Apt (April)

[Found poem: John Olsen review, ‘The Australian’, September 2016] “We spent a lot of time getting that purply moonlight colour.” He speaks with enthusiasm about a country that is best viewed from the air. Great empty spaces are anything but empty. “Perfection looks after itself.” “When you begin to travel over the top of it, then it begins to explain itself.” “It’s very exciting, but it’s very exhausting too.” The joy of being alive. “To my mind, I only have a theme and I concentrate on where I am.” “The line ‘nature is never spent’ seems especially apt.” [April 2017]

Notes to ‘Apt’: ‘Poetry in his palette’ Cover story, ‘Weekend Australian Review’, September 10-11, 2016, by Ashleigh Wilson. Opening line is a reference to the mural painting ‘Five Bells’ at the Sydney Opera House, made by John Olsen circa 1972. “Nature is never spent” – Gerard Manley Hopkins.

D (February)

D is for Delta. Cramped and guided for too long in narrows force must, big with addition, shoot wide over availability, direct and detour, spread out so rich in the blues, the mineral basin, joy. Swamped and gouged over long flats in flood D colours manifold capillaries, irresistibly embellishes and emeshes, crawls to the sea, beautiful, fertile, engulfed by its element: reminiscent of John Olsen (Closing February) crazily applying textures amid his garden party of paint pots. E is for Epsilon, the inexplicable and multitudinous birds arising, commonest signs, where waters converge like language, their wings the microscopic evolutionary link.

S (February)

'Golden Summer, Clarendon' (1983) John Olsen

S is for Sun and from sun serpentine rays cut sand and shelter of sandbanks. Sun turns sapphire, as when eyes close onto sun’s negative, sometime. Sun is bush road, lost orchard of ghost house: crow casts shadow, dog dream-bends on porch. Sun picks up speed, crosses the drowning blue harbour, drops gear through Darlinghurst. Just as in John Olsen (Closing February). His shorthand says S is for Seasons, T is for Tendon, their tendency to curve and grace, to drag the paintbrush, wiggle and widen, sign off with similar familiarity, while pelicans push off, still, and frogs translate Basho.