Steve Brock (part 1)

Speaker 1 00:02

This is a Vision Australia Radio podcast.

Speaker 2 00:19

On Vision Australia Radio, welcome to our conversations on the work and experiences of emerging writers. I'm Kate Cooper and I guess today is the poet and translator Steve Brock. Last year on the program we interviewed the Chilean-Australian poet and translator Juan Garrido Salgado and made reference to Steve's beautiful translations of Juan's poems. We also spoke about Juan and Steve's collaborative work along with Sergio Olas and Mictosifuentes Palacios on the remarkable trilingual poetry anthology Poetry of the Earth which brings together translations into Spanish and English of poetry written in Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche people of Chile.

So we'll be talking with Steve about that experience too. As well as translating poetry from Spanish to English, Steve has published collections of his own poems and during our conversation we'll be reading from his published works. Steve's poems and articles have been published in journals in Australia and overseas and he was a featured writer at Adelaide Writers Week in 2017. He has a PhD in Australian literature from Flinders University. Welcome to the program Steve. We have a lot to talk about. You grew up here in Australia. What drew you to studying the Spanish language?

Speaker 3 01:43

That's a good question as someone who grew up in Adelaide. What drew me to the Spanish language was I did a student exchange with AFS to Argentina for one year in 1989. Prior to going to Argentina, I didn't have any language background with Spanish. I was a monolingual English speaker and my experience with Spanish was living in Argentina, living with an Argentinian family, attending a school in Santa Fe, the city of Santa Fe in Argentina, and studying with classmates at year 12 level.

Speaker 2 02:28

How did that experience and your other experiences in Spanish -speaking countries shape how you perceived the world?

Speaker 3 02:36

It was a very transformative experience, particularly as I was quite young when I went to Argentina. I was 17 years old, turned 18 while I was living there. So I came from a very monolingual view of the world and learning another language, meeting other people, seeing a whole other world view, gave me quite a different perspective on life and made me reflect also on what it means to be Australian and different ways of seeing the world and also through learning another language that also makes you think differently as well when you're thinking in that language. And I was also exposed to a lot of other young people who were also in Argentina in exchange from European and other countries, most of whom were multilingual. So it really did broaden my perspective.

Speaker 2 03:38

I certainly concur with that, and from my own experience of learning Spanish, when you're in a situation where you need to use the language because you can't assume that people around you speak English, then it does compel that fast learning.

Speaker 3 03:52

That's right. There's nothing like being immersed in the language and it really forces you to learn and communicate and yeah, so it was a transformational journey For example when I remember when I first dreamt in Spanish and one feels you're making progress in terms of the language learning

Speaker 2 04:13

I can still remember the first time I had a dream in Spanish as well. It's funny how those things stay with you. I'd been reading a play and studying it, because I was formally studying Spanish at the time. And I remember waking up thinking, oh my goodness, I've just had my first dream in Spanish. It's a real excitement, quite a few more since then. And in 1989, when you were in Argentina, I was living and working in Nicaragua and having that same experience of the day-to-day usage of language, which is quite different from my previous experience in an academic context or in the community but here in Australia. So quite different focus of the learning and the living and experiencing language.

Speaker 3 05:00

It is a different way to learn and for me, prior to going to Argentina, well, I only found out I was going to Argentina a couple of months beforehand. That's the way the AFS exchange student program worked. And so I did a little bit of prep, of course, but it was fairly minimal. And for me, the academic side came later when I came back to Adelaide. I was determined to formally learn Spanish. And I did that at Flinders University. And it was quite a rich experience to go through the formal process and really strengthen grammar concepts and get a more rigorous understanding of the language. 

My experiences in Spanish -speaking countries, in terms of how they've changed, how I perceive the world, in addition to the advantages of being bilingual and seeing things you've taken for granted in a new light. Spanish has also been important in my relationships, both through friendships, but also I met my wife through Spanish. He's from Chile and moved to Australia in the late 80s. And so learning Spanish has really revolutionised my whole life and my daughter's bilingual and is a Spanish teacher. So it's been a transformative experience in that sense.

Speaker 2 06:30

Learning another language can certainly lead to some incredible life experiences and rewards. Would you tell me, Steve, which came first, the poetry writing or the translating?

Speaker 3 06:42

So in my case, the poetry writing came first. My father was a poet and published a number of books. So poetry was something I grew up with. And in fact, I published my first poem when I was around seven years old. My father published it in a newsletter type publication. So it was something natural that I grew up with. And when I was a teenager, I began to take more seriously and had some influential teachers that I went to Marion High School.
That included Erica Jolly, the poet. So learning from her helped me really connect with poetry and maintain that. So poetry definitely came first. I was already writing poetry before I learned Spanish.

And then just so happened, the mother of the family that I was living with, Maria Guadalupe Alassia, was a well-known published author, poet, and writer of children's books. So my learning of Spanish was quite a poetic experience as well. It's a little bit emotional for me because she passed away about six or seven years ago, like quite suddenly. So she was one of my first real teachers of Spanish. And she was aware, I wrote poetry because I was writing poems at the time, which I could share with her.

And she would also do things like, when I was learning Spanish, take me, for example, to the local fruit shop and it would hold up pieces of fruit and get me to say it in Spanish. So that was a lovely relationship and environment to be in. So my poetry developed during that time as I was learning Spanish as well. So it kind of developed in tandem, really. It's entwined.

Speaker 2 08:44

So you had three really wonderful mentors, your father, Erika Jolly, who really is a South Australian treasure, and then in Argentina, that support as well.

Speaker 3 08:56

Yeah so I grew up in an environment of poetry and also had other experiences through school when I was in year 10 around that level. I did a workshop for a week which was a program possibly part of the Fringe Festival and we went for a week to Port Adelaide and worked with a number of different writers and that also included Jeff Goodfelling and he was living nearby at the time so we'd catch the train together, chat on the train and also exposed to his poetry at school. He did a lot of still does reading in schools and grew up with his books on my father's bookshelf so it's always poetry has always been something close at hand and to do with people around me as well.

Speaker 2 09:47

And you include a reference to Jeff Goodfellow in your collection, Live at Mr. Jakes, another wonderful South Australian poet.

Speaker 3 09:56

Yes, yeah, that's right. We travelled to New York together about nine years ago and read at Stony Brook University together at a conference and stayed on in New York. We went over with a couple of other writers Dennis McIntosh and Sarah Atfield for our How Class Works conference and so there's some poems were a refer to Jeff in that context.

Speaker 2 10:23

So you grew up surrounded by poetry. Did you think about writing prose or was it always going to be poetry for you?

Speaker 3 10:31

It's always, for me, it's been both poetry and prose. When I was living in Argentina and also prior to that, I was always writing a lot in terms of letters and correspondence. And while I was in Argentina, I kept journals and also around that time wrote short stories. I've always had a passion for writing, both fiction, non -fiction. And I think in terms of my evolution as a writer, poetry's been something that I've had most passion for and also began upon returning to Australia, publishing, and one thing led to another and that took over as a focus for me.

Speaker 2 11:13

We spoke before about some of the influences on your poetry writing of other poets and writers. Are there others who've been an important influence on your work? Would you tell us about those?

Speaker 3 11:26

Yes, so I mention in my poetry I often refer to writers who have been in influence. When I was young, in my early 20s, writers such as Charles Bukowski and Allan Ginsberg, the beat generation, were quite a big influence and I was fortunate enough while in the US to be able to go to LA and San Francisco and looked up a lot of the haunts where those writers were living and associating places I'd read about and also upon learning Spanish and studying Spanish, I was exposed to a lot of Spanish poetry and the poet Pablo Neruda was a really important influence and in 1995 I went, visited Chile and visited Pablo Neruda's residence, which was a great experience.

Speaker 2 12:26

And we spoke with Juanabar Babelonirurtha, who of course was a Nobel Prize winner of literature. You dedicate your poem Vanishing Point to the late Sid Harrex, who was also one of my lecturers when I studied English at Flinders University more than 40 years ago now. Would you tell us some of what you learned about poetry from Sid Harrex?

Speaker 3 12:49

When I studied at Flinders, I studied double major in English and Spanish. And so one of my first lecturers and tutors was Sid Harrex, which was a great experience to learn from and work with a practicing poet. And as I stayed on at Flinders and went on and did a PhD in Australian literature. So through all that time at Flinders, Sid was a really important influence. And as an undergraduate, I did the very first creative writing program that was established at Flinders at the time was the first one in the state.

And that was run by Sid Harrex and Rick Hoskin, who later became my PhD supervisor. In addition to the creative writing classes, Sid Harrex was an important influence in other ways, especially. And this is what I talk about in the poem in my collection Live at Mr. Jakes is the experience of having lunch with Sid. There's a table, table 10 at Flinders, which still meets today. But as an undergraduate and also a postgraduate student, that was quite a rich experience, just being able to sit at that table where Sid would often hold court and listen to him talk about poetry, share poetry and also the other guests he would invite to that table.

So there'd be many international writers would join. So being able to experience that the I think it was lesson in the art of conversation and moving from reading a lot, reading a lot of theory to actually going to lunch with a diverse group of people that included linguists and mathematicians and experiencing a diverse conversations and having your views challenged and also having dialogues about poetry or hearing you fresh poems and experiencing poetry and writing through relationships and writers as as people practicing their art was a great privilege as well.

So doing that creative writing course was quite important. And I learned a lot about practical things about publishing your work in journals and how to work with an editor. And during during that process, one of our assignments was to write piece of work and then have a professional editor look at it. And that happened to be Graham Rollins who was doing some work at the time with Flinders. And so he critiqued my output and of all the poems that I'd submitted, most of them were critiqued fairly harshly. But there was one poem in there that he quite liked and recommended. I sent top journals. And so for me at that time, I thought, well, if I can do one, I can do more.

Speaker 2 15:57

And you acknowledge Graham Rowlands at the end of your book live at Mr. Jake, so you're still working with him. Yes.

Speaker 3 16:03

Yes, so Graham's worked as an editor on all of my books and it's an important relationship someone I can send material to and get feedback on.

Speaker 2 16:17

Fantastic. On Vision Australia Radio, you're listening to our conversation program, Emerging Writers. Our guest today is the poet and translator Steve Brock. Steve, when I read your works, I'm struck by how strongly your identity as a poet comes through the poems that you write. You mentioned before about having a poem published when you were seven years old, so when did you first identify yourself or realise your own identity as a poet?

Speaker 3 16:50

So a good question, as I feel poetry has always been part of my life and something I've done. When I was in my early 20s studying at Flinders, I began to think more firm up that identity. However, something I've been cautious about in terms of how I identify myself is not to make too big a deal about being a poet as such and just stay grounded and focus on the writing and the work and getting that published in magazines and so on and books. Having said that, it's been very important in giving meaning to my life and that's something I look for in poetry writing poetry. It's about creating meaning and looking for inspiration and the joy of the poetry. So all of those things I think more important than the label of being a poet or a writer.

Speaker 2 17:59

And giving others insights into the meanings for you in reflecting on life and in reflecting on everyday things in life as well. 

Speaker 3 18:11

Yeah, that's right. So a lot of my poetry draws on everyday situations for inspiration.

Speaker 2 18:16

Which is why the reader can connect so easily and comfortably with it. Would you read one of your poems to us, Steve, and then tell us why you chose that particular poem to read?

Speaker 3 18:28

Certainly. I'd like to read a poem from my first collection - and the reason I'm choosing this poem is that a close family friend, Alan Young, read my collection and he told me after that he quite liked this poem that I'm about to read and Alan was a person who was blind and I first met him as a young child I was only seven around that age and he came stayed with us for a few days with his family and I've just got a vivid memory of a as a seven-year-old we had a large wooden reel in the backyard that as kids would play and walk on try and balance on and I remember showing him this wheel and he leapt on it and walked on it and as a young child I thought it was just amazing and just changed my perception of someone who was blind and could see this man could do anything. 

So later in life he visited Adelaide again gave him my book, he read the collection and he liked this poem as he felt it tried to convey something beyond the sense of sight in its narrative which was something I didn't necessarily set out to do but I was trying to reach beyond the the senses five as Blake would put it. It's called autumn in Adelaide. 

It's autumn in Adelaide the river holds a lonely gondola close to its cold heart rippling beyond the yellow lament of plain trees each stroke creaking and sighing for Venice or anywhere but here among the paddle boats and their haphazard paths this circus of colors and numbers though still I'm here weaving a sense of place and time in endless travels and conversation in memory and the half light of what could be we go there often caressing the edges of a hidden world this language of touch and intuition where the movements of eyes and breath are laden with meaning a dialogue of shapes and sounds of colors and fragments of dream we let things flow and divide among themselves 

It's autumn in Adelaide and the shadows of people gather long into the afternoon of bus stops and waiting around the poets came and went laughing and crying between their tents the flamenco singers have packed up their and illusion lament it's autumn in Adelaide the dancers and crowds have returned to the folds of other lands to a familiar movement out of here to a pattern of coming and going which passes me by 

For its autumn in Adelaide and the skies are thick with cloud the cafes and pubs are spilling their warmth onto the streets the torque is at once high and melancholy our destination is a tram it will take us to a house in holdfast bay a journey of sudden stops and starts of rumblings and prolonged silences a journey we've made our own yet do not tire of knowing 

It's autumn in Adelaide and the sun makes its way gently down our chimney leaving a cradle of soft light on the grate its fingers turned upward caught in a gesture of abundant warmth holding on as though it were a memory of fire as though this winter may not come at all as though we won't have need to gather round and share its warmth with windswept guests from other worlds

Speaker 2 22:00

It's beautiful - and as we record this conversation, it is now autumn in Adelaide. As I mentioned before, Steve, your poems have a wonderful way of looking out and looking in, capturing the light and inspiration around you in ways that the reader can easily relate to. I especially love the final lines of your poem, Presence, where you say, I don't turn to say hello, but rather let myself become absorbed into her landscape of contemplation. I love those last words, and it could be said that your poetry collections together do comprise a landscape of contemplation. Could I ask you to read Presence for us?

Speaker 3 22:42

Certainly, Presence. 

I walk by a house each morning, its white Corinthian pillars overlook a park and creek with a view to low-lying hills in the south where the sky is still coloured from the dawn. An elderly western woman sits on the front steps in a kimono, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. There's something about her presence which inflects the landscape with a sense of tragedy. I don't turn to say hello, but rather let myself become absorbed into her landscape of contemplation.

Speaker 2 23:22

There's a wonderful lyrical quality to your poetry. It doesn't rhyme, but it does flow in a very beautiful lyrical way. What do you think about when you think about the form of your poems?

Speaker 3 23:36

It's a good question. The form is often related to the flow of thought and also the flow of breath and the rhythm on the page. There are some poems which I may set out in a bit more of a formal structure, like a sonnet structure, which helps to create a bit of creative tension, but it's still a fairly free type of sonnet structure. And other poems will flow out and it relates to the structure of the imagination and also breath and hopefully it achieves a natural flow from conscious as well of the sounds of words and language and the stressors, even though I'm writing in free verse, they're still underlying a sense of the rhythm of language.

Speaker 2 24:33

This certainly is. Steve, you mentioned earlier your PhD, which you completed in 2003. Would you tell us which writers were the focus of your doctoral thesis and why you chose them?

Speaker 3 24:47

My PhD was in the area of Australian literary studies. I focused on four main writers, Patrick White, Peter Carey, Xavier Herbert, and a lesser known author, James Bardin. The focus of my PhD study was undertaking a post -colonial reading of these narratives and looking at the novels as stories of nation, how they constructed the concept of nation, and how in telling that story, they represented other cultures, in particular indigenous cultures, and how they represented that in their mode of storytelling.

Speaker 2 25:30

Now I know that asking someone about their PhD thesis in a few words when it's years of work and very many words is a little bit unfair so I did just want to ask you though about the post -doctoral research that you've done over the last 20 years where your doctoral thesis has led you since.

Speaker 3 25:51

It's an interesting question when I finished my thesis or leading up or during the writing of it, I was undertaking bits and pieces of academic work, various research jobs, tutoring jobs. And while I was writing, I was on a scholarship. Eventually the scholarship ran out. I still had quite a bit of work to do on the thesis. I had a young family at the time and the work situation was rather precarious. That led me to seek employment in the public service where I got some more stable employment. That also gave me time in the evenings to finish writing the thesis. So there was a couple of years there where I was working full -time and working on the thesis. 

By the time I finished the thesis, I felt quite burnt out from the academic process and academic ways of thinking. And I was also in my early 30s and I was keen to publish my own poetry and I just felt I needed to focus on the poetry and the working a nine to five type job allowed me to do that. And also allowed me to read a bit more for pleasure and read a bit more widely. So since completing the PhD, I've only really done limited academic work, occasionally I'll review books. I've done some interviews that I've published with other writers, but mostly I've focused on my own creative work and also translation as well.

Speaker 2 27:28

And it's translation that I'd love to pick up as a focus of next week's program so Steve thank you so much for taking part in today's interview. I guess on emerging writers today was the poet and translator Steve Brock. Steve is the author of the poetry collections The Night as a Dying Dog, published by Friendly Street, Wakefield Press in 2007, Double Glaze, published by Five Islands Press in 2013, Live at Mr. Jake's, Wakefield Press 2020, and the chapbook Jadon du Luxembourg, Garand Publishing 2016.

This program can be heard at the same time each week on Vision Australia Radio, VA Radio Digital, online at varadio.org, and also on Vision Australia Radio podcasts, where you can catch up on earlier episodes. Thanks for listening to this Vision Australia Radio podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Visit varadio.org for more.

Speaker 1 28:41

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