The first comparative poet who came to mind
as I was reading this collection was Bruce Dawe, who shares Mitchell’s
alternating ocker flippancy and grave sensitivity. Like Dawe, Mitchell
finds beauty and solace in the most seemingly mundane of subjects. His
poems have a tendency to oscillate between sensory osmosis and abstract
observation. This collection of poems is divided into three chapters:
Burbin’, which houses poems dedicated to suburban living; minorphysics,
where the poetry is more introspective and animistic; and Home Time,
where the poems are both heartfelt dedications and childhood memoirs.
'That Other Suburb' is a classic example of suburban symbolism stripped
bare, the diminishing facades between neighbours to the point that hanging
one’s underwear on the line in full view becomes common practice,
(“..Y-fronts tell their dirty jokes to a chorus-line of panty hose”)
a symptom the claustrophobia and lack of discretion of living in close
quarters for far too long. The street and all the activity that it creates
becomes an allegory of communal living:
(…”Holden Geminis wake up coughing groping around for their false
teeth…”)
The nature versus culture element in 'Backyard Rites' takes a look into the artificial
landscapes, the elements of modernity that seep into the wilderness that makes
up one’s backyard. The protagonist laments the absence of lawn in place
for concrete. There is no spirituality, just the glow of the TV next door playing
US sitcoms, not indigenous to this country. It is a touch voyeuristic with the
protagonist sitting naked “in the couch grass” watching the neighbour
from his backyard, relishing in the comforts that nature has to offer.
'Aspirational' is a particularly evocative mental snapshot of the irony of suburban
isolation growing in the face of population density. Nothing less than a late
model car is on display in the driveway, the working class make way for the nouveau
riche, weatherboard homes are replaced with gentrification era townhouses, Do
It Yourself becomes Pay Someone Else To Do It with the rise of Jim’s Mowing
and the smell of conspicuous consumption attracting door to door salespeople
in droves.
There is a sense of reminiscence about an era where you knew the names of everyone
in your street and lamenting the American inspired monoculture that is replacing
it.
“
Look how far we’ll be. We won’t know ourselves or anyone”
'OurLand' is an ode to the Thursday night shopping experience and how it has
become an integral part of our lives. It is a sensory experience that overfeeds
us yet leaves us feeling unfulfilled: the food in the bains-marie that smells
better than it tastes, the underemployment of the staff, the lounge acts that
are impossible to drown out with conversation and finally to return home to wheelie
bins with “[l]ids open, saluting us.”
The whole shopping experience has become a routine to fill a void, but what void
are they trying to fill, their own or that of the empty bin? These people have
everything and yet they have nothing. The artificial atmosphere is creating an
environment that is made for the comfort of the customers but appears sterile.
“
One day they’ll build a swimming pool here; there’s an air-conditioned
church, reduced hours for Sundays. Plastic plants at the door are shiny…”
'Dredging Jerusalem' begins at the breakfast table over an article in the morning
paper and continues in the bathtub with the protagonist’s two children
arguing over the ownership of “a plastic toy cooked up by a hamburger restaurant”.
Here Mitchell is not only correlating the situation in the Middle East with the
dispute between his two children in the bathtub but pinpointing on human instincts
and where they begin and the consequences if he does not step in to rectify the
situation.
The protagonist has the luxury of being able to turn away from the horror of
what he is reading in the paper, and to this he acknowledges, and to intervene
in the conflict between his two children, but he also realises that peace is
also dependent on him with his symbolic gesture of turning the paper on it’s
back to form a wing spanned dove, having just split up the fight between his
two children who are now “[e]ach content in a corner of their homeland”.
He has nipped it in the bud while the children are still young, before the problem
manifests.
'After Your Son’s Death' is a very complex and heartfelt tribute to someone
known to the author, who cannot participate in the wake afterward because of
its seemingly celebratory atmosphere, as it is difficult to celebrate the death
of someone who was taken long before their time.
The poem is told in second person, someone who empathises but cannot begin to
understand what it is like to lose a child. While everyone is sharing their stories
of the deceased person, the subject is stewing over the feelings of failure that
they were not there at the time of his death to prevent it from happening. There
is an air of insincere politeness that the protagonist can observe in empathy
with the subject which appears to evade the other participants at the wake and
results in the subject leaving their child’s own “party”. While
other participants may be grieving in their own way, the grief of losing your
own child is a very personal one that nobody can ever understand.
Then there are the childhood musings. 'Kevin Robert Mitchell' is a vignette about
a child’s fascination with esoteric wonders of the adults’ world.
A younger version of Paul Mitchell is musing over the anonymity of his father’s
signature and how his name evolved into an indecipherable scribble and in 'Rating
Maths' an older version is sitting in class working out which girls in the class
have the best physical attributes.
The most profound poem in minorphysics is 'Stubby Bert and the True Sense of
Everything'. Raw and heartfelt, it commences at the protagonist’s grandfather’s
funeral. The former is contrasting the “three sober uncles” who lower
his coffin into the grave from the brutish image that was their father. The nature
of the funeral is very impersonal; the priest who read the eulogy uses euphemisms
and appears to have never met the man.
The poem contains twenty four sub-headings, each an individual reference to Bert’s
character. More often than not the vignettes are unsavoury; Bert is uncouth,
a gambler, a heavy drinker and a bullying husband and father, but there are lighter
moments on offer, like the grandson combing over his bald patch and his stubborn
insistence that he does not snore, even in the light of tape recorded evidence.
There are even a few funny moments where Bert recalls “sniffing the cunts” of
the tall African women and the mental image of him confronting a group of bikies
in his Y-fronts armed with a bayonet is priceless.
By the end of the poem you feel for Bert, through the trail of wartime laments
and the betrayal of the British during his time in World War Two through to his
last rites and his regret that he treated his beloved wife so cruelly. Despite
his tarnished character, you cannot help but feel for the tormented man.
I have to admit I did not really take to Mitchell’s poetry at first. It
was a little too meandering and hyper-Australian for my liking. I put in down
for a few weeks before deciding to give it a second chance, and I’m glad
I did. It was then that I discovered Mitchell’s talent for drawing on things
that we may see but give no credence to.
They are the little things that we observed as a child but became desensitised
to over time. I remember once hearing that the late Sidney Nolan had said that
it took him a few years to paint like an adult but that it had taken him several
years to paint like a child. Mitchell also shares that ability to place himself
in another perspective, particularly that of a child, so accurately and compassionately.
— Claire
Stewart, Cordite
Raw, honest,
confronting and challenging. And very Australian. A sharp eye on social
and political
ideas. Australian
vernacular, Australian images and Australian bias to expose Australian
bias.
Much of Paul Mitchell’s poetry has a biting tongue and a dry wit,
and the satirical tone is heightened through contrasting and powerfully
evocative, powerfully gentle, powerfully personal poems like ‘After
your Son’s Death’, ‘Leaving Glenthompson’, Butterflies
in the Water’, ‘Prayer’ and ‘Thirty Months’.
This poetry is always taut and true, edgy and moving. ‘Prayer’ won
the 2000 Studio Poetry Prize. Go on, go back and read it again. Other
poems explore people, places and experiences in a life lived in this
land, within this culture, through a poet’s eyes and heart.
Perhaps the opening poem, ‘That Other Suburb’, captures the
irreverence and the insight of Paul Mitchell’s poetry so strongly
it might convince you to read this book about us…
Where tracksuits are worn diligently
hello is blown through smoke rings
and Holden Geminis wake up coughing
groping around for their false teeth
Clouds are caught in telephone wires
Rottweilers pull assault rifles to shoulder
and home-brand trees line nature strips
packed by night winds on over-time
Houses kneel for paint jobs
747s jog the block in headbands
and the smell of fried ambition rises
from a nearby fish ‘n’ chip shop
But underarms are sniffed with passion
renaissance Victas roar
and Y-fronts tell their dirty jokes
to a chorus-line of pantyhose
— Paul Grover, Studio
If poems were nails I would want Paul Mitchell to build my house. His poems are straight, simple in design, focused, gleaming with insight – and they’re sharp. His ear is close to the language of any urban family, and his acts of ventriloquism are transforming. With touches of formal balance worthy of Elizabeth Bishop, strange connections as compelling as a Forbes or an Ashbery and humour that delivers the apocalyptic in a drawl, this is a poet arriving suddenly on the scene fully formed.
— Kevin Brophy
I’m a fan of Paul Mitchell’s poetry; as passionately and one-eyed as I would be at a football game, shouting from the sidelines involved in every play... His super real internal sketches of claustrophobic suburbia cover the small of a plastic toy to the vast expanse of universal reflection. His poetry wears both halo and beanie. This is a must read.
— Alicia Sometimes
Here is a world in which ‘next-door’s television’ is ‘letting off US sitcoms’ and a man says ‘I crawled inside my father’. By turns wry and moving, Minorphysics is the work of an original. A poem like ‘Sleepless in Braybrook’ is as compelling as it is unique.
— Kevin Hart
Winner, IP Picks 2003, Best Poetry (Aus.)
This collection of poems delivers astute social commentary on contemporary
Australian life that’s compelling, insightful and funny all at the
same time.
Mitchell moves from the poetry of the self, family, and the
everyday, to connect with the wider world in poems that are at times achingly
tender, and at times scathingly wry.
The language is simple and concise,
yet there is great depth and substance of themes. This is the most accessible
collection of poetry to be published in Australia in many years.
Paul Mitchell lived in several small country
towns before completing secondary school in Geelong. He now lives in Yarraville
in Melbourne’s inner west, with his wife, Simone, and two children.
Paul’s work has appeared in numerous Australian journals, magazines
and newspapers. It has also been broadcast on Triple R radio in Melbourne,
and Sydney’s The Red Room.
Paul’s currently studying for a Masters of Creative Arts (Creative
Writing) at the University of Melbourne.
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