Month: February 2025

Colleen Keating reviews Natural Light by David Atkinson

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CAPTURING THE HUMAN CONDITION:

 

 COLLEEN KEATING  REVIEWS NATURAL LIGHT

BY DAVID ATKINSON.

 

A Review of Natural Light by David Atkinson

Review  by Colleen  Keating

Reviewed by Colleen Keating

Natural Light

by David Atkinson

Delphian Books

ISBN 978-0-6486276-8-5

“With an acute lyrical touch and an unerring ability to evoke sights, sounds and sensations,  David’s poems reveal new depths upon every rereading.” These affirming words by Richard Clark who recently launched ‘Natural Light’, come from an appreciation of the rich use of imagery, and the way in which the poet, speaks to his readers.

This new book is David Atkinson’s third published poetry collection after ‘The Ablation of Time’ (2018) and ‘Strands and Ripples’, (2021) both published by Ginninderra Press.  The poet grew up in the Riverina and knowing this, the reader can appreciate the way he pays reverent attention to the landscape, the birds, the sheds, tools, country roads, road kill and the Hume’s long-snaking journey to connect with the city. 

‘Natural Light’ is a striking book, full of original images, capturing the human condition and the natural world. These are broad themes and longstanding interests of the poet. An example of this is from ‘Whipcord’,

Transfixed, we swerve in aversion, wary and watchful,

as the brute, terror of the imagination,

topic of tales, slithers away. 

Piques a flashback to that folio of boyhood fears;

an eastern brown slides through a dream.

The Holden accelerates, the small boy braces,

steeled like a vehicular strut, then the weight 

of the work boot, as breaks squeal

in a controlled skid through the writhing backbone.  

Atkinson holds his memories, sets himself the task of researching a subject and then works them into a poem. He plans his poetry to put together a collection of work that shows variety of subject and form, including sonnets and villanelles while falling back into the things he loves and is most comfortable with. Hence we are gifted with a book of poetry that surprises wherever you open its pages.

The poems are arranged into six sections:   In the first section titled The Scaffold of Time  there are moments of reminiscing. One example of this is,  as a child. sleeping on the verandah with his family on a breathless country night,

in the open we are kneaded into nature. 

The night breathes a soft–hued concerto, 

         the wildlife variations.

and 

Beyond the strands of ringbarked trees

the muted moon rises

and the stars are glow worms

over the riverine flats.

In ‘Bow Wave’  how wonderful to watch the way the poet shifts us from the country’s hard hot washing day to pondering a dream Manly holiday with memory of his mother,

In the freestanding washhouse she launders

the clothes, her farmer husband’s khakis,

reek of the shearing shed and the killing tree.

After igniting the copper, boils the garments

and bed linen; the spit of split kindling,

the flames prancing in the grate. 

Then as reader, we feel the cool ocean breeze with her dream,

the South Steyne churning its bow wave 

slamming the subservient wharf.

even as,

Her neck sallow, not yet seared swarthy

by the sun, she groans, heaves the bedsheets,

feeds them into the clothes wringer,

hand-operated, the water squeezed down

flowing, gurgling into the drain.

This scene is part of my own memory of helping my mother and grandmother but I wonder what the next generation will picture here.  Whatever, it is important for this weekly chore to be honoured . 

In the poem ‘Generations of Ritual’, the imagery shows how the fates have determined the change and similarity in our lives with the colourful phases,

The pungency of lucerne hay, 

the prickle of the fleece’s burrs. 

the taste of the moonrise frost

solo star in the top paddock,

 In the section, Unswept Wings,  there are many gems including the prize winning poem ‘Gang Gang’,

When you sweep in, deep wing beats,

you skim along the runaway of azalea blooms.

In an ambience of apricity, I observe

your free flight through the bush reserve; 

I know why this time you alight alone.

I watch your actor’s bow to the water,

curved beak leading to its cere,

eye staring off across your canopied 

territory of eucalypts;

Another award-winning poem, ‘Wedge-tailed Eagle’ 

takes us deeper,

In a rhythm of etiolated recall my spirit

aches for the passing of the years.

The fundamentals seem to have been recast,

a perception of having taken

a long journey to the interior. 

The moment to explore the season

with Vivaldi, to grasp the assertion,

the fretwork of the river red gum.

At last the opportunity but I am ageing

and my soul yearns for peace.

Time is transient and pitiless;

I must seek out the resting ripple

of the remote and elusive platypus

in the headwaters of the Coxs River

and turn back to accompany you

on your buoyant ascent.  

In the section Anchored,  one poem  ‘The Challenge of Algebra’ stands out for its thoughtful attention to our wider broken world with the final lines;

Faith is a trait which cannot

be contained; it bubbles

and spurts like water

from an underground spring, 

from a young maths student pinned

under the earth of Mariupol

Further sections are The Ochre of Dawn, Light on the Breeze, 

and in the last section titled Interwoven 

I especially appreciate ‘Villanelle of the Drought’,

‘the yawl of callous crows; he dreads their shriek

alighting on a victim in the glare.

The stricken ewe has slumped, half-starved and weak.

Poems are honed with short, sharp words that give a sense of urgency. In the poem ‘The Old Hume’, Atkinson recounts a trip to Sydney as a young boy, with the rhythm of the road, its bucolic smell and heat.  The light hits that memory as a young boy remembers the sticky heat of the vinyl under his hand and he is jolted by the change in towns now dead and the speed of progress.

As Richard Clark commented in his launch, Atkinson is a master of enjambement and I was interested to spend some time observing his skilful working of this technique.  How it draws the reader in.  I say this because I especially relate to his portrayed country world of the 60’s with the droughts and struggles, having spent my childhood in the country albeit a different direction, The New England Tablelands. 

This is a journey book.  Atkinson uses learnings especially from the birds, with their lightness of being and so opens the perspective of being untethered and free. He comes to a finality with family that brings him home. 

‘Natural Light’ is a worthy collection, full of surprises. Poems that shine like gems, many illuminating the way,  many with  their beauty in the natural light alone.  We are gifted with the opportunity to pause and contemplate their translucence. 

 

Colleen Keating is a Sydney poet. Her recent poem The Two Canticles was winner of the Phillipa Holland Poetry 2024 with Eastwood /Hills FAW (Fellowship of Australian Writers) and is published in Rochford Street Review Issue 40 – 2024:2. Her poem,Fifth Symphony was awarded Highly Commended in the Poetic Christi Press poetry competition and published in the new Anthology A New Day Dawns 2024. Colleen has published six collections of poetry, including two award-winning verse novels, Hildegard of Bingen: A poetic journey and Olive Muriel Pink: her radical & idealistic life. Her newly published book is The Dinner Party: A poetic reflection. (2023) All are available through Ginninderra Press. Colleen writes on Ku-ring-gai land in Sydney and Darkinjung on the Central Coast NSW.

Francis Webb Centenary ed Rochford Street Review

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FRANCIS WEBB CENTENARY – 8 FEBRUARY 2025

by

8 February 2025 marks the centenary of the birth of Australian poet Francis Webb. Born at Rose Park, Adelaide, Francis went to live with his paternal parents in Sydney in 1931 after the death of mother and the institutionalisation of his father for depression. The young Webb was writing poetry at 7 years old and by 1942 his work was appearing in The Bulletin. His first collection, A Drum for Ben Boyd (1948), was described by Douglas Stewart as major poetry’ and ‘without parallel’ for a debut poet.

Writing about the Webb Centenary Dr Toby Davidson, a poet himself and a  Webb scholar based at Macquarie University, and editor of the UWAP updated edition of Francis Webb’s Collected Poems, writes:

By 1969, when Webb’s career effectively ended with his Collected Poems, he had profoundly influenced both the postwar and late 60s generations. Les Murray called him ‘the gold standard by which complex poetic language has been judged’, while Gwen Harwood wrote that Webb was ‘unmatched’ and Judith Wright declared ‘He’s done so much suffering for me and I’ve read him so much and I think that’s what poetry is for’. 

Today, Webb is recognised by a new generation as the first Australian poet to write about mental health and the lives of mental patients when it was utterly taboo, informed by his redemptive, transcendent Catholicism. 

Francis Webb will forever be the ultimate ‘poet’s poet’, but he belongs to all Australians and this milestone is a chance to reflect on his legacy which elevates us all. 

To celebrate the centenary year of Webb’s birth Dr Davidson will be convening a series of publications, podcasts and readings in his honour throughout 2025. Details of these events can be found at https:// uwap.uwa.edu.au/ blogs/marginalia/ centenary-of-major-australian-poet-francis-webb

To mark the actual centenary Rochford Street Review is republishing Robert Adamson’s important essay Something Absolutely Splendid as well as the poem ‘Two Canticles’, a poem about Webb by Colleen Keating:

– Mark Roberts

 

 

Mahler’s Third Symphony at Sydney Opera House. First Concert of the Year

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Some of the things on Mahler’s mind  as he  named the scenes

  1. Summer marches in
  2. What the meadow flowers tell us
  3. What the creatures of the forest tell us
  4. What night tells me
  5. What the morning bells say
  6. What love tells us

In 5,  what the bells say, we have the story of St. Peter’s distress and Christ’s forgiveness

 

 

This is Mahler’s longest symphony. Approx 100 mins divvied into six movements.   Simone Young AM was our conductor and it opened the  2025  Sydney Symphony Orchestral year .

 

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Symphony No. 3 in D minor (1896)

 

\relative c' { \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"french horn" \clef treble \key d \minor \numericTimeSignature \time 4/4 \partial 4*1 a4\ff-> | d2-> c4-> d-> | bes2-> f8 r bes4-> | d-> e8-> f-> e4-> d-> | c2-> a4 }

Pan Awakens

 

the clear alpine air,  and rousing 
springfulness  I feel even before
i arrive at the Opera House, so excited
to experience Mahler’s 3rd symphony.

Lights dim, the buzz stills
and from a quaver rest of silence  
eight French Hornsin fortissimo  
wake us from our slumber.

In the beginning was the sound  
it rouses a universe  into being
vibrates the hall with wonder
It stirs like a giant turtle shimming 

after a long sleep,  heavy with its shell 
slow to move as the music sinks 
into the struggles of journey. 
We are there  present on cello strings.

Mahler wanted his symphony 
to be like the world, for it to embrace 
everything; a star map of music
 to comprehend creation  in all 

its magnificence. Its  constellations, 
celestial spheres, ferns and trees, 
flowers, birds and a distant flugelhorn 
off stage a triumphant sound of human life.

Choirs of angels  light up our faces 
and the soloist sings Nietzsche poem  
from Thus spake Zarathustra 
O Soulful one take heed, take heed 

Every desire yearns for eternity  
and with a tender ecstasy of  human  feeling 
on the breath of oboes and clarinets
a slow movement beatifies  the one 

striving to find oneness with nature 
evolving of humanity to divinity .
 Our guest speaker before the concert  
reminded us: let go of thinking 

comprehending, let your eyes gaze over 
allow the music to  burst beyond
the horizons. just be immersed 
not trying to understand. 

No Way back Revolution and Exile, Russia and Beyond. by Nathalie Apouchtine . Book Launch reflection by Colleen Keating

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It is always enjoyable to be part of a launch of a new book . There is always the promise of bringing it forth into the world that it will make its mark, inform someone, change someone, help someone to find their way anew and so it is with the launch of

No Way Back  

Revolution and Exile ,

Russia and Beyond

by Nathalie Apouchtine. 

It was a buzzing group of writers and family and friends that filled the Judith Wright Room at the Writing Centre last Saturday to witness this launch and to  congratulate her  on the final book here and to  wish Nathalie all the best.

It is published by  Riverton Press 2024

No Way Back: Revolution and Exile, Russia and Beyond by Nathalie Apouchtine spans three generations, three continents and nearly 100 years. Her family left Russia following the 1917 Revolution, some travelled alone, some in groups, many lived in France, very few of them ever returned to Russia. But some of their descendants did, including Nathalie, who has done magnificent research to document the personal telling of her family’s story amid the historical events they witnessed and experienced.

The book includes a photo section where we see the continuity of life: men of one generation dress in military great coats with medals, while the migrating younger generations wear simple worker’s garb, and later, the family finally puts down roots in new lands. As with refugees everywhere, this is no small achievement.

A story of exile and migration, one that continues to resonate in today’s troubled world.

I am very pleased to have a promotion on the back cover which reads

No Way back brings alive the story of the Russian Revolution
and the aftermath of exile, through a wonderfully traced family history.
Apouchtine interweaves a reflective history with world history
in an engaging and captivating way . . . No Way Back
is a valuable addition to our Russian history 

Colleen Keating Poet

 

   

Question and AnswerPanel    and Jackie Buswell at the launch.

 

Some friends ctching up at the launch

Review

No Way Back  brings the story of the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of exile alive through a wonderfully traced family history.  It is better than any ordinary history book as the author, Nathalie Apouchtine, weaves a scholarly historic timeline with her ancestors’ stories, personalised by memoirs, diaries, recorded interviews, eye witness accounts, old photos and keepsakes, letters and postcards from throughout the 20th century.  The tapestry even more enlivened as many of the archives have been translated by Nathalie for the first time.

 At one level a journey from a family’s life of contentment to face a world changed dramatically and completely and at another an epic history of an all too familiar experience : violent disruption to traditional ways of life, the mass movement of peoples and exile.  

The threads of this story, their warp and weft are made even more real by the author’s visits in the 1990’s to trace the footsteps of her ancestors. Visits to Smolny Institute  with its checked and bloodied history  Nathalie writes,

Seeing the stately architecture with the winged symbol of the tsars and the peaceful trees and lawns around it on a summer visit in the late 1990s, I tried to picture the scene described by Sergei: the cold, the crowds, the weapons, the rushing about. . .  a place  where my maternal grandmother and three of my great-aunts were students here, music and young female voices would have resonated behind those windows.

Nathalie has the gift of interweaving a personal history with a world history in an engaging and captivating way. In her writing she makes the reader feel we are unravelling the story togethers Never boring. It is a valued addition to history and a good read.

Even where the flight was more orderly and less risky – whether via land or water – the mingled feelings of confusion and fear for the future, and grief at having to abandon the homeland, built on anxiety over the actual logistics of various escapes.  165

 No Way Back is one of those rare books that can give a depth of understanding of historic time, recounting  the idyllic Russian life at the turn of the century  with the unfolding of a changing world before their eyes

 . . .the Civil War effectively ended in November 1920 when the anti-Bolsheviks in the south lost their last bit of territory on the Crimean peninsula. This prompted the biggest surge in the exodus. About 150,000 White troops and civilians – though some historians say many more – sailed away on a flotilla of boats of every size, shape and purpose, their overflowing cargoes of people destined mainly for Constantinople.  . . . The travellers to Constantinople, as well as to other areas adjacent to Russia, would eventually continue on to various parts of Europe, to China, to the New World, and to countries all around the globe. They were now refugees. 

This story will hold you immersed in a tapestry of love and loss of country or Homeland. For any writer a formidable task but here Nathalie skilfully faces the challenge and we the reader are the fortunate ones to read this book and to be forever enriched .

Colleen Keating

 

Book launch invite pdf 7

Echidna Tracks Issue 14: Open Theme edited by Marilyn Humbert and Simon Handsom

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Proud to be included in Issue 14 Summer/Autumn 2025 of Echidna Tracks especially with these talented haikuists.

Thank you to the editors  Marilyn Humbert and  Simon Hanson for their dedication  in working to choose the haiku   for the journal and especially for their sensitive and thoughtful placing of  our work.

northeasterlies . . .
a fleet of bluebottles
sails into Sydney harbour

Corine Timmer

bluebottle tide
silver gulls forage
in seaweed

Vanessa Proctor

ebbing tide—
the beachcomber treasures
her amble

Colleen Keating

low tide
the setting sun sips
from a salt-rimmed glass

Kathryn Reese

 

voices in the night . . .
the stars maintain
their silence

Elaine Riddell

cloudy night vigil—
waiting to see the moon
perfectly full

Andrew Hede

peek-a-boo moon
meandering through the creek
a rakali

Corine Timmer

looking for peace—
a rakali carves V-wakes
across the river

Tony Steven Williams

 

by the river
corellas scramble for space
solitary ironbark

Colleen Keating

 

Hospitality; a reflection by Colleen Keating

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Hospitality: A reflection

Oak of Mamre (Rublev icon)

Hospitality

This is a Russian Icon that I have loved for many years. it has always been a  a centre piece in our home  near the entrance. It speaks to me of hospitaity.  Officially it is called the Oak of Mamre .  A Rublev  icon it is full of symbolism using the Holy Trinity which at his time was the embodiment of unity, peace, harmony, mutual love and humility.  

The icon is based on a story from the Book of Genesis called Abraham and Sarah’s Hospitality or The Hospitality of Abraham (§18). It says that the biblical Patriarch Abraham ‘was sitting at the door of his tent in the heat of the day’ by the Oak of Mamre and saw three men standing in front of him, who in the next chapter were revealed as angels. ‘When he saw them, Abraham ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth.’ Abraham ordered a servant-boy to prepare a choice calf, and set curds, milk and the calf before them, waiting on them, under a tree, as they ate (Genesis 18:1–8). One of the angels told Abraham that Sarah would soon give birth to a son.

 

 

 

 

Rumi’s mystical poetry often helps me regain perspective on life. In this poem, I love his notion that being human is like being a “guest house.” Unexpected visitors occasionally show up and stay for a while, including some you’d really like to throw out!

Welcoming them and learning what they may have to teach you, or where they may lead you, isn’t always easy. But in my experience, it always pays off — if for no other reason than it hastens the day of their departure!

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

 

 

I believe practicing hospitality towards the other is key to restoring the civil community
on which democracy  depends. It means finally coming to the realisation there is no other. we are all one , depending on each othere on this small ship of earth .  Hospitlity doesnt mean agreeing with everything

It means listening openly and with respect learning how to build bridges rather than walls. 

Each of us is a “guest house” Our first job is to be good hosts to ourselves , good hosts to each other and out wider and wider.  “Be grateful for whoever comes our way/ for each comes to us / as a guide from beyond.”  Rumi

      

Drawing Sister Mary Brady OP

We have to question our Hospitality as a country when we have reminders of cartoon as those above.  And today with the Rivers of Humanity we see each night on our television we have to wonder how can we be present to this  and what can we do to heal our broken world.? These are the questions we have to humbly grapple with  as a caring person on this planet. 

Prayer for  this Broken World.

Into this world

this demented inn

in which there is  no room for him,

Christ has come ininvited.

His place is with those others

for whom there is no room –

those who do not belong

those who are rejected

who are denied the status of persons

who are tortured, bombed, exterminated.

Thomas Merton.   1965 A modern mystic. 

 

And in this world today I like his final prayer written in New York  in about 1985

 

Another drawing to remind us to work always to build bridges not walls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Komorebi: Sunshine filtering through trees by Colleen Keating

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When I took these photos in the Edna Hunt Sanctuary in Eastwood Sydney NSW while on an early morning walk with Millie (yes I am pleased Millie is there standing with me mesmerised. This was an epiphanic moment for me at the time in 2012  .  I actually stood in  it and it was like the ephemeral thing of  grace falling all around me.  I had to go back and retrieve these photos  to share here on my blog as I had a new experience this morning The story is below .

Komorebi (木漏れ日): Sunshine filtering through the trees

The cello’s dappled flow, with  the guitars sharp strings of light-fall, in the new music by Alisha Redmond  played on the ABC this morning caught my attention for further study. It was titled Komorebi. I googled the word only to find it is  a Japanese word  coined to describe that light that shimmers through leaves and plays its music too on the footfall of your bush track swaying rhythm to the whim of wind at the time. 

There isn’t really an English  word equivalent: we speak of dappled, filtered, light. Spiritually we can speak of our connection with nature, symbolising a harmony that can inspire feeling of awes, tranquility, and sublime beauty. The sight of Komorebi – the dappled sunlight, the shifting shadows, and the leaves aglow with the radiant light – is something that resonates deeply with me. Once walking with Millie in the Sanctuary I  used to live near  the experience of komorebi  was like an epiphany for me at a certain time in my life. 

I googled the word Komorebi to find it defined as

Komorebi 木漏れ日 (pronounced kō-mō-leh-bē) Literally, “sunlight leaking through trees”  this word describes the beauty and wonder of rays of light dappling through overhead leaves, casting dancing shadows on the forest floor.

Another definition states, Japanese term “Komorebi”, for which no simple English translation exists. Yet it is a distinct phenomenon, that anyone who spends time among trees will have enjoyed. roughly translates as “the scattered light that filters through when sunlight shines through trees”. It is made up of three “Kanji” or Chinese characters: “tree” or “trees”, “leaking-through” or “escape”, and “light” or “sun”.

Thank goodness for google for then I met  an  Arboriculturist  on a site called AWA and he becomes poetic doing the research I was going to do as he writes:

Komorebi is especially noticeable when the sun is low, and mist or smoke can add to the effect. The impact of Komorebi to the observer can range from creating a pleasant ambiance for a walk through the woods, to generating feelings of awe – which in the right place at the right time – verges on the transcendental. As an arboricultural consultant, I spend more time than most looking at trees when undertaking tree surveys for planning, and occasional experiences of Komorebi have caught me unaware, and have momentarily transformed the most uninspiring trees in development sites, into something special.

Less technical and more poetical attempts have been made in the English language to capture the event. Without a suitable term, several poets and authors felt compelled to invent their own words:

Dylan Thomas called it “windfall light”, in his poem “Fern Hill”, writing:

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins created the term “shivelight” for: “the lances of sunshine that pierce the canopy of a wood”’.

The author C.S. Lewis was a fan of these “shafts of delicious sunlight” or “Godlight”, writing: “Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are patches of Godlight in the woods of our experience.”

Despite their efforts, none of these words have caught on.

Komorebi, like several similar terms, highlights the influence of nature and aesthetics that is unique to Japanese culture. 

Perhaps, beyond poets and physicists, there is no need for an English equivalent. The experience – of observing sunlight through trees – might be enough. Indeed, the absence of a comparable word allows respite from the taxonomic rumination that occurs in most other aspects of life, helping Komorebi remain as one of life’s “pure and spontaneous pleasures”.  https://colleenkeatingpoet.com/5925-2/

Adam Winson (Chartered Arboriculturist,)   Photos: Lars van de Goor