14x21 cm, 22 pages, 250 gsm "Natural" Strata card cover with colour illustration, black endpapers, hand sewn with navy twist. ISBN 1 903090 36 9 Pam Brown fled Sydney for the duration of the Olympic Games in September 2000 and spent almost a month visiting the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and La Réunion. In the following year she spent three and a half months travelling in Hawai'i, Québec, Berlin and France. The poems in 'eleven 747 poems' are some of the poetry written on those journeys. The term "747 poem" was coined by the North American poet, critic and academic Rob Wilson, meaning the kind of poem written during a brief stay in a foreign place. Contents See below for biographical note and extract. Click here for Pam Brown's website |
Biographical Note:
Pam Brown has published thirteen books of poetry including 50 - 50 (Little Esther Books, 1997). Her Selected Poems went into a number of editions. A new collection, Text thing, is due from Little Esther in Spring 2002. She has also made screenprints, films, video and theatre. To quote the Australian poet, critic & publisher, Ken Bolton, she is "a longstanding member of that disorganised band, the radical opposition in Australian poetry". In 1993 she was a guest of Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie in Paris, France andin June 2001 she was a guest at the Berlin International Literature Festival. Born in Victoria, growing up in Queensland, she now lives in Sydney. Since 1997 Pam Brown has been the poetry editor of overland magazine.
from eleven 747 poems
Mascarenes
preferring the gist
to the opus,
on return, I wonder,
if this was a foreign country
would it be more interesting
to be here ?
to be finally asleep
& dreaming, like yesterday,
the day lost to jet-lag,
in French -
"je suis perdue"
& must find a place
called "rue Guibert"
where, in waking life,
I've never been,
nor heard of,
imagining
the spicy Indian Ocean air -
the constant alizés,
trade-winds
that drive you crazy
buffet the house,
the mango trees,
& knock
big juice-logged jackfruit
to the mulchy ground
looking for traces
of Charles Baudelaire’s
exotic fabrications
in some tropical
banana flower,
liane de jade, reeking vanilla,
or Johnny Walker bottles
filled with honey
at lunch-time
at a waterfront camion bar,
or maybe in the loquats
& Malabar samoussas
from the sleepy street seller
just near the mosque
everything here
from long ago,
the ancient erupting volcano,
everything
except the cars, satellite tv,
play-stations, the world wide web,
net-draped cliffs,
unadorned concrete
anti-cyclone construction,
every other mouldy thing
- 17th, 18th, 19th centuries
Leconte de Lisle’s nose
knocked off the statue
in the church square
where a slender Créole
picks take-away scraps
from white pvc boxes
in the bin,
she must have fucked-up
& slipped past
welfare enslavement
born here, buried here,
Leconte de Lisle,
that old Parnassian -
the hymns and odes
inspired by steam power
and electric telegraphy
leave me cold
pure art or social art ?
that hesitation
quickening
young Rimbaud’s disgust
Baudelaire,
at 20,
persuaded by his parents
to take a voyage
meant to temper wildness,
to save him, said the step-father,
from “the sewers of Paris”
when shall we set sail
for happiness
he squibbed, years later,
and invented the east
he never reached -
ditching
the journey
for these two small islands -
îles Mascareignes
in Pamplemousses Garden
by the long rectangular pond,
giant, flat Victoria Regis lily pads,
Baudelaire writes his poem
to a Créole woman
of rue Guibert,
Port Louis,
I write mine
in St. Denis.