Interview with Peter Skrzynecki

2 juni 2011 Michael Brennan: When did you start writing and what motivated you?

Peter Skrzynecki: I started writing in the early/mid 1960s. I was motivated by the death of Frank Partridge VC. I could not reconcile the death of someone so brave, so talented, who “came into his own” late in life, but died in a motor vehicle accident, leaving a wife and baby son behind.

The poem I wrote was called ‘The Guaranteed Clock’. . . I don’t have a copy but remember the first four lines:

We all see happiness and we all see joy
written on the face of a clock –
the hands are carrier of life and death
but never complain of their burden.

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

Peter Skrzynecki: The writers who first inspired me at Sydney University in 1964 (where I failed everything except English) were the moderns: Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Lawrence, Beckett . . . Later, at Sydney Teachers College, through The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by Michael Roberts, I discovered Wallace Stevens, Auden, Lowell, Plath . . . I think that anthology is still one of the best ever published.

I was also discovering the European poets through the Penguin Modern European Poets series. I bought them as they came out – and I think I have them all today. The Italians, Russians, Greeks, East Europeans, etc. Yevtushenko’s ‘Zima Junction’, Montale’s ‘Dora Markus’, ‘The King of Asine’ by Seferis. These poems are as fresh in my mind as they were forty years ago.

Also the Chinese poets, especially Li Po and Tu Fu, Arthur Waley’s classic collection Chinese Poets, the haiku masters, etc. And the Americans, the English, the Irish . . . The list becomes (almost) endless.

I probably read more European poetry today than before. Recently I discovered the work of Angelos Sikelianos in an anthology; then found a copy of his Selected Poems on the net – so I bought it. Also the work of a young Polish poet, Josef Czechowicz, who died in Lublin during a German bombing raid in 1939.

What’s changed? I have. The deaths of both parents. Having children and grandchildren changes you, surviving illnesses, seeing friends you grew up with pass away. Having been to Europe, including my birthplace in Germany, questioning the circumstances that brought me to Australia in 1949, trying to understand the passion I have for Australia and what it stands for. Travel also, on a recent trip to Greece and Turkey, visiting places like the Temple of Apollo at Delphi or Troy, trying to place it all in context of what I learnt at school in Ancient History and read in the classics. There’s an inexplicable/unutterable joy in all this, in helping one understand one’s place in the dharma.

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

Peter Skrzynecki: ‘Everyday life’ for me is the essence of existence itself. I don’t sit in boardrooms or preside over political and economic decisions. I taught in primary schools and I taught at university. That was the bread-and-butter of my everyday commitments; that’s what paid the bills; but I loved my job as long as I was able to write. Out of the noise/music of the pots and pans of everyday life, joining the dots and dashes, as it were, I was/am able to write my poems.

In Ulysses and Us (Faber, 2009) by Declan Kiberd there’s a dedication to John McGahern with a line from the Gaelic. The line is from The Islandman by Tomas O’Crohan, a memoir of his life on the Great Blasket Island in the Dingle Peninsula. Translated it means “it’s only a day of our life” – and conveys a kind of carpe diem sentiment, sad or joyous, depending on the context.

That sums it up for me. Without everyday life – with its ups and downs, its happy and sad situations, its rainy days and its sunny days, the children crying or the children laughing, the dogs barking, the birds singing – there would be no poetry.

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

Peter Skrzynecki: The place or role of subjectivity in my poetry varies on the type of poem I am writing. Originally, I wrote poetry that was highly subjective, that encapsulated my attempts at trying to come to terms with my life; but somewhere along the line I learnt to objectify, write in the second or third person which displaces or detaches you from your subject and creates another ‘voice’ without altering or lessening the emotional affect. The problem – when adopting a mask or guise – is not to lose clarity of vision or intensity of feeling, to remain lyrical or elegiac, without losing the authenticity of inspiration. In other words, you must become someone else but must also remain yourself.

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

Peter Skrzynecki: I am not political and have never consciously tried to fit into any cultural/social movement. I am a poet of experience rather than abstract ideas or language theories. Because of my background, and the poems that resulted from it, I have been called a ‘migrant’ poet, a poet of ‘displacement’ or ‘exile’. That is partly true; but I also write in the pastoralist tradition and, over the years, have embraced the search for spirituality.

I am probably a traditional poet because I do not experiment with language, poetry forms nor do I play on words semantically – nor do I deliberately indulge in irony, encryptions, mock heroics, post-modernist linguistic mind games or literary subterfuge, etc.

Over the years the poems have become my ‘own’. What I have to say is in my own voice and based on my own experiences. The feelings are intense, the images as precise and as clear as I can refine them. The tone has also become my own – whether I am praising the flight/songs of birds or writing an elegy. Basically, what you see is what you get. There is no mysterious poetical agenda.

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

Peter Skrzynecki: Capturing that initial impulse – inspiration, if you like – and recreating it in words. Usually I write very quickly and sometimes there is no need for more drafts; at other times, even though you ‘have the poem’ there is a need to redraft it. How do you know? You just do. Intuitively. There is a precise point in every poem that reveals whether you got it right or failed. The poems tells you itself, surrenders to the fact that it was articulated, made whole. Now leave me alone, it will say. You have created me. I exist. Your part in my manifestation is complete. Be grateful for that. Goodbye.

That’s the challenge. Getting it right.

As Seamus Heaney says, “Sing yourself to where the singing comes” (from ‘At the Wellhead’).
It has never been about money or fame or anything beyond itself. “The gift of putting words together”, I wrote in a poem recently. A poor man or a king can write poetry. Both are equals in that respect. The challenge is to get it right. It’s an art form that offers endless possibilities but, in the end, the reward is worth it. There’s nothing else like it as a calling, except maybe music and art. All are captured moments of vision or inspiration which can be replayed, revisited, reread. Relived.

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

Peter Skrzynecki: Reading autobiography, memoir, biography, in that order. I especially like the first two as they allow us direct access to a writer’s mind, even though there might be shortfalls, we have the choice of rejecting our accepting the words directly – not through a secondary source, as you would with a biographer.

There are too many to use as examples of the former but one that had a profound influence on my own writing and responses to an author’s voice is An Angel at My Table by Janet Frame, where three volumes were published under the one umbrella-title.

Frame: novelist, short story writer and poet captured her childhood, youth and adult life in such a searing but candid portrait it was hard to separate Reality from Imagination. Her evocation of her love of words, songs, nursery rhymes, the sound of syllables is second to none. It did not surprise me to learn that she’d chosen the title of her autobiography from a poet, from one of the Rilke’s French poems:

Stay still, if the Angel
suddenly chooses your table;
gently smooth those few wrinkles
in the cloth beneath your bread.

(from ‘Orchards’)

There’s also the narrative – both lyrical and dramatic – of her life interwoven into a magical but at times grim story: family poverty, the death by drowning of two sisters, her wrongful incarceration in a mental hospital, the release from this hospital and then the journey to England, Europe and America and finally returning to New Zealand – and all the while writing, writing, writing, serving her Muse, the Angel at her table.

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

Peter Skrzynecki: I see myself as an ‘Australian poet’ from an European background. I write about matters relating to Australia, e.g. landscape, wildlife, fauna and flora, but I also write about generic/universal matters such as immigration, resettlement, exile, spirituality, family relationships.

Hard to say what is ‘Australian poetry’ these days. Poets come in all sizes, colours and shapes, whether they were born overseas and have settled here or live overseas but still claim Australian nationality.

MB: In reference to the heated debates around poetics and poets, 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 in your view? How do you think Australian poetry and discussions about Australian poetry might best develop in the future?

Peter Skrzynecki: No, Australia’s only real blood sport is politics. As one senior Labor ex-minister called his autobiography, Whatever It Takes. That sums it up. You scratch my back and I’ll lick yours. As long as we get the numbers and win!!

Poets are wimps compared to politicians.

Discussions can be developed in the classroom or the universities but whether they do or not doesn’t matter. People and poets themselves will continue the debate/discussions in their own circles, at poetry readings, festivals, workshops, etc. with publishing collections that challenge and keep the debate of poetry alive.

The state of poetry in Australia is healthier than it has ever been.

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?

Peter Skrzynecki: More seems to be happening in Australian poetry at the moment that I can remember in forty years of writing and publishing. The internet has provided a network of publishing opportunities never seen before. In my opinion Poetry International Web is the best example. Suddenly Australian poets are out in cyberspace with the rest of the world.

Small presses continue to flourish. Poetry Centres are being established with massive financial inputs from sources such as Copyright Agency Limited. Premiers Literary Awards carry big financial rewards. Poetry slams and such have been taken into pubs and literary festivals. That is the beauty of poetry, of the Word. Age-old barriers have been broken down.

Writing centres provide writing classes, workshops, mentoring projects and the like. Universities offer courses in creative writing/poetry, in encouraging confidence and uniting established poetry lovers and anyone wishing to become a poet. The possibilities are endless. If you believe you lack talent, but genuinely have it, chances are that someone will discover it in you and develop your potential.

Yes, it is a defensible form of cultural practice, just as saluting a flag or singing a national anthem is. Why shouldn’t it be? What is there to be ashamed of ? It’s as relevant and valuable to contemporary society as it was in the time of Henry Lawson because it concerns itself with the very core elements of life/philosophy that make up our breath and daily bread. It feeds as the type of food that money doesn’t buy; it gives hope and the promise of love in a society increasingly obsessed with getting on the Business Rich List and to Hell with what’s happening to the planet. Poetry reveals the search for beauty and truth, the core of our existence, just as it did in the time of the Ancients.