KEVIN GILLAM
Launch speech
'The Roof Milkers' by Anna
Maria Weldon
SunLine Press 2008 -
Gallows Gallery Perth; 21st June, 2008
I first met
Anna Maria when she was a participant in my Writing Marathon classes on Saturday
afternoons at Tom Collins' House. A Writing Marathon, as the name suggests, is a long, in
this case 4 hours, session in which I throw a selection of ideas - words, music, feathers,
etc. - at the gathering and they respond to each with word. For most people, the energy
over an afternoon, the inspirational juices, tend to dry up as we progress. But not for
Anna Maria. No. Every piece of writing she would produce showed care, use of exquisite
detail, an ability to see a place or mood very differently, coupled with the imagination
to 'sell' that place to us through her poetic craft.
I think it is
these three elements that form a tidal pull, a skin of logic that I find in 'The Roof
Milkers'.
When I read a
collection of poems, an anthology such as this 'born today', I need to feel as though,
upon completion, I know the writer a little better, that I've shared something, that
she/he has given something of self, laid themselves open to me, gifted some kind of
kinship, some thread. But it's not just content here - yes, Anna Maria may have
been born and raised in Malta, she seems have had significant and very deep
relationships with places and people, she appears to have a propensity for walking
in plazas and market places and experiencing their exotic headiness - all of these, yes,
are important, the 'stuff' of the book. But for me it's the lacing of emotional content
with patterns and rhythms of diction that bring them close, conjure them real and now, so
that yes, I feel the connection between mind/hand/word/eye/mind. The poems then act as a
catalyst between author and reader.
This afternoon
I'd like to read and examine a few of the poems in 'The Roof Milkers', starting with
'Ultrasound'.
"Ultrasound"
- Rim dwellers, diviners of the
abyss,
- you scan spaces between sighs,
- ventricular vowels and
- quiet consonants.
- Foetal heart whisperers who whet
- bladed shadows, pronouncing your
- magician promises, seers of
sharp edges
- submarine, warnings word-soft as
- water lapped beaches forbidding
us
- to swim offshore where ocean
breathes.
This is a poem
that uses the gel of extended metaphor to unify. And the choice of language - "spaces
between sighs", "foetal heart whisperers who whet bladed shadows" - these
help create the grainy transience of the ultra-sound image. This is a superb example of
Anna Maria's considered, brush-stroke like approach to word choice.
"Curled"
- Curled in land's belly, beyond
the wind, living like
- hermits at Inlet's edge, that
South Western water-
- body's boulders, clouds,
reed-fringed wetlands
- mirror-gazed our reflections in
breathless
- shallows, wild Nullaki peninsula
- folded like a hinge between
- twin skies, our minds
- empty as cloisters.
It's a test of any writer when
they choose to write about a familiar landscape. Does the imagery evoke, reconfigure, live
beyond, succeed in giving us what we know? Yes, this first stanza from 'Curled' works
beautifully - I love the "peninsula folded like a hinge" - Anna, can I pinch
that line?! We're there, right there, with sun and wind, lifted from the page.
"Dolceamaro"
- In Umbria the shutters, he
explained,
- open only to the inside,
are
- made always of oak
-
- A five hundred year old disputed
- papal tax is why the bread
- is still unsalted
-
- Pasta is traditionally
flavoured
- with precious forest truffles
- and roasted wild boar…
This is a poem
that demonstrates the alertness of the 'immigrant' or 'traveller' mind. It's this
'awareness of the everythings' - the shutters opening "only to the inside",
"unsalted bread". When studying creative writing with Elizabeth Jolley, a
student in one of her classes described a room as being full of bric-a-brac. "Never
use bric-a-brac" was Elizabeth Jolley's response, "always give detail - tea
chest, broken photo frames, for example". It's this attention to detail, the
precision of memory and word that Anna Maria uses so well in bringing both image and mood
to life.
"Afternoons"
- Tired eyes closed to swish of
London tyres in sleet
- I conjure Nanna's country where
shrill cicada scream,
- their sudden silence tipping
afternoon
- empty as clay pot.
- Till, in distant field, lone
farmer's rhythmic
- stroke hits hard earth, arcs
metal sky to ground, ground
- to sky, dreams dug to sleep to
pound of mattock metronome.
This is a
wonderful poem, a listener's poem, with the "swish", "shrill scream",
"rhythmic drive". The aural world of the poem is with us, speaking beyond the
page.
"Even in
Memory"
- Lunch dishes draining, shutters
latched
- wooden against glare, low the
blue thread
- dimly glows kerosene down there
between
- enameled door, scrubbed
flagstone floor
This is a poem
that, for me, displays the real depth and conviction in Anna Maria's writing. Here the
'small moment' is examined, "lunch dishes draining", that opening with the
seemingly inconsequential, how the reader is drawn in then, "blue thread dimly
glows". The poem shifts, embracing "slow fermentations", "steady
drips", and "scalded moment". This is the essence of poetry, the tapestry
of mind and mood and word and now.
"The Roof
Milkers", with its broad landscape sweeps, earthy delights, subtle changes of mood
from introspection to exultation, has the elements to make a collection. It is a real,
honest, well-crafted, beautiful collection. And to quote from the book itself, it is
"a companionship that revives me". I wish it well and commend it to all readers
here and beyond.