Island Earth: New and Selected Poems. S. K. Kelen. Brandl & Schlesinger.
Reviewed by Michael Byrne
Steve Kelen was born in Sydney in 1956. He has worked as a teacher of Literature and Writing in universities, in high schools, as a public servant, librarian, book reviewer, and a number of years as a full-time writer thanks to residencies and grants from the Australia Council, artsACT and Asialink. His latest book, Island Earth: New and Selected Poems selects poems from Kelen’s poetic career including some juvenilia and new poems.
Notable early in Kelen’s poetic career, but still evident later on, is his originality. The originality of his subject matter is evident in ‘Homer’s Dream’:
Woo-hoo Homer Simpson is thinking
designer polish makes shoes softly glow
especially a pair of Assassin cross trainers.
The day just feels better owning lots of things
and knowing soon you’ll own even more . . .
Here, Kelen could simply do a synopsis of the Simpsons episodes he is watching. However, Kelen augments the poem by offering some insight into the human condition. This is why the poem works. If Kelen is a poet interested in (animated) people, he is also a poet interested in animals. This is evident in one of his best poems (‘House of Rats’):
Exterminators arrive dressed as astronauts and poison
the house for ten thousand years. It’s time to move out.
But the rats have laid eggs in your pockets, stow
away, follow you from house to house.
The curse enters its exponential phase.
Tentacles unwind from the ceiling, dirty great moths
and leopard slugs take over your happy home.
Soon you are a trellis. That’s just what the rats say.
I’m down here listening to radio messages,
oiling automatic weapons, building rockets.
Living in a rat’s belly.
Kelen gives his imagination free rein. He takes an idea and successfully runs with it. What also works in Kelen’s poetry is its touch of the exotic (‘Extreme Orient’):
A barge adrift the Perfumed River –
reclining beneath a parasol
is the courtesan Tigress and her fan
– barge floats by village and pagoda,
houses and huts saluted by bodhi tree
coconut palm, flame flowers,
bamboo forest, and flat green
leaves float in the green river
tangle roots and mangrove.
In the morning she bathed in the river.
Everything about the poem (not just the courtesan) is lush. The poem has both elegance and splendour. In Island Earth, Kelen balances this elegance and splendour with wit. In ‘Poetry Does, However, Have Practical Uses’ a judge commuted the sentence of a crack-addicted mother from fifteen years in jail to a good behaviour bond for reading a poem (‘Cocaine Slave’) about her troubles. Kelen ends nicely:
The lady kept her freedom
She was a Muse now,
And the Judge lived happily
Ever – that evening
Miss Dickinson &
Ms Plath visited him
For tea. ‘Please recite
The rave that shifted
Your view concerning stars
Set your head a-buzz
And taught you to be just,’
The ladies asked.
Kelen demonstrates an eye for interesting subject matter. This interesting subject matter is ultimately a vehicle for good humour. Kelen also uses witty exaggeration (‘Saddam’):
Missiles that actually
walk up to you in the street
to ask directions, drive jeeps
& sing the Star Spangled Banner.
Here, Kelen delivers a memorable phrase that is notable for its cleverness. Kelen’s focus is also on South-East Asia (‘A Traveller’s Guide to the East Indies’):
Kalimantan monkeys and wildcats screech like brakes
before a crash. Honey bears and orang-utans
chant laments, carry giant lilies to hideaways
as all the forests are felled
so throw-away-teak-chopsticks
adorn Japanese bowls.
Kelen is an astute traveller. He knows what is going on around him. It is what makes his poems about travelling work. Kelen’s poems also have wit and can be poignant. The reader, in Island Earth, experiences this wit and poignancy from his juvenilia to his new poems. Island Earth gives the reader an outline of Kelen’s development. From his quirky early poems to his more orthodox later ones, Kelen demonstrates in Island Earth he is always worth reading. He demonstrates he is one of Australia’s best poets.
Michael Byrne 