Martin Duwell

'Anyway, for reasons that I don’t fully understand but which may involve the fact that I come from an academic background or that I am one of the few reviewers of poetry who is not a poet himself, I resist the idea that reviews should be evaluative. This irritates friends who are poets because they would like to see what they are inclined to call undergrowth being torched by the flamethrower of critical truth (it’s amazing how consistent their metaphors are). But of course their real reason for wanting the “undergrowth” cleared away is so that they themselves can be seen to better advantage and the precious book-buyers’ dollars will be more likely to be spent on them. They also often quote Yeats’s famous comment at the Rhymers’ Club, “The one thing certain is that we are too many”. All I can say is that, in my view of creativity, there can never be too many genuine poets.

Also, I really resent criticism which is basically evaluative because, deep down, it’s gatekeeping. It thinks that the function of writing about literature is a matter of standing guard and deciding who is allowed in and what sort of riff-raff is to be kept out. I know that I’m shifting notions of nationality around in a very dubious way here, but this seems un-Australian to me. It seems like the kind of thing I would expect to occur in, say, England (though I admit that my notions of that country’s class system are probably based on little more than Australian prejudice).'

Martin Duwell in conversation with Jeffrey Poacher
Jacket 40, 2010
http://jacketmagazine.com/40/iv-duwell-ivb-poacher.shtml

 

the purpose of art

'The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.'
                               Pablo Picasso

Colum McCann

'I do believe in poetic realism. I do believe that we should sing even in the darkest little corners. I do believe that our ability to say things beautifully is one of the things that absolutely sets us apart. Because anyone can say the most brutal and awful things but to find some kind of redemption, to find some sort of grace is the overarching need, I think, of the human spirit in the end ... It's easy to be cynical. It's much more muscular, much tougher to find some kind of redemption or some sort of grace. I don't want to sound soft or poncy but the fact of the matter is that I think it's necessary to have some sort of optimism against all the available evidence and most of the optimists I meet are tougher than the cynics.'

Colum McCann talking with Michael Cathcart, BooksPlus, RN, Sunday 29 November 2015
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2015/11/bps_20151129_1405.mp3 

http://colummccann.com/ 

Elizabeth Charles, British writer (1828-1896)

'To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers - or both.'

Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family
(a fictionalised account of life of Martin Luther)