Blair French

Whilst he published poetry and short fiction for close to two decades from the mid-1980s, Blair French has primarily worked in the visual arts in NZ, the UK and since 1995 Australia as a writer, teacher and curator. As a writer he has published extensively on contemporary art and photography. His publications include a number of edited or co-edited artist monographs and catalogues; the books Out of Time: Essays Between Photography and Art, and Twelve Australian Photo Artists (co-authored with Daniel Palmer); and as editor, Photo Files: An Australian Photography Reader. He ran Artspace Visual Arts Centre, Sydney (2006 – 2013) and was involved in curating two iterations of the SCAPE Public Art: Christchurch Biennial through and following the period of the major Christchurch earthquakes 2010 and 2011. He is now Assistant Director, Curatorial & Digital at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

Take a Picture Here

For most of my adult life I’ve been fascinated by photography – but never from the position of being behind the camera. The act of photography seems to me, from the outside, to be one of simultaneously reflecting, speculating and levering oneself into place – an apparently simple affirmation of being here now, a positioning statement. It’s what folds back into the world from that moment – that act – that is a constant source of fascination for me as now a critic and curator. But my process of self-placement and reflection has always been through language. It took a long time for me to recognise what now appears so obvious, that poetry for me over the time of these poems (late-1980s to early 2000s) was a fundamentally pictorial act as much as it was linguistic, whether in attempts at distillations of visual impressions or in narrative strands recalling filmic passages. From formative times in New Zealand to travels through Asia, Europe and the Americas to my more recent life in Australia, these are my acts of shoring up memory, my attempts at making sense of place and of my presence in place, however fleeting.

At the Lake

look Debra, trees on the far bank

define country

as topographical pen and ink

and this I can understand

dragonflies chase their own

shadows over the surface

and in the shallows baby fish

pull headstands, tails flicking

air as they burrow for food

we could wade in

amongst this colourless weed

each step a new displacement

we could walk right across

into that background

without even getting our heads wet

turn and see back here

this same view awaiting

us over again

Botticelli’s Annunciation

Her heart

was disturbed

within her.

She lent away

from the angel,

eyes closed,

floating herself

away on the music

of spring afternoons

in the Tuscan light –

the touch of pollen

on porcelain.

No, she said –

no, I am deeply

honoured, moved

even, really…

but I would prefer

to dance this life

away, dance under

the touch of this

horsehair brush.

Colon

There they go again,

brown shoes discussing cases

beneath the curtains,

the two of us

left to play hangman

beneath beige coverings.

The exit sign

reflects red

in the doorway.

We listen

to a woman

across the way

leaking,

wonder if that’s Greek

for I’m dying here

in an apricot cubicle

with green diamante curtains.

Desert Coda

Perfect pitch

here at the feet

and there

the neighbouring range –

Distance collapsing

at a glance.

An aircraft

passes itself by –

Reverberation

fades opposite edges

of sheer sky.

Dunedin Sonnets

1         

I often stood on the

balcony above finest

southern colours –

gold, green, red

skinning each leaf

and eyed faintest outlines,

blue tracing frames

for the hills. I listened

to a town stripped bare

on the edge of a wind

slicing its way around

stone corners, through

bodies. A certain music.

Anxious. Clear.

2

I used to look out

at the peninsula each

morning through rain

dropped glass and notice

spaces, calm spaces

trailing those mists

which slid up the harbour.

The harbour’s surface

still and reflective,

the light, translucent.

Shifting and settling,

shifting and settling,

I was a person

measuring the odds.

Leaving Town

Coastal winds

twist the wing

mirror

reflecting

your face,

the road

absorbed

by your eyes,

daylight

as fractured colour

slipping over

your forehead.

Your hands

grip the wheel

with such urgency.

Soaking Up Those Radiation Waves

Extending to this hill

above               this empty beach

            those waves

below a mocking sky

                                    where

                        yes

we express our yen

            within parentheses

and avidly consume each other.

            I can see

satellite reflections

on the sea’s surface

            bouncing network

            talkback power

                        hype

through our bodies.

            We hold on

for                   the duration.

            Tussock stalks

snap

                        under our weight

            and you

            lie

on some

            ‘extraordinarily fine

            achievement in New Zealand poetry’

smudging the retail price.

Same Road

An unnerving surface calm

glosses this molten body of water.

Throws of blue-white light

question moon and crescent graves

clustered on the shore.

May we make

something of this?

Or simply do as we do?

Michael drives. The engine running

just so and those softened tyres

loosening tight corners.

We cleave space

at that edge between land and air,

this parting of the world to our passage.

Compass-needle pylons swing south

across the plateau. To the west shadow

slices sulphur-poisoned sunlight,

transparent sheets of tissue.

The mountain slips

shades of almost colour,

the smoke-hardened pelt

of animal skin

and all this stuns words breathless

like never before –

all our talk of distances travelled,

a country folding us back

upon ourselves again,

this perpetual re-tracing

of a cooling highway.

Smells Like Rain

A momentary swelling

the world inside out

like the moment just before

militia enter town

or the trapped gunman

yells ‘enough!’

Nothing visible.

Nothing… linguistic.

No white sky keening.

No scent of moisture.

Just a bruising of the nostrils,

a shift in the register

of silence.

Someone Else’s Spring

Light & air & water,

the warm embrace

of a perfect Renaissance

courtyard & the kiss

of an orange tree

placed exactly at its centre.

Vantage

the trick is to trust your body’s

desire for imagination

            and think of the invasions as a walk

            taken to sweat out a fever –

choose a thunderously close afternoon

two headlands with steep, difficult approaches

and a long hesitant line of a coast between

where each step is muffled by a gush

of ocean mopping clean before and behind

listen to the ache of muscle talking back

                                                nothing else

and refuse the temptation to look inland

at buildings struggling for vantage

                                                pace yourself, always pace yourself

only at the top of the cliff pause and relax, draw breath

lie down even on the sandstone overhang and shuffle legs

and buttocks on the rock until your sweat buffs that shape

from your own

see the horizon where sea and sky

sign their names?

                                    forget them

                                                let them be lost

                                                to each other

Walker Evans in Redfern

The Qantas girl’s

taken a blow to the face.

Her silver coating lies in pixilated

piles on the pavement.

Her skin’s darker,

her smile ambivalent.

She’s trying to run

but her knees

knock together

like awkward first kisses.

She tries not to look

at the mid-morning drinkers

she bumps into.

She just wants out.

She’s that sick of the camera.

Wittgenstein and the Cat

In a casual sort of way Debra’s been seeking Wittgenstein

for years. Last trip to Cambridge she searched this churchyard

from stone wall to stone wall, prising each tomb open to inquire

within. A bookshop owner phoned an old woman once his nurse,

housekeeper or something, but memory proved as useless as

memory. Library inquiries drowned in a small storm of paper,

whilst Dons at a college dinner came up with three different

countries between them, to which later in New York

the American conceptualist added a fourth.

Now back at the churchyard there’s a footnote

to the notice of weekly service addressed specifically

to her. He’s out on the main road west in a churchyard annex.

It’s a twenty-minute trudge out there avoiding traffic wash

and those treacherous bits of chipped pavement.

Left after the hedgerow and down a lane that threatens

to narrow into nothing, as if the English landscape tradition

were drawing the curtains on winter and lying down

on the lounge sofa before a gas heater and satellite television.

At lane’s end a late model Japanese hatchback and a tiny

converted presbytery, electric light assisting day within.

Behind there’s an even smaller chapel for quick and quiet

dispatches, and rows of stone markers in requisite disorder.

We’re checking the plot map posted at the entry when he

saunters from behind the chapel porch and stops stock still

before Debra, coated ginger and eyes the grey of cathedral stone

before rain. His stare is fixed, his head, torso and haunches

so quiescent that all the world about – the drizzle fingering

unruly oaks, the dribbles of bird sound and distant lorry

drone – all positively quiver in comparison.

He moves. Stepping forward he brushes her leg like a lover

taking the lead, then strides ahead down the rows

all feline poise. He crosses two rows to the left, careful to

pad between not over the archived bodies, until he reaches

one ever so slightly raised slab, springs up, paws the incision

and turns to wink at Debra as she reads the name aloud.

When she takes out her camera he shuffles across to ensure

the chiselled appellation is kept in full view, then tilts his head

to offer his preferred profile as if auditioning for some lucrative

advertising contract. She begins to move silently, soliciting

his cooperation in the cycle of camera click and eased

shutter compressions – the sound of time wrapping

itself ever more tightly.

She’s almost done when he cracks the silence with a couple

of Germanic aphorisms over-pitched into the crappy English day.

Perhaps he’s bored. Perhaps no one visits any more. He stretches

and steps down, then offers to take a photo of us sitting at either edge

of the billet – a Ludwig memento of our long journey.

Then he asks are we hungry? Ready to escape this clawing rain?

He knows a little pub nearby so tiny you have to crouch

Over your beer to allow lapsed academic and farmers a clear shot

At the dartboard. But the fire’s always going,

The conversation’s good and the beer best for miles

around. Besides, he says, he’s been going there

for years – it might as well be home.