'The closure, he says, has more to do with a corporatist ethos than with Pandanus's debts. ... "I think all university presses are cultural publishers. They are not trade publishers. No university press I know of runs at a profit." ... the ACT government has been thinking about co-subsidising Pandanus but the university wasn't interested' (Rosemary Neill, 'Review', The Weekend Australian', Dec.9-10, 2006, pp 12-13).
This demise of small specialist presses that operate from imperatives other than the financial is worrying for the increasing number of established poets unable to find publishers for their collections - so we can be grateful that Kelen's latest managed to be launched into the world.
Kelen is a mature poet, a fact that can be recognised through his directness and lack of obfuscation. He eschews overt cleverness in favour of actually communicating, and is unafraid to call a spade a spade. Though the poems are often descriptive, it is visual detail that's communicated rather than the nebulous vagueness and lack of a real point that blights so much contemporary (often university-sponsored) poetry. Kelen's linguistic ability, while evident, does not overshadow his message. He has a direct line of attack, but is not didactic. Rather, he shows through metaphor and description what he really thinks about the world, particularly in the more political poems, where he rails against the violence and injustice in both the present and the recent past.
Of the poems set in Asia, particularly affecting was 'Hanoi Girls' (p.7), where the poet describes the new world inhabited by the young women born long after the war, who wear miniskirts and talk to each other on their mobile phones, '... by magic, motorscooter and miniskirt / ... [they] make the city truly powerful'. But he is not judgmental, quipping 'As grandma said, / 'when no bombs fall on the polity / it's fine to indulge frivolity.'
In 'Letting Go' (p.11), the poet considers the grey areas of travel in third world countries through the eyes of a naive female traveler in India. Described as 'the woman from prosperity's suburbs', the traveler notices a 'woman doing starvation yoga ... [who] tugged the strings a good heart / holds in abundance' and she responds by giving away all her money, her camera, her clothes, and her jewelery to street beggars. She is rescued by a penniless sadhu, a 'ragged King Neptune', who leads her away before she leaves herself completely destitute and unprotected. Westerners would recognise the situation, but what lifts the poem to another level is the description of the sadhu, a saviour whose 'eyes burned like suttee pyres / ... / In another life he'd have been a star or a psychopath / ... / He bowed nobly and hailed a taxi'.
The death of a natural ocean ecosystem by human polluters is the subject of 'System Arrest' (p. 38). This bleak (but probably realistic) view of our environmental future pays homage to what little is left: the rocks which 'survive all species'. 'The First Circle' (p.39) reveals the poet's vision of hell, where 'Stockbrokers snort fake coke and the markets melt / while commuters wait for a train forever'. In 'al-Qaeda Bushfire' (p. 47), terrorism is compared with the destructiveness of fire. Less successful of these contemporary 'issues' poems is 'Flowers - for Schapelle' (p.42-5), a discussion of dope culture's 'happy combustions'. It was hard to know if this piece was intended as satire or sympathy. In referring to Schapelle Corby as 'compadre' he reveals sympathy for her plight (languishing in an Indonesian prison for dope smuggling), but do the statements 'good ganja saves' and 'what's great is great dope' signify approval of marijuana use, just point to its all-pervasiveness and essential 'normality' in youth culture, or poke fun at its proponents?
Other pieces are more domestic, providing a balance to some of the heavier subject matter. 'Bon Voyage' (p.2), is a heartfelt poem of farewell to his deceased father, ('A man who never / said never, made life look like an exercise / in style') whom he admonishes, without sentimentality: 'don't forget / to write & charm the clouds, the stars'. Later, we enter the realm of parenthood as Kelen reflects with good humour on parenting teenagers: 'The poet said, 'they fuck you up your mum and dad ...' / but forgot to mention what kids do to you' ('Teenagers', p.16-18). In 'Sick Kids' (p.19), he observes: 'they are pleasant / as sweet as lemon cordial / until they get better'.
But in 'The One Song Wonders' (p.21) Kelen shows his age by coming across as a typical middle-aged father ('We had good times though wow / and went deaf in the process / creating sheer noise ...'), indicating that he cares little for the culture of the moshpit. He does, however, wax lyrical on cars ('Personality, p.22), and this reader assumes Kelen's offspring wouldn't be allowed to drive this particular treasure. Humour is also present in 'Old-Fashioned Blues Cliche' (p.38) which describes missing an absent lover in the 'melodramatic' and 'pathetic' language of a blues song. The title poem, 'Earthly delights' (p.60-62) is a love poem to the joy of gardening and the pleasures of creating beauty in the world.
This is S.K.Kelen's sixth collection of verse over some thirty years. On the evidence of 'Earthly Delights', he is yet to run out of either opinions or inspiration.
(Reviewed by Liz Hall-Downs, June 2007)
