Peter Bakowski

The late MML Bliss's review in the online journal Thylazine (http://www.thylazine.org/archives/thyla8/pbbook.html) rang ominously true in its opening lines: 'Q: when is an ad not an ad? A: when it's disguised as a book of poetry.' Indeed, the paragraph on the acknowledgments page that begins 'The author is available to give poetry readings any time anywhere' and ends with an email address does have a whiff of commerce about it. But it's too cynical to see these poems only as product, to be read to a paying audience and then sold in book form as a souvenir of the Cultural Experience. It was Peter Bakowski's readings (heard on Radio National) that drew me to the poems in the first place. They're witty, and there's a romantic appeal in the idea of the poet wandering the world as a modern troubadour:

I hit the road,
walked
countryside and city,
hitchhiked,
caught a freight train,
watched
the hem of
an island or continent recede
from the stern
of another ferry.

But ... whether or not the poet ever actually caught a freight train, there's nothing here about his individual experience of it. Do we really want to follow a traveller who doesn't care whether it's a continent or an island whose hem is receding? And you can't get more generic than 'walked / countryside and city': Vietnamese terraces, Irish lanes, Sicilian hills, Hanoi, Paris, Palermo -- all much of a muchness here. With many of the poems, I can tell that a real experience is being referred to, but the felt reality of it, in fact any strong feeling at all, is a long way from the words on the page. Generic seems to be the word -- poems suitable for a reading any generic time any generic where.… (lisätietoja)

In an interview with Peter Bakowski on PoeticA on Australia's Radio National he was described as a modern troubadour poet. He says his country gigs are generally well attended, and he aims to write poetry that can be easily grasped by a listener. This a slim volume, and a quick read; not exactly jolly, as most of the poems seem to deal with one form or another of human suffering. The human night of the title may appears to be kin to the dark night of the soul. The technique is mostly unobtrusive, the images unflashy, but there is poetry in its portrayal of depression, exploitation, alcohol and cigarettes. Especially cigarettes.

http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20070902165621/index.htm...… (lisätietoja)