Some notes on Alex Skovron’s publications

Books

The Rearrangement

First published 1988 by Melbourne University Press (hardback, 112 pp., $19.95, out of print).
Reprinted 1996 by Octave (paperback, 112 pp., $14.95). Available from the author.

Alex Skovron’s first collection of poetry presents a diverse poetic landscape in which some of the major preoccupations of our time are explored. Central to these is the journey towards self-knowledge. It is a journey that moves through the discovery, questioning, perhaps even judgment, of history’s lessons, both personal and collective; through relationships, observed, intimate and estranged; through music, art and the creative impulse; through faith. The Old World, with its complex legacy, is a recurring concern.

Each of the three sections opens and concludes with a longer poem. Within and across the sections, themes overlap and echo, contend and mesh. By means of this framework, epitomized in the structure of the title poem, the circle of experience is drawn together. But the circle is never closed; like the pattern in the glass of a kaleidoscope, it remains restless, open, and ready always to rearrange itself into new patterns and possibilities.


“... the individuality of Skovron’s voice is remarkable and disconcerting. Poems like these amount not so much to an extension of our poetic traditions as a rearrangement of them.” (Philip Mead, Age)

“... a poet of great resourcefulness and erudition, one who brings to Australian poetry an originally European sensibility together with an impressive panache in the music he is able to make from English vowels and consonants.” (Alan Gould, Canberra Times)

“I have now read The Rearrangement many times and the riches it has to offer seem to me inexhaustible ... It can be strongly recommended to all readers of poetry, as well as to general readers who do not care for poetry, as a rule, but who like to have their intellect led on into fresh pastures and other lives.” (Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Australian Jewish News)


Sleeve Notes

Published 1992 by Hale & Iremonger in association with Golvan Arts (paperback, 88 pp., $12.95, out of print). Available from the author.

This highly orchestrated collection — in both the thematic and the musical sense — features three longer poems: the symphonic meditation ‘Quadrilateral’, the autobiographical sonnet sequence ‘The Waterline Poems’, and the twelve-part title suite inspired by the life and music of Mozart. These and the thirty-three other poems that make up the book offer a rich poetic journey — a journey that takes in Berlin and Beijing, Dublin and old Venice, Vietnam, Uluru and the Garden of Eden; a journey where Sisyphus and Nietzsche rub shoulders with Eliot and Hopkins, where Elgar and Mahler encounter Karl Marx and Clark Kent. We come across photographers and fools, flying-boats and fledgling poets, apples, chess games, grammarians, circuses and sleep; there are ants, moths and spiders, flowers and faces — the imagined, the actual and the surreal. And there are the shores of childhood, with their magic, their promise, and their song ...

“Those who have not previously read this scrupulous and inventive poet will now have to do so, and those who already admire his work will find new depths and lustres in these fresh explorations into life, art, and the surprising exchanges to which they are subject ... Skovron’s poetic voice — formal without undue formality, serious yet always open to wit and humour — has been recognized from the start as clear and companionable. With Sleeve Notes it becomes authoritative.” (Kevin Hart)

... His conservative, discursive self is a courtly presence, like that of a highly civilized tutor to a princely house of the Enlightenment ... But under his radical aspect Skovron is a restless scientist of language, an inventor of beautiful new taxonomies and even a psychologist of violent impulses.” (Chris Wallace-Crabbe)

“The attentive may feel that some obscure plan is being played out around them (as indeed we know it is, in the more ambitious poems ...). While a lot of the work stays covered, one begins to trust it because of its manifest care.” (Les Harrop)

“There is a roundedness, a variety, to Skovron’s poetry that makes it both accessible and yet challenging ... These are lucid and frequently moving poems, their language the controlled result of the often difficult marriage of passion and intellect.” (Shane McCauley)

Infinite City

Published 1999 by Five Islands Press (paperback, 118 pp., $13.95).
Reprinted 1999. Available from the publishers and from the author.

Infinite City is a collection of 100 poems in a ten-line form for which Alex Skovron has coined the name ‘sonnetina’. These sonnetinas speak in many voices, though certain motifs recur and intersect. Rhythm and colour shift from page to page; rhyme-schemes vary, or vanish; fact and invention jostle each other as the form is explored from many angles. The poems reflect upon time and destiny, on culture, language, sex, music and art, on the sacred and the mundane. They investigate terrains both social and inner, probing our daily confrontations with the self. The relation between thought, language, symbol and meaning is a central concern.

Although each sonnetina is self-contained, the book can be read as an unfolding journey through the realms and layers of experience. It can also be entered obliquely, along paths that subvert the printed sequence but uncover unexpected echoes and links; or dipped into at random, with individual poems rotated under the light.


“This book is remarkable in two respects: its high standard of craft, and its strong and flexible intellectual quality ... The overall effect is of a fluid whole which is impressively large in its reach, both in tone and in thought.” (John Leonard)

“Reading the poems singly, in their complete sequence or in their thematically-arranged groupings, the reader is rewarded by their extraordinary range of intellectual rigour, emotional experience and subject matter, as well as the satisfaction of encountering extremely accomplished poetry.” (Marcelle Freiman, Australian Jewish News)

“Structurally, these are flawless poems: economical, and beautifully put together ... [They are] almost like modern-day psalms.” (Paola Bilbrough, Heat)

“... Infinite City is an impressive and masterly book.” (Peter Boyle, Cordite)


The Man and the Map

Published 2003 by Five Islands Press (paperback, 136 pp., $21.95). Available from the publishers and from the author.

In his fourth volume of poetry, Alex Skovron revisits many of the concerns explored in his earlier collections: history, language, music, our exchanges with one another, the everyday surrealities of life — and the elusive relation between memory, time and self. The poet probes the terrains of his own past (its truths and fictions), and navigates the territories beyond. His map encompasses the old world and the new; his journey traverses the crossroads of childhood, the webs of adolescence, the jolts and comedies of experience. It takes in strange landscapes and illustrious cities, restless dreams and ghostly fantasies, the outskirts of eternity and the road to hell. Across the horizon, like a distant range discerned from a moving train, hovers the shifting backdrop of the twentieth century.


“This is Skovron’s fourth book of poetry, and he continues to delight and astonish the reader with his deft and elegant work.” (Ian McBryde, Artstreams)

“It is the author’s ability to use the quick and ‘dangerous’ metaphor, efficiency of form and subtle but insistent flow which brings each poem to unique life ... Skovron is able to encapsulate an image in a fleeting and angular manner, not unlike the shutter of the photographer or well-placed brush stroke of the painter.” (Kevin Gillam, Five Bells)

“Irrespective of its subject, a Skovron poem manifests fundamental decency, self-awareness and civilisation ....” (Oliver Dennis, Island)

Poetry in journals, anthologies, and other media

Journals, magazines, newspapers

Adelaide Review, Age, Age Monthly Review, Agenda (UK), Antipodes (USA), Arena, Ars Poetica, Atlanta Review (USA), Australian, Australian Book Review, Australian Jewish News, Australian Scholarly Newsletter, Blue Dog, Brave New Word, Bulletin, Bystander, Carrionflower Writ, Caulfield/Glen Eira Leader, Centre News, Divan (e-zine), Eureka Street, Famous Reporter, Fine Line, Forum, Generation, Heat, Helix, Hobo, Island, LiNQ, Luna, Macedon Ranges Guardian, Mattoid, Meanjin, Melbourne Chronicle, Melbourne Times, Menorah, Mercury, Modern Writing, Nocturnal Submissions, Outrider, Overland, Overland Express (e-zine), Phoenix Review, Poetry Australia, Poetry Wales (UK), Quadrant, Salt, Salt-lick Quarterly, Scripsi, Slope (e-zine), Southerly, Stet, Sud (France), Sydney Review, Thylazine (e-zine), Tirra Lirra, Ulitarra, Verandah, Visions (USA), Voices, Wagtail, Westerly, Worcester Review (USA).

Anthologies and other books

Lines from the Horizon and Other Poems (Mattara Poetry Prize anthology), ed. Christopher Pollnitz. University of Newcastle, 1982.

The Harold Kesteven Poetry Prize (booklets). Brisbane: Creativity Centre, 1982, 1983, 1984.

Poems Selected from The Australian’s 20th Anniversary Competition, ed. Judith Rodriguez and Andrew Taylor. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1985.

Appreciating Poetry, Rex Sadler, Tom Hayllar and Cliff Powell. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1986.

Pomegranates: A Century of Jewish Australian Writing, comp. Gael Hammer. Sydney: Millennium, 1988.

La Mama Poetica, ed. Mal Morgan. Melbourne University Press, 1989.

Contemporary Australian Poetry: An Anthology, ed. John Leonard. Melbourne: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.

The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, ed. John Tranter and Philip Mead. Melbourne: Penguin, 1991.

The Sea’s White Edge (Mattara Poetry Prize anthology), ed. Paul Kavanagh. Springwood: Butterfly Books, 1991.

On the Move: Australian Poets in Europe, ed. Geoff Page. Springwood: Butterfly Books, 1992.

The Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems, ed. Jennifer Strauss. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Riding Out: New Writing from Around the World, ed. Manfred Jurgensen. Brisbane: Phoenix-Outrider, 1994.

The Oxford Book of Australian Religious Verse, ed. Kevin Hart. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994.

The Immigrant Experience in Australian Literature, Annette R. Corkhill. Melbourne: Academia Press, 1995.

Cheating and Other Infidelities, ed. Manfred Jurgensen. Brisbane: Phoenix, 1995.

Lesen und Schreiben: Literatur, Kritik, Germanistik, ed. Volker Wolf. Tübingen and Basel: Francke Verlag, 1995.

Let Dark Memory Bloom (Newcastle Poetry Prize anthology), ed. Paul Kavanagh. Newcastle: Coal River Press, 1995.

The Oxford Book of Modern Australian Verse, ed. Peter Porter. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Prizewinners (booklet), comp. Edwina Toohey. Ravenshoe, 1996.

Australian Verse: An Oxford Anthology, ed. John Leonard. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Family Ties: Australian Poems of the Family, ed. Jennifer Strauss. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998.

On Our Reflection, ed. Julien Winspear. Melbourne: Poetica Christi Press, 1998.

Enough Already: An anthology of Australian-Jewish writing, ed. Alan Jacobs. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999.

My Secret Life: Poems from the 1999 Melbourne Festival of Poetry, ed. Bev Roberts and Ian McBryde. Melbourne: MFP, 1999.

Latitude: Exploring and Creating Poetry, ed. Lisa McNeice. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Forever Eve: An anthology celebrating NCJW 75th Anniversary 2002, ed. Zevia Schneider. Melbourne: National Council of Jewish Women Victoria, 2002.

Chess and Other Poems (Wagtail 16), ed. Rob Riel. Warners Bay (NSW): Picaro Press, 2002.

The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets, ed. Geoff Page. Canberra: Indigo (Ginninderra Press), 2003.

The Best Australian Poetry 2003, ed. Martin Duwell and Bronwyn Lea. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2003.

The Best Australian Poems 2003, ed. Peter Craven. Melbourne: Black Inc., 2003.

Said the Rat!: Writers at the Water Rat 2000 — 2002, ed. Jennifer Harrison and Phil Ilton. Melbourne: Black Pepper/ FAW, 2003.

For the Love of God: A creative anthology, ed. Desmond Kon. Singapore: Beaumont Publishing, 2004.

Reflections: 20 Years 1984 — 2004, ed. Stan Marks. Melbourne: Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre, 2004.

The Best Australian Poems 2004, ed. Les Murray. Melbourne: Black Inc., 2004.

Radio and television

A First Hearing (ABC Radio National)
The Book Program (SBS TV)
Writers at Work (3CR, Melbourne)
RN Drive (ABC Radio National)
The Spirit of Things (ABC Radio National)
Life Matters (ABC Radio National)
Write Now (Southern FM 88.3, Melbourne)
Poetica (ABC Radio National)
Also radio stations 3RRR, 3AK and 3RPH (Melbourne), and CSPR (Canberra)

Musical settings

Roger Alsop: ‘The Infinite City’, ‘Atrament’, ‘Zooming In’, ‘Ambit’.

Leonard J. Lehrman (New York): The Golem, Op.142 (setting for voice and piano).

Leonard J. Lehrman (New York): ‘The Golem’ and ‘Credo’, in An Australian Odyssey, Op.149 (part of song-cycle of Australian poems, for soprano and piano).

Stories in anthologies, journals, competitions

‘Gambit’, in Storyteller (No.1), comp. Ann Granat. Melbourne: Brooks Waterloo, 1987.

‘Stone’s Throw’, in Cheating and Other Infidelities, ed. Manfred Jurgensen. Brisbane: Phoenix, 1995.

‘The Instrument’, in Southerly (Autumn 1997: vol.57, No.1).

‘Marking Time’, 3rd Prize, City of Glen Eira Writers’ Competition (‘My Brother Jack’ Short Story Award), 1998.

‘The Man who Took to his Bed’, Highly Commended, Glen Eira Literary Awards (Caulfield RSL ‘My Brother Jack’ Short Story Award), 2001.

‘The Courtyard’, in Children of the Shadows: Voices of the second generation, ed. Kathy Grinblat. Perth and Melbourne: University of Western Australia Press and Benchmark, 2002.



Novella

The Poet (Hybrid Publishers, Melbourne, forthcoming)