Tasmania's Journal of Discovery

River of Verse

River of Verse
A Tasmanian Journey 1800-2004
Edited by Helen Gee
Published by Back River Press
ISBN: 0 646 44182 5

Helen Gee, writer and poet, has edited a spectacular collection of verse written about Tasmania from the earliest days until early in the 21st century, the place, its people, history and culture.

It begins with two traditional Aboriginal songs and showcases the work of some 150 poets, some Tasmanian born, some comparitive newcomers, some who visited briefly. As Gee writes: ‘I followed a very simple rule: if the verse was essentially Tasmanian and I really liked it, I included it.’

Dr Margaret Scott, whose poems ‘Shark’ and ‘Walking to Cape Raoul’ are among the collected works, wrote the Foreword, calling this remarkable collection ‘kaleidoscopic’.

Like a kaleidoscope every twist and turn brings new light and new patterns of words and imagery.

Convict dirges, Victorian ballads, country songs and protest songs, laments for lost bushland, nostalgic memories, modern times, all are to be found within its pages. It is peopled by whalers, convicts, cattlemen, fisherfolk and others; there are heart-rending descriptions of our beautiful — and endangered — wilderness. As in John R Wilson’s ‘spirit of the tarkine’

1
in the beginning
the land and the air and the seas
were all without end

there were high peaks
snow-capped
and quiet valleys
where trees too tall to contemplate
reached up
to grab clouds

the tarkine’s place was without question

There are singular events in the lives of the settlers, from a death of a jockey at a country race meet to winning ‘The Champion Boat Race’ as chronicled by J Grimes:

On the 24th of January, in eighteen eighty-three,
Those eight determined champions to row they did agree.
The ‘ring’ were betting five to four upon the favourite crew,
To win the race at a killing pace upon the Derwent waters blue.

Some rollicking protests span the times from feisty convict writers to Vicki Raymond’s more contemporary ‘To the Anti-dam Protesters in Risdon Prison’:

Shall I tell you their crimes?
First they conspired
wilfully to keep the peace
with nature; second they sought
to preserve life, with malice aforethought;
third, they plotted the destruction
of our right to destroy.
What can be said in their defence?
Perhaps they were not taught
that the earth is our quarry.

And place after place throughout our island has been captured in words. Here we have an atlas of the imagination, from the Cape Barren Island to Cockle Creek, Cradle Mountain to Port Davey to Salamanca Place.

Helen Gee worked for more than two years to research and collate this outstanding collection, writing Endnotes giving a brief background on each entry and biographical notes on each poet represented.

Because over the eons all Tasmanians have been newcomers to these island shores I will end with words from the second last poem in the anthology, by Ajak Kwai, a young Sudanese refugee. To me it sums up how Tasmania makes one feel:

When I feel blue
you make me smile again,
when I see Mount Wellington
and the green on the hills in sunrise
it makes me feel at home again.
Oh Tasmania I smile again.