Introduction to Michael Farrell (Part 1) [by Thomas Moody]
Michael Farrell is one of Australian poetry’s great experimenters. Over his eight collections to date he has pushed at the limits of form, structure, syntax and more to interrogate, and indeed reshape, what “Australian poetry” actually means, particularly in its post-colonial paradigm. His seminal critical work Writing Australian Unsettlement: Modes of Poetic Invention 1796 – 1945 expanded on this project, and further established him as among the nation’s most adventurous and original intellects, along with being one of its foremost poets.
“proust aboard a doomed corvette” is taken from Farrell’s second collection ode ode (2002), a collection marked by a talent for hyper-paced parataxis, reminiscent of Dean Young. Farrell’s early poems are laced with pop-culture and literary references, wit, irony and pathos. The imagery is surreal and their associations surprising, but they always remain rooted to an emotional truth, so that in Farrell’s poetry we are able to identify both the fractured external world around us and our equally incongruous internal lives.
proust aboard a doomed corvette
the blue car was too slow marcel
insisted this was a virtue so we
toured the galleries gave cats lifts
painted bodies as we passed there
were some whose souls we entered
briefly & saddened like weevils
in an opened cheese remained
illdisposed to heroics haircutting
ate nothing so this is the moon
marcel remarked gloomily the life
forms are disappointing i dont
understand what god was getting at
leave god out of it i said
annoyed at last by his trilby
twitching watch the road baron
he replied there arent any moon
roads anyway i thought you
were driving out of petrol time
to abandon vessel lay low hope
a cattle farmer comes along we
can steal his wife horizon his
bitter expressions well the first
figure to come along was an army
deserter we were too sentimental
to harm we lent him a cork
shelter a phone that remembered
princes number ned kelly shrieked
mp we continued without holdups
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Author: Thomas Moody
