Re-Viewing

Taking a brief look back at some poetry from 'At Home and In Exile' last year.

I thought I’d take a moment to re-view and repost some poetry from 2024.

Part of why it feels right to post this review now is that, here in Australia, we are approaching the far side of Winter — about a month away from the vernal equinox. As this season of introspection and renewal passes, leaving many here down under with a pruned stem of identity from which to regrow, I feel a desire to reflect on the roots that have steadied me and to take note of what fledgling leaves might be emerging.

Though I also mean this personally, what I’m sharing in this post pertains mostly to the identity and themes of this Substack.

While I have loved reading and writing poetry since I was about eight, I really only started playing more seriously with some of its forms late in 2023, inspired by the work of

Nathan Woods

,

J.Z Schafer

,

Nik Hoffmann

and

Sam Downey-Higgins

. It is largely thanks to their vision for the revival of poetry that I have taken to this way of articulating those ideas and experiences that move me and that I think are worth sharing. So, my poetic style is certainly still in its infancy, and it may be interesting to re-view the way it has grown and changed so far, and the way it has enhanced my understanding of the experience of being at home and in exile.

To that end, I’ve put together this small collection of poetry to repost; I hope you’ll enjoy re-viewing it with me …

One of the best sunrises of 2024 (an ostentatious claim, I know).

The poem that feels central to last year, and that felt strangely central when I posted it in August of 2024, is Blackbutt Towers — especially these first six lines:

He picked a sprig of lavender
And held it to his nose
To ease the pain of passing rumour; 

The slow enthralling throb
Of effort without recourse,
And nightmares masquerading real.

~

The poem I thought most underrated was Two Wallabies (though I published it early this year, I actually wrote it about halfway through 2024). It may come across as somewhat casual or offhand, but I do think it’s one of the more interesting reflections on Australian identity that I’ve posted.

Cynocephalus sojourners skipping down-under,
the left-handed guardians of the hell-gates asunder.

~

The best poem, in terms of craft, from At Home and In Exile last year was, I think, The Organ Underground, where I described a setting from my Fantasy series with a fun verse structure somewhat inspired by alexandrine and triplet examples from Dryden’s translation of The Aeneid (I settled on a kind of clipped variation of this verse structure, playing with the metre a little more in the last stanza). This is the second stanza:

The organ built into the stone
Does not make music all alone.
For when the boy sits down to play,
Out comes the thing from deep away,
The thing that yearns to hear and smell the day.

And an honourable mention with a similar atmosphere might be Weeping Woods — the only sonnet I posted in 2024 — which also describes a setting from my Fantasy series.

A picnic in the weeping woods at dusk;
In autumn when the changeling winds arrive
And all the world is inside-out, a husk 
That stumbles neither dead nor much alive.

~

The poem most fun to write, and the best of the postcard poems, was probably The Cobblestone limerick in the postcard From Ireland, which I penned while nursing a pint of Guinness and listening to folk music in Dublin …

So there in the pub we were standing;
Not a seat there was left for a landing.
The Guinness was cream,
The music, a dream,
Every note in my chest was resounding.

~

The poem that seemed to make the biggest impact on my personal friends, those who I live my life alongside, was, I think, Pondering/The Rest. (A friend has actually put this one to a tune, which will be released on music streaming platforms soon.)

A heavy head;
A yearning heart.
A path to tread
And bread to part.

~

Finally, I think the theme for At Home and In Exile this year, as yet, seems to be Phantasy, Faërie and Australia — so far encapsulated best in these lines from Past the Corner of My Eye, which might end up being the poem most central to 2025:

And are there fairies in Australia, I wonder?
And will my English soul be able to befriend them?
By all accounts I did grow up in part in Fairy Land,
But I have wandered far upon a southern road
Through scorching deserts and past many severed hands.

~

I hope you’ve enjoyed this short re-viewing and reposting of some poetry from At Home and In Exile.

Until next time,

Peter Harrison

PS. I have a two-part essay on Brent Weeks’s The Ka’kari Codex lined up to post soon, which I hope will be of some interest to those of you who enjoy Fantasy and are searching for good, current authors to follow. The first part is a spoiler-free review explaining how Weeks synthesises my conceptions of traditional and contemporary Fantasy, and the second is a kind of analysis of the first three books (containing spoilers). It’s a coarse, difficult story — fitting into the Grimdark sub-genre by most standards — which means that the essay is not as clean as usual, but I do think it’s a very good story, and, especially, a good case study for the argument I outlined in my essay on World-Building and Myth-Making … Stay tuned!