Article
A tribute to Noel Rowe
July 24, 2007
Noel was in the Department of English at the University of Sydney for twenty five years as a postgraduate, a lecturer, a colleague, a fellow poet, co-editor and friend. After he settled into Sydney University, he became a valued mentor and guide to a whole range of students who have since gone on to find their own way as teachers and writers. He instinctively knew how to help; but beyond direct help and guidance he gave an extraordinary number of people the sense that contact with him made a difference to their lives. I want take a few moments to say something about his own writing which played such a fundamental role in his life.
Noel the poet I knew for more than ten years before I met him. He used to send poems to a journal I was associated with and I published about twenty of them there, many still uncollected in book form. Apart from a small collection of religious poems brought out by the Marist Fathers, he published Perhaps After All (1999), Next to Nothing (2004) and Touching the Hem (2006), all with Vagabond Press — a substantial body of work. For a number of years his poems have been appearing in anthologies both here and abroad. Next to Nothing, a selection from twenty years work, went on to win various accolades, including the invitation to read at the prestigious Rotterdam International Poetry Festival where he proved to be a star turn. He became friends with a number of internationally acclaimed poets there and since then some of his poems have been translated into various languages. Rotterdam also resulted in another invitation — this time to appear at the Poetry Festival in Jerusalem in October 2006 where his reading was a great success. This well deserved recognition overseas meant a great deal to him — and it was good to see someone who did so much for others getting the kind of acknowledgement that is simply not available in Australia.
Noel was also a brilliant, highly original critic, deeply responsive to the full range of modern Australian writing, and he wrote right across the board on poetry, drama, short stories and novels, and most recently on writing and ethics. Many of our writers wanted him to write about them. Many, though not all, were pleased when he did. His monograph on Australian poetry remains an important reference point; his recent studies of Hal Porter as dramatist and novelist are extraordinarily innovative; he was planning a book on Janet Turner Hospital and contemporary fiction. He was one of the editors of Southerly for a decade which saw so many shifts in the development of Australian literary journals and he brought many subtle changes into the editing arrangements. He and I edited together the anthology Windchimes: Asia in Australian Poetry, which dealt with the growth of Australian interest in Asia, a special concern of his — and indeed the original idea for the whole project, which we worked on for many years, was his. He was always full of ideas and new discoveries in reading and approaches to it.
Noel’s poems cover a wide range from hilarious humour to savage and indignant satire — especially through his sardonic mouth-piece Bluthorpe — to poignant, personal lyrics. As a rule comic poems go over best at public readings. Intimate lyrics, which are the least public and the most fragile of all forms of writing, are more demanding and difficult to handle. But Noel carried off these extremes with remarkable aplomb and finesse. Few people know that Noel originally planned to be an actor and that he started training for a stage career before other callings asserted themselves. He had a comfortable stage presence and an ability to read poetry in public in a calm and self-possessed way that did not inflate or distort the work. I have been told that his performances at Rotterdam and Jerusalem were exceptional.
Read right through, Noel’s poetry is an autobiography which presents us with an outline of a life and a destiny — from his days on the family farm at Macksville, making his way by train to the great city to be educated by the church and later the university — through to his last years. It is not a “grand narrative”. It works through suggestion, glimpses, fragments — but it tells a story that we can piece together quite easily. There are poems about life in Lewisham which focus on the absurdities and comedies of existence — indeed his feeling for the dailiness of suburban things is often extraordinarily heightened, as in poems like ‘Saturday Morning Leichhardt’ with its different registers and gliding shifts. It begins:
Saturday morning Leichhardt
those bread and coffee smells
are on the move again
strolling down the street
eyeing off the furniture
all looking good and rubbed
ready for sale so bright
you’d think the market vegetables
had traded off their smiles.
It is a poem where the observation becomes the mood of enjoying and looking and sharing.
Noel wrote many different kinds of poem. Some readers prefer the Bluthorpe poems; others his portrait poems, others his political pieces; others his partly imagistic observations of the passing scene, often written in diary like sequences. But in all these we hear Noel’s unique voice, its matter of factness carrying along leaps of comprehension and revelation. He has an acute ear for dialogue, with precise records of conversations overheard in buses or over the back fence, or the sustained idiom of ‘Someone from the Family’. He has a very sharp eye for detail which makes his images both precise and unexpected, for instance, the image of “the cows sitting black shoulders hunched forward like nuns at prayer”. Anyone who has ever heard geckos will respond to his marvellous image of a “gecko clinging to the bedroom wall, ready to crack the knuckle of the night”. There are acute observations of changes of light: the way the jacaranda “surrenders its color to the evening coming on”; a bird “darting past the frangipani tree without a sound.”
The years of teaching and later the times of travel are explored in several groups of poems. First there was the journey to Rome. Noel had a great liking for small churches – so Rome, or perhaps it was just St Peters, disappointed or shocked some part of his personality — until he found a glimpse of what he was looking for in Assisi, a sacred place that meant a great deal to him, as did the Franciscan spirit. And then there are the poems based on his experiences in Thailand where he took up a visiting teaching position in Australian Studies at one of the universities. He got to know parts of the country well and some of its inhabitants and their families became his close friends. He grew more and more fascinated with Buddhism and its philosophy which influenced and shaped one phase of his later writing. Poems became much freer, their rhythms more relaxed; themes of lightness and impermanence, and the need to let go, started to dominate. I only know of his religious life and thinking what can be gauged from his poetry, which is an affirmation of gentleness and kindness, even perhaps the unbearable lightness of being. But I think that something of his playful spirit and his fundamental goodness shines through in this, the last poem from the sequence ‘Magnificat’:
Resurrection
Yes, Simeon, there was sorrow, but much fun
too, when he set about making contradiction.
I should have known: for when the glorias first were sung,
it was to celebrate my son, born among the dung.
Ever since, I’ve been hearing heaven’s laughter.
Cana’s newly-weds, absorbed in what was coming after,
did not even notice how the water changed its mind.
The Pharisees got a holy shock as a man born blind
told them if they didn’t get a hold on their desires,
so taken up with Christ, they’d land themselves among his followers.
Sacred irreverence. It is a gift to those found free
in the spirit. Even Zaccheus found it in himself, up a tree,
and Lazarus, sauntering around in his shroud.
There was a time too when, expecting stones, a crowd
got instead some bread and fish. I heard a thief steal
his way back to paradise. The structure of the real
is mercy. Having seen so many reversals,
I should have known he would test his muscles
on the stone, and walk away from the dazed
grave, leaving its mouth open and amazed.
Vivian Smith gave this tribute at Noel Rowe’s funeral on Monday July 16, 2007 at Villa Maria Church, Hunter’s Hill.
Noel was also a brilliant, highly original critic, deeply responsive to the full range of modern Australian writing, and he wrote right across the board on poetry, drama, short stories and novels, and most recently on writing and ethics. Many of our writers wanted him to write about them. Many, though not all, were pleased when he did. His monograph on Australian poetry remains an important reference point; his recent studies of Hal Porter as dramatist and novelist are extraordinarily innovative; he was planning a book on Janet Turner Hospital and contemporary fiction. He was one of the editors of Southerly for a decade which saw so many shifts in the development of Australian literary journals and he brought many subtle changes into the editing arrangements. He and I edited together the anthology Windchimes: Asia in Australian Poetry, which dealt with the growth of Australian interest in Asia, a special concern of his — and indeed the original idea for the whole project, which we worked on for many years, was his. He was always full of ideas and new discoveries in reading and approaches to it.
Noel’s poems cover a wide range from hilarious humour to savage and indignant satire — especially through his sardonic mouth-piece Bluthorpe — to poignant, personal lyrics. As a rule comic poems go over best at public readings. Intimate lyrics, which are the least public and the most fragile of all forms of writing, are more demanding and difficult to handle. But Noel carried off these extremes with remarkable aplomb and finesse. Few people know that Noel originally planned to be an actor and that he started training for a stage career before other callings asserted themselves. He had a comfortable stage presence and an ability to read poetry in public in a calm and self-possessed way that did not inflate or distort the work. I have been told that his performances at Rotterdam and Jerusalem were exceptional.
Read right through, Noel’s poetry is an autobiography which presents us with an outline of a life and a destiny — from his days on the family farm at Macksville, making his way by train to the great city to be educated by the church and later the university — through to his last years. It is not a “grand narrative”. It works through suggestion, glimpses, fragments — but it tells a story that we can piece together quite easily. There are poems about life in Lewisham which focus on the absurdities and comedies of existence — indeed his feeling for the dailiness of suburban things is often extraordinarily heightened, as in poems like ‘Saturday Morning Leichhardt’ with its different registers and gliding shifts. It begins:
Saturday morning Leichhardt
those bread and coffee smells
are on the move again
strolling down the street
eyeing off the furniture
all looking good and rubbed
ready for sale so bright
you’d think the market vegetables
had traded off their smiles.
It is a poem where the observation becomes the mood of enjoying and looking and sharing.
Noel wrote many different kinds of poem. Some readers prefer the Bluthorpe poems; others his portrait poems, others his political pieces; others his partly imagistic observations of the passing scene, often written in diary like sequences. But in all these we hear Noel’s unique voice, its matter of factness carrying along leaps of comprehension and revelation. He has an acute ear for dialogue, with precise records of conversations overheard in buses or over the back fence, or the sustained idiom of ‘Someone from the Family’. He has a very sharp eye for detail which makes his images both precise and unexpected, for instance, the image of “the cows sitting black shoulders hunched forward like nuns at prayer”. Anyone who has ever heard geckos will respond to his marvellous image of a “gecko clinging to the bedroom wall, ready to crack the knuckle of the night”. There are acute observations of changes of light: the way the jacaranda “surrenders its color to the evening coming on”; a bird “darting past the frangipani tree without a sound.”
The years of teaching and later the times of travel are explored in several groups of poems. First there was the journey to Rome. Noel had a great liking for small churches – so Rome, or perhaps it was just St Peters, disappointed or shocked some part of his personality — until he found a glimpse of what he was looking for in Assisi, a sacred place that meant a great deal to him, as did the Franciscan spirit. And then there are the poems based on his experiences in Thailand where he took up a visiting teaching position in Australian Studies at one of the universities. He got to know parts of the country well and some of its inhabitants and their families became his close friends. He grew more and more fascinated with Buddhism and its philosophy which influenced and shaped one phase of his later writing. Poems became much freer, their rhythms more relaxed; themes of lightness and impermanence, and the need to let go, started to dominate. I only know of his religious life and thinking what can be gauged from his poetry, which is an affirmation of gentleness and kindness, even perhaps the unbearable lightness of being. But I think that something of his playful spirit and his fundamental goodness shines through in this, the last poem from the sequence ‘Magnificat’:
Resurrection
Yes, Simeon, there was sorrow, but much fun
too, when he set about making contradiction.
I should have known: for when the glorias first were sung,
it was to celebrate my son, born among the dung.
Ever since, I’ve been hearing heaven’s laughter.
Cana’s newly-weds, absorbed in what was coming after,
did not even notice how the water changed its mind.
The Pharisees got a holy shock as a man born blind
told them if they didn’t get a hold on their desires,
so taken up with Christ, they’d land themselves among his followers.
Sacred irreverence. It is a gift to those found free
in the spirit. Even Zaccheus found it in himself, up a tree,
and Lazarus, sauntering around in his shroud.
There was a time too when, expecting stones, a crowd
got instead some bread and fish. I heard a thief steal
his way back to paradise. The structure of the real
is mercy. Having seen so many reversals,
I should have known he would test his muscles
on the stone, and walk away from the dazed
grave, leaving its mouth open and amazed.
© Vivian Smith
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