Letters to the Editor - April 2015

AN HONEST, FIERCE RESPONSE Dear Editor, In his review of John Kinsella’s new book of poems, Sack, David McCooey makes an assertion that my review of Kinsella’s The Vision of Error (2013) was written not from a critical literary position but from one based on a ‘long-running dispute’ with Kinsella (ABR, March 2015). My review is an honest, fierce response to what I believe are badly written poems. I made my case clear based on a number of examples, and I explained my stance. The evidence is in the review. I find McCooey’s statement insulting and predictable. My ‘views’, as he calls, them are serious and hard-won, and were applied to the poems, not to some personal agenda with Kinsella. TEXT ran the review because the editors were in no doubt as to the clarity and insightfulness of my response. I would also like to question McCooey’s statement that ‘only men seem to be programmatically averse to Kinsella and his work’. McCooey is clearly out of touch. Many men and women (poets and readers) in Australia and oversees have enduring negative opinions on Kinsella’s poetry. Anthony Lawrence, Hastings Point, NSW JUST THE BEGINNING Dear Editor, I was surprised to read, in David McCooey’s review of John Kinsella’s poetry collection Sack that I had dismissed the inclusivity of Kinsella’s most recent anthology ‘with a shrug’ in my review of The Turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry (ABR, December 2014). I thought I had said that John Kinsella’s impulses are generous and inclusive, and also that his attitude to anthologising over the years has been distinguished by the inclusion of work as varied and exploratory as possible. However inclusive John Kinsella is as a person and an editor, though, the Australian poetry world is still mainly mono-cultural. This means that, in my experience, an anthology of Australian poetry that seeks to be inclusive tends to look much like one that doesn’t, stylistic preferences aside. Kinsella has probably done as well as any editor could to overcome this, but there is a fair way to go. Being inclusive is only the beginning. Peter Kenneally, Preston, Vic. DAVID MCCOOEY REPLIES: I am surprised that Anthony Lawrence should be so easily offended by what I thought was the gentlest of questionings of his decision to review John Kinsella’s recent book. Regardless of his assertions of objectivity, I remain unconvinced that he should be publishing reviews of Kinsella’s work. In 2006, Kinsella took out a restraining order against Anthony Lawrence. The issue, then, is not Dr Lawrence’s critical acumen; the issue is a perceived conflict of interest (real or not), which should be enough to suggest that he is not well-placed to review Kinsella’s work. I am, in turn, taken aback by the assertion in Dr Lawrence’s letter that my supposed attack was ‘predictable’, given the many years of public and private support that I have given Dr Lawrence’s poetic and academic careers. In regards to my ‘criticism’, perhaps Dr Lawrence should take his own advice, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, when Kinsella took out the restraining order: ‘And I feel like saying, “Hey, take it on the chin, mate!”’ Regarding Peter Kenneally’s concerns, I am sorry that I was not more accurate. If, as Mr Kenneally no doubt rightly asserts, Australian poetry remains ‘solidly monocultural at its core’, I nevertheless feel that Kinsella’s notably inclusive anthology could be celebrated as doing more than simply demonstrating ‘this continuing exclusion to us’, as Mr Kenneally asserts. LUCID LIGHTS Dear Editor, Dennis Altman’s review of Andrew Scott’s book Northern Lights: The Positive Policy Example of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway, is generally fair and perceptive (ABR, March 2015). I was surprised, however, that Dr Altman found the book to be ‘written in leaden prose’ and lacking a capacity to appeal to a wide range of readers. I think the book displays exactly the skills one needs to appeal to a broad audience. Eschewing unnecessary jargon and employing an engaging turn of phrase, Andrew Scott lucidly explains to the reader that these four countries are pursuing some astonishing achievements. The book deserves to be widely read. Tim Battin, Canberra, ACT 1953 AND ALL THAT Dear Editor, I was startled to read in Chris Wallace-Crabbe’s review of Dylan Thomas: A Literary Life that Thomas ‘has now been dead for a century’ (ABR, March 2015). It is just over a century since Thomas was born, but he died in 1953. Sally Bird, Castlemaine, Vic.

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