Acheron (April)

'Acheron No. 9', Philip Hunter (1958-2017)

Pondering again the Acheron works of Philip Hunter, this April. His intense awareness of combustible nature. His acceptance of fire’s destructive power. His interest in regrowth being the environment we walk through each day. The conventions of art offer little assistance to describe the implicit reality of bushfire across the landscape. Two days can change everything in sight. Imitating the cliché watercolours of my grandparents’ time, those grand views of huge eucalypts and distant blue hills, Philip took to the surface instead with red conté, dark orange oil paint, black ink, brown chalk. Nature’s presence toughs it out between blazes.

Ararat (April)

'Shallow Aquifer', Philip Hunter (1958-2017)

Landscape is a line drawn at the top and the bottom. Landscape is the lines across the land before and after. Landscape is the persistent application of what the hand muscles are capable. Landscape is the colour that keeps coming back, night and day. Philip died on the fourth of April. I comb his books for his jazz, his surf, his jokes, his laugh. Landscape is the ever-changing effects of light on the givens of earth. Landscape is the catchment at its most mundane and its most sublime. Landscape is what’s become, recently, Armadale, Altona, Alamein, Avenel, Avoca, Acheron, Ararat.

Autumn (April)

Definitions vary. In southern Australia autumn arrives with seven consecutive days under 18-degrees Celsius, and cold nights. Last year (2016) this occurred in May. This year it again does not look as though it is going to happen in April. Garden guides keep their standard planting timetables, out of synch with the changing patterns of warm and cold. The Wurundjeri identified March as the Eel Season and April to August as the Wombat Season. They caught eels in “weirs of stone and woven funnels”, mussels and fish, along the Birrarung. Birrarung itself means River of Mists. Mellow fruitfulness was anticipated.

Accessible (April)

Will Johnston asks, as prologue to our presentation on Hopkins, why do we like to read difficult poetry? April, with its showers sweet, is the cruellest month. Discuss. As if existence is not complex enough, we want ever more complex sentences. Hopkins wanted, briefly, fourteen lines to speak of the Eternal. For every word that gives access, another expects us to learn something new. We yearn for, even delight in, sentences we don’t understand. The effort is enough, sometimes; we respect the mystery we cannot, for now, know in full, and memorise. We wish footnotes were superfluous. Or do we?

Arc (April)

Frazzled yellow shivers in simplified tall trees. Great earth-hold white trees glisten. Solar-panelled metal roofs shine a moody blue. Lichen-shaded tile roofs, proofs of perpendicular, glow. Three coated humans struggle down hillside footpath. Contracted umbrellas flap, at the ready, comic encumbrances. Coincidentally above the fray, an arc emerges. Hard purple, red bend. Reflector yellow like a road sign. It’s the full 180-degrees. A second arc forces up from out of thin air. Soon though day will darken again. Rain will arrive in unstoppables. There’ll be blips and dribbles first. April shower turns to inclement weather. Sprinkle turns to bucketing down.

Ambulating (April)

Ambulating in one’s mind with the letter A. Amen: not closure but confirmation. Answer: Yes. Ant: destroyer and restorer. Argentina: a nightmare from which Borges awoke. Auden: “His thoughts pottered/ from verses to sex to God/ without punctuation.” Avenue: leaves April for dead. Awesome: overused, overrated, over it. Aardvark: not a rodent, or a pig, some kind of elephant. Acrobat: how do they do it? Activate: that part of the brain that was leaning on its spade. A-Lister: often Alister, implies Z-Listers, the ones in the gutter with the face of Christ. Allusion: a grammatical illusion. Alternative: the new mainstream.

Anzac (April)

The Reverend Sydney Buckley is a familiar name on plaques in Ivanhoe. He was vicar of St. James and founder of its parish school (1915), later Ivanhoe Grammar. Mention of this name prompted a story from my mother, whose father (Charles Hulme, born April 1897) lived in that parish. When he met Buckley, now an army chaplain, in France Charlie said to Sydney that when they got back home he was going to marry Evelyn McKeown and that Sydney was to officiate. Evelyn, a woman of strong Irish mind, declared later, well at least he could have asked me first.

Adjective (April)

In my dream, language reaches the point of no return. This miasma of immemorial memes loses my attention. Adverbs fold in on themselves, ‘ands’ unjoin what they brought together. Full-stops look ludicrous in their millions, scattered like atoms, or zillion planets telescopes cannot perceive. There are colourful adjectives for this feeling of losing language, adjectives not repeated in polite company, but adjectives too are dissolving as loss sets in, or chaos, or a bad coffee. Expletives self-delete. There is only us, attempting forgiveness, reaching out, somewhere where nouns are non-sense and verbs are in the past. April is history, asleep.

Avon (April)

Penguin Books Australia put out a request (born April 23, 1564) for our favourite Shakespeare. My replies: Hamlet’s too long but has every kind of great line. The Sonnets perplex, as we can never be sure how much is Shakespeare’s own experience and how much is artifice, so can we ever say what is biographical? The Tempest’s such a mystery, in some ways hardly a play at all but an allegory, or a dream play (see Strindberg), or a private letter to friends. The great tragedies push us to the edge. The Merchant of Venice enshrines his favourite virtue, mercy.

Arctic (April)

Talk turns to pop. Alternative artists have gone over to pop. I ask: They’ve sold-out? Remember ‘The Who Sell Out’ cover, Townshend and his oversized Odorono stick? But what would I know? Pop for me is (probably) the Arctic Monkeys. What’s pop? Pure pop? The best: Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson, ‘Please Please Me’, ‘Dancing Queen’? Dad, when was that? Um, the 1960s. Hmmmmm. The Arctic Circle is receding. The leaders of the world don’t want to know. They close down the agencies that tell them the Arctic Circle is receding. No one wants to know. It’s April 2017. “Unfinished Sympathy’…