I started this blog because someone had written that they are doing a Ph. D. on a friend of mine from Balmain in the '70s. This was my immediate response:
Looking for Nige? Shhh!
Furtive glances over shoulder.
Come this way to meet
all the old wrecks
from the tail-end of the 60s.
I can take you there
I was once one of them.
Balmain is too up-market now
the shadows are driven away
and the sharks have gone
from around Mort Bay,
but they are never far away,
fading whisper; far, far away.
Hello Satyr, thank you for your message on my blog (dada...). I am still working on the generation of 68 project for my PhD and I contacted Nigel earlier in the year and he said he would be happy to do an interview via email. I just haven't put the questions together yet! It has been a busy year, but I hope to email Nigel again soon with questions.
ReplyDeleteThis year I have interviewed Laurie Duggan, Robert Adamson, Kris Hemensley, John Scott, Alan Wearne, John Tranter, Robert Kenny and spoken to Martin Duwell a number of times. The interviews are forming a significant part of the research for the thesis.
Cheers,
Fiona
It sounds as if it is progressing well Fiona. It is so important to keep focused on a major work like a thesis. You have chosen a very wide field covering all Australia. Are you going to break them up into subcategories like the Balmain poets, the Melbourne poets, etc?
ReplyDeleteIn the Sydney poets you probably should include martin Johnston, Rae Desmond Jones and Geoffrey Lehmann. You can't contact martin as he died in the '90s but he was an important ingredient in the mix, bringing in a classical view of poetry which balanced in some way Nigel's leaning towards California. I think that the very 'smallness' of the Sydney scene at this time made it an incredible melting pot and gave it that creative energy. The mix of politics, music, poetry, art, theatre and the heady atmosphere of those taboos breaking down all combined to make it very exciting to be young then. Everybody knew everybody else. Nigel gave incredible parties and he and Dav were very hospitable.
Yes, I am looking at the Balmian poets, La Mama poets, Monash poets and poets associated with the "New Poetry" magazine. I am interested in how these nodes created networks and formed the generation of 68 (as it was critically taken up from Tranter).
ReplyDeleteStill a lot of research to be done, but the writing has begun.