Interview with Philip Hammial

Michael Brennan: When did you start writing and what motivated you?

Philip Hammial: Inspired by the poetry I was reading at that time I started writing in 1958, at the age of twenty-one.

MB: Who are the writers who first inspired you to write and who are the writers you read now? What’s changed?

Philip Hammial: The mentors of my youth (late 1950s, early 1960s) were the modernist poets of France, Italy, Spain, Greece & South America – Apollinaire, Artaud, Michaud, Lorca, Montale, Seferis, Neruda etc. These poets are still my favourites. As translations appear, I’m trying to read the poets of Eastern Europe, Japan and South America. It’s an expensive proposition, especially now that there is no longer sea mail from the States. In university I also read the US, German and Russian poets but was not influenced by any of them.

MB: How important is ‘everyday life’ to your work?

Philip Hammial: Most of my poems, as strange as they may seem to most Australian readers, are based on real-life experiences.

MB: What is the role or place of subjectivity in your poetry?

Philip Hammial: I usually work with/from the unconscious (or, if you prefer, the subconscious). If the unconscious can be equated with subjectivity then subjectivity is the primary source of my poems.

MB: Do you see your work in terms of literary traditions and/or broader cultural or political movements?

Philip Hammial: No, unless modernist European poetry can be seen as a tradition.

MB: What aspect of writing poetry and working as a poet is the most challenging?

Philip Hammial: Getting published, getting read, getting reviews, lack of community, selling books.

MB: What reading, other than poetry, is important to your work as a poet and why?

Philip Hammial: I read history, cosmology, political commentary, tantric Buddhist texts, philosophy etc. but never poetics or literary theory.

MB: What is ‘Australian poetry’? Do you see yourself as an ‘Australian’ poet?

Philip Hammial: I have no idea what Australian poetry is and, no, I don’t see myself as an Australian poet. I see myself as a person who writes poetry who happens to live in Australia.

When I arrived in Australia in 1972, Australians, and especially Australian poets, were in the midst of an identity crisis. Now, 37 years later, they’re still having an identity crisis. I can’t imagine a French poet, for example, asking him/herself what does it mean to be a French poet. For me it’s a ridiculous question that reflects our colonial mentality, our pathetic kowtowing to the Queen of England, our Great Cringe.

A few years ago I went to a poetry conference where the question was asked – What is Australian poetry? The answers seemed to be based on the assumption that all Australian poets are Anglos born in Australia. What happened to the “new” Australians? Is a Turkish poet living in Australia and writing in Turkish an Australian poet? If we ever manage to get rid of the queen and become a real nation perhaps we’ll stop asking the question.

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?

Philip Hammial: As I see it Australian poetry is stuck in the same rut it’s been stuck in for years. Ninety per cent of it is hopelessly derivative, based on one of the US models – Iowa School, Black Mountain, NY, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, etc.

One of the problems with Australian poetry is that, with notable exceptions, most Australian poets have only read English language poetry. Their reading of poetry in other languages, in translation or in the original, has been superficial, limited to a few anthologies. It’s a shortcoming that limits their vision of what poetry can be.

Probably the biggest problem our poets have, especially our white male poets, is fear, fear of being ridiculed by their mates if they step outside the box and write something that doesn’t conform to a US or some other model. With the result that most of our poetry is safe, dull and predictable. I sometimes ask myself why a nation that has produced so many top athletes and courageous soldiers has produced so many cowardly poets.

MB: How is poetry relevant or valuable to contemporary society and culture in Australia or at an international level?

Philip Hammial: In today’s world I don’t see poetry as relevant to anything except itself.