Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Bacchanalia

By Brett Dionysius, Carindale: Interactive Publications, 2003, 82 pages, paperback, $20.00. Reviewed by Stephen Lawrence in the July 2004 issue.

Help more readers find out about this article
Slashdot Digg StumbleUpon Del.icio.us

Here is another in the successful Interactive Press series of emerging writers. This press produces high-quality work -- although 11-point Georgia can be an unforgiving font to the reader's eye, and an incorrect web address at the rear of this book may confuse those interested in further exploring what the publisher has to offer.

Brett Dionysius' second collection has a confident tone, evident in his earlier poetry, and he chooses sometimes confrontational subject-matter without apology.

We are in southern Queensland (David Malouf territory) -- and Dionysius shows us very specific parts: Kurrilpa, Brisbane. We get a nice introduction to the flora and fauna of the area, and the semitropics are ever-present: 'Cockroaches upturned -- lacquered coffee tables' ('Odin in Sussex Street').

The local environment is woven into several of the narratives ('Musgrave Park, 1897,' 'Of Ants & Men'), and as the region becomes overbuilt we move into streetscapes and crime scenes (`Browning Street'). The highly successful 'Paul 2' vividly evokes Australian urban life in the 1950s: 'the green enamel vanity basin', 'the Hills Hoist / like a diseased white rose', 'the channel / flicking loyalty of cats'.

Into this setting are inserted other elements: the ghost of Lorca ('Lorca in Highgate Hill'), Welsh myth ('Ragnarok'). Echoes of Ted Hughes ('Strawberry Season', 'Stars in My Eyes My Country', 'As the last sparks from the arc-welding sun / embered the horizon' in 'Hammer', and 'ravens marched out of his eyes' in 'Il Duce') emerge into the light with 'Crow the Birdbrain'. Dionysius doesn't quite manage to appropriate Crow, however: Hughes' irrepressible creation never needed to learn about his own nature, he was born full-blown. Crow 'in denial'? That's not Crow.

Although generally very capable in portraying his home-town surroundings, in seeking authenticity he can strive too hard to assert it:

Kept playin' the grinning' fool & laughin'
In our faces. We wiped the smile clean off
His nosh tho'. I still piss me-self...
(`Musgrave Park, 1897')

Not all of the collection hits the mark. Some of his characterisations are glib: 'the little alchemist / Goebbels' ('Kolberg'). He riffs too hard at times: 'Tiny grasshoppers (an air-cav unit / Sic Apocalypse Now) snip Rorschach / Shapes out of the chocolate mint' ('Observations From the Herb Garden'). And the poems about war zones and global culture ('small k kulcha') are history roadkill.

A few of Dionysius' characters unapologetically cause death or do dumbass things. (There's even a poem -- rather a weak one -- for Martin Bryant.) 'All Poetry' portrays a bloke who falls off his motorbike, and of course it's someone else's fault ('they hit me / from behind'). There are hints of good poetry (nurses slide / their smiles into me', 'bought my soul for fifty bucks / & junked the rest'), and yet it's too full of self-glorifying bravado that presents as somewhat adolescent:

I will scream
with the realisation
of what I've become.

'Cincinnati Zoo, 1914' is about the shit-shoveler who inadvertently freaked the last bird of its species to death. Once again, it's overblown ('[I] listened to the final / early morning confessions / of her race'), self-important ('the first man / to discover the end of a species') and it wasn't his fault ('I didn't mean to frighten her... [the bird] had been scared shitless / of death'). At the end of the poem, this 'humble cleaner' joins the army. (We know from Al Ghraib that armies accept morons.)

A few of the poems feel half-baked, and aren't always consistent. The cocky 'The Politics of Flowers' sometimes works ('i write poetry like i have to take a piss') and sometimes doesn't quite come off (my screams are sound poetry)

Dionysius' poems can be marvellously spontaneous, yet can become mere embellishments of a momentary thought that does not always bear the weight of its metaphors. 'Strawberry Season' opens with a straightforward premise: 'How does a poet see them; / these black worms on their / red strawberries?' Then he gives us a spill of images. 'How the Man Became a Flower' -- (we get the How but not, or only obliquely, the Why) is another simple conceit flooded with imagery. Dionysius is better when the rage of images form a narrative, drilling into the darker stations of reality.

When he's good, he's very good. 'Chernobyl,' despite its weak ending, transfixes the reader with horror. And 'Bacchanalia' is excellent from start to finish, and deeply shocking:

...johnno & shazza were pashing i screamed at them as i rammed the knife in again & again she didn't look like a sheep she looked like a unicorn a dumb fucking unicorn.

Although brash and erratic, and a bit rough around the edges, some of his images -- 'the smooth, brown // cello skin of her stomach' ('The Green Emerald of Dying') ---- work well in their context, and can be powerful and effective.

The knife
He never expected
Stage-dived
Into his belly
(`Browning Street')

Although there's a little too much 'stage-diving', the finest poems make it worth seeking out Brett Dionysius, either in performance or in his published work.

Citation

Stephen Lawrence. 'Review: Bacchanalia by Brett Dionysius' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), July 2004. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 20 June 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

Only the night was on time

keeping its tight schedule, falling

at the right moment on every living thing.

Lulling some into sleep, awakening others

&, occasionally, killing those

who had no idea it was coming.

This is a collection of significance and substance, pushing Dionysius to the forefront of a new breed of Australian poets.

'Brett Dionysius has chronicled urban and rural life, aligning myth and truth with an uncompromising lyrical seriousness'. - Anthony Lawrence

Have You Also Read?

Fine Salt

Sally Finn, Carindale: Interactive Publications, 2003, 164 Pages, Paperback, $20.00
Reviewed by John Blahusiak in the November 2003 issue.

Do you know a Jack and Jill couple? I have heard rumours of the existence of the kind of couple -- too perfect. Perhaps married since high school, never been heartbroken, and able to balance home-life and careers with a single mortgage; such a couple might have made its way into your social circle. Or worse still, your friendship group. And there, always ready for the purposes of cross-comparison, they are filtering outward the material image of what ideally constitutes a relationship for our modern times. The destabilising force of such a projection lies in the perception that it was possible for two people to wholly escape the dilemma of coupling: the mirage is a reminder of the ... read more.

Interactive Publications

NRB July 2004

Network Review Links

Need to Contact Us?