Playful complexity: Mark Roberts reviews ‘Flying North for Winter’ by Pete Spence

First published in Rochford Street Review, Feb 2024

Flying North for Winter by Pete Spence, Now Orries Press, 2022

There is much talk these days of the arts industry. We are told that artists need to build their “brand”, and in the literary world that means that an increasing number of writers compete for a seemingly ever decreasing bucket of grant money and mainstream publication. While there is no doubt that some very good work is being produced under these circumstances, and most of the established literary journals continue to deserve ongoing support, it is important to consider the risks that working in such a model can led to – a way of writing, creating art, publishing that always has threat of loosing funding or support in the back of the mind. Sometimes it is refreshing to step outside this framework and see what can happen.

Pete Spence is a poet/artist who stands, for the most part, outside the mainstream of Australian poetry. Over decades Spence has built up a considerable body of work, most of it appearing in small independent magazines and in books and chapbooks published by small presses. Which brings us to his 2022 chapbook Flying North for Winter, published by now orries press.

Consisting of 16 poems this is a finely honed collection driven by a wordy playfulness that references an expansive cultural environment embracing art, writing and music. This is clear from the first poem ‘Gouttess de Pluie’ (raindrops)

Aplollinaire tapping
on the french doors          p
gouttes de    p  p   p    l     p                
                 l     l   p   l     u    l                
                 u    u   l   u    i    u                
                 i     i    u   i    e    i                
                 e    e    i    e        e                            
                            e

This playfulness continues across two short poems about music ‘Anne Cessna’ and ‘Kind of Blue’. Both of these are very short poems, but dense with imagery. Adding to this is that the first letter of each line spells out the object of the poem:

Melting note
into air
laid flat
emerges again
sharp

Dabs blue
as a cloud’s
vellum sound
in shape and
space
– ‘Kind of Blue’

The richness of imagery in such a short poem is impressive. This can also be found in ‘Anne Cessna’ and I’m sure Spence is well aware that Cessna has sung in a band called Essendon Airport.

This almost ekphrastic playfulness bubbles over into ‘On the Range. For Laurie Duggan’. At the bottom of the poem we are told that it contains a line from Duggan’s ‘Blue Hills’ cycle of poems. The tile, ‘On the Range’, can be seen as a reference to those sequence of famous poems, but it also references another Duggan collection, The Ash Range – so more and more layers even before we get to the poem!

Once again complexity and references to art and popular culture abound through the poem itself. We have, for example, the creator of mountains:

you take on the job of designing mountains
for Peru though the orders are yet to come in

Which recalls Slartibartfast designing fjords in The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Universe. Then surely:

                                                          ...Christo
Offers to cover The Peak in bubble-wrap

is a reference to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks… or not – with Spence you can never be sure! Though there are direct references to Joseph Beuys and Fats Domino.

One could get lost in this collection which, considering it is a chapbook, is no mean feat. I keep coming back to particular lines such as:

if the dog’s tail
wags any faster
will it tilt
the world enough
for sunrise to comeearly?                                 
                                – ‘While a Cello Takes a Bath’

And

most things are just plain “black & white”
and the zebras agree
as a little herd mentality
thickens an escapable plot
disguised as an exit
- ‘Vanishing Points’

It is perhaps a good idea to end by looking at the title poem ‘Flying North for Winter’. Of course, as this is the southern hemisphere, things need to fly north in winter to find heat – but for Spence the things are not ducks or birds but “gladioli flying north’. From this starting point we rush into a spring on steroids – pollen fills the air!

i picture not opening the door
And the pollen building up around the house like a snow drift!

Beyond the logical absurdism of these poems there is a craft to the language and rhythm. While the unexpected images dance across the page I found myself often almost singing the poems in my head (as I was on a train singing out loud was not an option).

While only a small collection of poems, Flying North for Winter shows once again that Pete Spence is a poet you should seek out and read. He might not fit easily within the current Australian poetry mainstream, but poetry would be boring if everybody did!

– Mark Roberts.

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First published in Rochford Street Review Issue 38, Feb 2024. https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2024/02/06/playful-complexity-mark-roberts-reviews-flying-north-for-winter-by-pete-spence/

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Mark Roberts writes on literature and culture and this Substack page will include both new pieces and contemporary writing and culture as well as pieces from his archive that have appeared in various publications over the past few decades.

While he will concentrate on writing and poetry, Mark will occasionally venture into film and visual arts.

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