Notebook 

The following is excerpted from Notebook, the complete text of which can be found in A Dwelling Place, 49-60

   What are a writer's responsibilities and obligations to an inheritance they must by now acknowledge either as a civilising influence or a delusion? Alienation from the levelling tendencies of post-industrial capitalist culture is not the same thing as disillusionment with aesthetic and cultural traditions themselves. Feminist, ethnic, gay and green critiques have been an essential part of an ongoing reassessment of the Western intellectual tradition, but absolute scepticism hardly seems fertile ground for a poet.
 
   Biotherm, Howl, The Maximus Poems, Paterson: 'barbaric yawp'?
 
   Translations — not a soft landing. Bilingual editions at least put a mattress in place.
 
   History of bad criticism: Four legs good. Two legs bad.
 
   Obsessive aestheticising — a fin-de-siècle speciality?

   Two kinds of poetry: the poetry we live, that is unique to each of us, the sex and death that is ours alone, the pain and pleasure we feel, the ideas we think; the poetry we write, the best of which survives each day's detritus, the work that speaks beyond our individuality. That poetry is profound, like our lives, yet eloquent, as our lives can never be.

   There is no entrance exam to the school of Proper Poetic Intelligence, but a study of versification, like life drawing classes and a mastery of counterpoint, is a suitable departure point for innovation and rebellion.

   Perhaps you can look on Rilke and Celan as an entrance point to and warning sign beyond the black hole of the Holocaust.

   Australian: references to flora and fauna, soaps, cricket teams and money-spinning films won't do any longer. Here is a different kind of sensibility that requires new ways of seeing, thinking and feeling.

   Stravinsky — one of the most original and gifted composers of the twentieth century. But we still want to listen to Rachmaninov.

   Market surveys — pop sociology. If a poll had been taken of the Austrian public as to whether or not Bruckner should have continued to compose symphonies, we know what the result would have been.

   Little money in non-funded poetry. That helps keep the motive pure.

   Hackers entering computer systems — poets entering nervestreams.

   Emotion recollected in tranquillity, overt linguistic expressiveness — falling on one side of the language tightrope bruises stanzas and rhythms; falling on the other means hospitalisation in the ward of damaged language.

   If Hart Crane and Dylan Thomas had managed to stay afloat, what then?

   Mummies — dead poems wrapped in theoretical bindings.

   Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim — wit and artistry, sophistication, tenderness of feeling. Not poets — supremely useful lyricists.

   It is easy, as with van Gogh and Wagner, to satirise the myth of Romantic genius, trying to convince ourselves that we have gone further than them. But no amount of critical fascism will help us make a silk purse out of an over-extended sow's ear.

   Some cities trade on their appearance rather than their reality. That can become a cult serviced by artists who prefer appearances to reality.

   Tristan und Isolde and 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', Der Zauberberg and Superman, a Rembrandt portrait and the Coca-Cola logo — reaching a new low point when you actually have to state that there is an intentional aesthetic achievement in one that surpasses the other.

   Several generations now exist for whom art is what they have grown up with. To hope that discrimination ensues is not elitism, nor a denigration of popular culture, which I enjoy as much as anyone, simply a wish for human fulfilment.

   American demotic: Gershwin, Tennessee Williams. American Gothic: Poe, Hopper, Arbus. American graffiti: Warhol, television talk shows.

   Philosophers suspicious of poets — poets distrusting philosophers.

   Passion makes mistakes, mistakes leading to beauty that lasts, beauty that can't be paid for.

Selected written work prefaced *; published work prefaced +. All work revised and edited subsequent to initial date of composition. Dates are styled day/month/year.

1819   Barron Field   First Fruits of Australian Poetry; first volume of poetry published in Australia

1890   24/6/1890   b William Ernest Edward Nicholson   paternal grandfather
1892   6/5/1892   b Wilfred Ernest Field   maternal grandfather
1895   19/5/1895   b Frieda Myee Nall   maternal grandmother
            A. B. Paterson The Man from Snowy River and other verses
1897   Vienna Secession inaugurated
1899   18/10/1899   b Elizabeth Janetta Francis   paternal grandmother

1901   1/1/1901   Australian Commonwealth federated as an independent nation 1909 Schönberg’s first atonal work

1915   C. J. Dennis   The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke; Gallipoli
1919   11/2/1919   Marriage of Elizabeth Janetta Francis and William Ernest Nicholson
             Treaty of Versailles, general theory of relativity experimentally confirmed

1920   15/3/1920   Marriage of Frieda Myee Nall and Wilfred Ernest Field
1922   2/9/1922   d Henry Lawson
          29/10/1922   b Frank Nicholson   father
1924   28/4/1924   b Patricia Alice Field   mother
1932   5/10/1932   d Christopher Brennan
1938   Jindyworobak movement founded
1939   Kenneth Slessor's Five Bells published

1944   Autumn edition of Angry Penguins-Ern Malley hoax; Dobell Archibald Prize lawsuit
1948   6/3/1948   Marriage of Patricia Alice Field and Frank Nicholson
1949   10/12/1949   Election of Menzies Liberal-Country Party coalition
1950   b Peter Nicholson Waverley, New South Wales

1952   11/1/1952   d William Ernest Nicholson
1956   Ginsberg Howl;  Melbourne Olympic Games
1957-1962   Epping Infants, Epping Primary
1958   A. A. Phillips   The Australian Tradition
1960   Bernard Smith   European Vision and the South Pacific

1961   22/7/1961 d Elizabeth Janetta Nicholson
1962  The New Poetry ed. Alvarez
1963-1968   Epping Boys High School
             Australian Literary Studies; Australian Society of Authors
             22/11/1963   John F. Kennedy assassinated
1964   Donald Horne The Lucky Country
1965   4/1/1965 d T. S. Eliot
            Australian troops sent to Vietnam; Freedom ride through NSW
            Judith Wright   Preoccupations in Australian Poetry
1967   Begin writing *At The Water's Edge   1967-1/12/1981
1968   New Impulses in Australian Poetry  ed. Shapcott, Hall
1969-1971   Armidale Teachers College
1970   20/10/1970   d Wilfred Ernest Field

1971   30/6/1971   d Kenneth Slessor
            Wake in Fright  directed by Ted Kotcheff
1972   Begin teaching
             5/12/1972   Election of Whitlam Labor government
1973-1978   Macquarie University B.A.(Hons) * Honours thesis   Wallace Stevens and 
            the poetry of the earth   March-October   1978
            Literature Board of Australia Council inaugurated by the Whitlam government
            28/8/1973   d W. H. Auden
            23/11/1973   d Francis Webb
1974   John Docker Australian Cultural Elites  
1975   11/11/1975   Dismissal of Whitlam Labor government by Sir John Kerr;
             subsequent election of Fraser Liberal-National Party government
            7/12/1975   Indonesia invades East Timor
1976   28/8/1976   d Frank Nicholson
           Contemporary American & Australian Poetry  ed. Shapcott  
1979   *Fast Forward   22/12/1979-23/3/1980

1981   *Views To A Bridge 25/12/1981 - 1/2/1986
            Macquarie Dictionary   ed. Delbridge
1983   16/2/1983   Ash Wednesday bushfires
             5/3/1983   Election of Hawke Labor government
1984   Jean-François Lyotard The Postmodern Condition 
1985   *Prometheus   3/7/1985-10/3/1987
1986   *Shadow Of A Doubt   2/2/1986-5/6/1987
             26/4/1986   Chernobyl nuclear accident
1987   *S.S. Snakebite   6/6/1987-7/12/1988
1988   26/1/1988   200th anniversary of white settlement in Australia
            *Speech To A Mountain   8/12/1988-24/5/1990
1989   24/8/1989   Voyager ll passes Neptune
            9/11/1989   Fall of the Berlin Wall
1990   *New Affection, New Noise   25/5/1990-21/3/1991

1991   *Bush Imperial   22/3/1991-12/2/1992  
            +28/8/1991   A Temporary Grace ATG published (At The Water's Edge, Fast
            Forward, Views To A Bridge)
1992   *Up ToThe Living  13/2/1992-14/2/1994  
            3/6/1992   Mabo High Court decision; end of legal concept of Terra Nullius
1994   *A Bit Black  15/2/1994-28/1/1995  
            +28/4/1994   Such Sweet Thunder  SST published (Shadow Of A Doubt,
            Prometheus, S.S. Snakebite)
1995   13/1/1995   d Max Harris
            First television program carried by Internet
1996   27/1/1996   Last nuclear test by French government in the South Pacific
            2/3/1996   Election of Howard Liberal-National Party coalition
1997   14/5/1997   First online reference 3 poems Ozlit Mareya and Peter Schmidt ICI         
            REPOSE VINCENT van GOGH, Laurel, New Affection, New Noise  
            +12/7/1997   A Dwelling Place ADP published (Speech To A Mountain,
            Notebook, New Affection, New Noise)
            Mark Davis   Gangland  Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism
1998   31/3/1998   Personal website activated — see Site Data below
1999   8/3/1999   d Patricia Alice Nicholson
2000   Sydney Olympic Games

2001   1/1/2001   100th anniversary of Federation
2002   *27/6/2002 - December Condemned At Kangaroo Court
2003   *Hammerhead
2004   2/8/2004 Resign Department of Education
2005   Poetry and Culture columns 3 Quarks Daily Sept 05 - Mar 08
2007   24/11/2007 Election of Rudd Labor government.

Site Data

31/3/1998   Site activated        
19/4/2000   Praising Gathered Worth added to site                 
8/1/2001     Student reference added to site
2/8/2002   Selected Chronology added to site
18/11/2002 Site archived National Library of Australia
8/6/2004   CAKC added to site 
18/11/2005 Site rearchived NLA
3/4/2006 Links added to site
18/6/2008 Site rearchived NLA
21/1/2009 Archive added to site