Conflux 5: Fantastic poetry

Written by Tim Roberts

Friday, 10 October 2008 03:31

When three panel members get together to share their knowledge and intense enthusiasm for poetry that contributes to and draws on speculative fiction traditions, it’s a wining result for everyone. Danny, Leigh and James present a variety of perspectives and historical contexts for the poems.

Danny introduces the general theme then gives his own talk on psychological aspects and key thematic interests in the ‘fantastic’ poetic tradition. His points include: fear of the unknown as both a topic and reason for writing, ancient creation myths, poetic expressions of supernatural horror through the ages and the use of an epic style evident in the general scope, mystical passages and conflicts between human heroes and mythical beings. Examples include sagas such as The Odyssey, Gilgamesh and Beowulf.

James focuses on the history of writing and publishing ‘fantastic’ poetry, discussing the cultural/literary contexts various poets lived in, why some poems become part of a public’s psyche and influences of key texts in later generations. Novels also exert an influence on the poets.

Examples come from Europe, North America and Australia: Matthew Lewis’s Tales of Wonder (1801) that influenced many generations; Coleridge’s vampire poem ‘Christobel’; Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto; Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590s); Celtic poems; ‘Decadent’ literature of 1890s; German influences and the 1920s collection The Haunted Hour.

Leigh talks about the history of fantastic/weird poetry in Australia. His examples include bunyip poems, verses by Christopher Brennan and Hal Porter and the New Weird style in more recent decades. Kenneth Slessor’s nature-worship verses and description of mythical beings in populated setting (e.g ‘Pan in Lane Cove’) are also cited for their significance in mixing European traditions and Australian environments.

A recurring influence is the imported English view of landscapes being imposed on the Australian landscape, which affects written traditions as much as painting conventions and farming habits. Nineteenth-century poets Henry ‘Bellbirds’ Kendall and Charles Harpur also write fantasies in verse. In this country, fantastic or ‘weird’ poems have tended to be published in niche journals and one-off collections that go out of print after one edition, resulting in a very scattered collection of creative output.

Assorted points:

In contrast to epics, there has also been the long-held ideal of “exquisite brevity”, requiring and enabling a poet to express fantastic, horrific or ‘weird’ ideas /settings/characters in ways not always possible in short stories or novel-length works;
Explosion of small-press activity in producing fantastic/’weird’ poems during 1960s & 70s, in various parts of the world;
Science Fiction poetry often proves more successful in terms of quality and enduring interest when the poet moves away from the highly technical features and instead writes about more philosophical concerns. E.g a poem about the loneliness of existence on one small planet in a solar system, compared to descriptions of what weapons might be used during wars on that planet.

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