ships. It really only started to move into the 20th century after the Second World War and then the past started to be demolished. I remember when there were moves to demolish Battery Point and Salamanca Place and even Port Arthur.

NR So that it is possible this background influences your sense of time, the way so many of your poems are catching that moment when the past is disappearing and the future is not yet clear, what you call “the steady incompletion of our days”?

VBS Yes. That is it, exactly.

NR I’ve always had fond feelings for your poem, ‘Looking Back’, and I have always wanted to ask what I will now ask. How autobiographical is it?

VBS ‘Looking Back’ is not really autobiographical, but I was a child during the Depression years and the years of the Second World War. My parents were not well off. Most people had to take care to make ends meet. I had that background and those years in mind compared with the more wasteful and affluent present we were living in and that I had grown into. When I was at school I used to have part-time jobs, working for the local newsagent, and fruit-picking at high school to help pay for books and clothes and minor luxuries. Something of that attitude of hard work and stoicism (if you can’t pay for it, you can’t have it) has remained with me. There was also a lot of fun and enjoyment too, of course. I wouldn’t want to forget that. ‘Looking Back’ was written too as a sort of protest at what I saw as a lot of aggrandising and snobbery on the part of some Australian poets and writers. I wanted to write about less pretentious and more honest and humble things. Now of course it has become fashionable to claim convict or working class descent. Plus ca change... But all art depends on selection and a degree of simplification and stylisation. And so does ‘Looking Back’.

NR You also used your Tasmanian childhood in ‘The Names’. That was something of an experiment for you?

VBS Yes. ‘The Names’ was an attempt to free up my forms. I wanted to catch something of those early years and childhood during the war. I think ‘The Names’ is more closely autobiographical than ‘Looking Back’.

NR But it is not an experiment with which you have persisted?

VBS It did what I wanted it to do. I wouldn’t want to go on just churning out further sections. It had its own necessity and completeness.

NR You were once accused of being ‘Georgian’, but I’ve always suspected the presence of surreal elements and even moments of self-conscious fiction in your work. I’m thinking of ‘Man Fern Near the Bus Stop’ and of the kind of play on reality and art that can be found in ‘Still Life’ and ‘Lines for Rosamund McCulloch’. What do you think?

VBS I wasn’t aware of the ‘Georgian’ label. But yes I would say that there are surrealist elements in my work, always have been, long before David Campbell’s comment about the surrealism of the Australian landscape — not to mention Australian plant life. What is more surrealist than a strelitzia? The flowers never cease to amaze me: I get a thrill everytime I look at one. And a man fern is rather a surreal sight and so is a bottle tree. Max Harris, of all people, once attacked one of my early poems for its surrealist elements.

NR Which are your own favourite poems? Tell us something of how they came to be written.

VBS My poems about Tasmania and my poems — often elegies — addressed to people I have known. I’m thinking of those poems about Edith Holmes, Rosamund McCulloch, Nan Chauncy, W. Hart-Smith and Maxi Tritsch which I think say something about the other person and also something about myself, my life. Edith Holmes has now been recovered by the Women’s Movement as an important Australian painter but when I wrote my poem she had fallen a little into neglect even in Tasmania. I’ve written more about her and Rosamund in my article “Tasmanian Artists” [in Island, 36, Spring, 1988] and about W. Hart-Smith in Hand to Hand: A Gathering [edited Barbara Petrie, Butterfly Books, 1991]. Nan Chauncy was a well known writer of books for children. Maxi (Amalia) Tritsch left Vienna to escape Hitler in the 1930s. She was part of a quite large circle of what I call the Sydney Viennese, now slowly disappearing.

NR Why are you so interested in painting-poems?

VBS As far back as I can remember I have been interested in music and pictures, with a great love for a wide range of works. I think this is characteristic of many writers. Baudelaire and Rilke wrote some wonderful passages about paintings. I am not conscious of any particular Australian poetic influences in this area, only a sense of affinity. It was the Tasmanian painters who first gave me the sense of a unique Tasmanian environment; the feeling that it could be depicted in paint and poetry. They helped me realise that the sense of encompassing disquiet that I felt was not a figment of my imagination but was being shared by others.

NR What about the sense of surprise? There’s been a lot of discussion recently about angels, and you have some poems where quiet epiphanies occur. Do you think there’s a ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ element in your work?

VBS I do not have any orthodox position and did not have a conventional upbringing in this area. My mother came from a Catholic family; my father would have called himself a Communist though he was never a party member. I sometimes feel a deep religious nostalgia but I find it impossible to join organisations. I like my independence, I like my solitude, even my isolation. In the 1950s I used to read and reread Gabriel Marcel and Simone Weil and a whole line of French Catholic writers. This shows up in some of my early work.

NR Would you say there is something almost spiritual in the quality of awareness which emerges in so much of your writing?

VBS There is a religious or spiritual element in my work but on the whole I prefer not to talk too much about my own work or its creative springs or whatever they are called. Writing is something of a mystery to me too, as well as a craft. While I can talk about the technical and craft side, the other side I prefer to leave alone. I don’t want to sound evasive, but I prefer the individual poems to speak for themselves. I am interested in what readers have to say, but readers are judged by their judgements too. I think it was Dr Johnson wasn’t it who said that there are limits to what we can say about poems? But it is the other side, all that remains amorphous and obscure that often interests us most.

NR What images and themes do you see emerging in your own work? How important are notions like the past, the European heritage, art, the “good poem”?

VBS A difficult one. I am preoccupied with growth and change, decay and renewal; the power of memory to hold out images against oblivion; art’s capacity to impose moments of stillness, reflection and calm. The earliest poems I wrote at school were about the Tasmanian Aborigines — the haunting presence of their absence — but the European heritage has been of major importance to me. How could it not have been? And yes, I like well-made poems, poems that stand firm and clear on the page. I think the de-skilling of poetry, the loss of the notions of craft and discipline has not been a positive development and has involved more losses than gains.

NR I sometimes think that what one values in writing poetry is not always what one values in reading poetry. Or do we tend to prefer reading the kind of poetry we ourselves write?

VBS In certain moods, in certain states of mind only one kind of poem or writer will answer to one’s needs. I get great pleasure from reading poems like Eugene Onegin, Don Juan, The Prelude, Paradise Lost, Leaves of Grass, The Golden Gate. There are so many different ways of writing poems, so many different kinds of poetry. I wouldn’t want to do without any of them.