Title page of Divertimenti
In memoriam: Cornelis Vleeskens, 1948-2012
Reading Cornelis Vleeskens’ divertimenti on random days (Earthdance, 2010), has me thinking of Franco Beltrametti, as occasionally I do. We almost met, courtesy of Tim Longville and John Riley, who’d advised that Franco, our fellow Grosseteste Review contributor, would be visiting London in ’71 – or was it shortly before the Hemensleys returned to Melbourne in ’72? – but that was cancelled. Any meeting in the flesh was forever thwarted by his Beltrametti’s death in 1995. He remains an exotic correspondent, then, from the golden age of hand and typewritten letters, always missed now as though a friend.
And Vleeskens’ book instantly recalls Sperlonga Manhattan Express, an international anthology edited by Beltrametti (Scorribanda Productions, San Vitale, Switzerland, 1980), because of the A-4 / 210-297mm dimensions and the visual content – Franco’s pictures from all hands and lands (e.g, P. Gigli’s photo of the Berrigans, poems by Koller, Raworth, Gysin, Whalen postcard/cartoon, J Blaine, G D’Agostino, et al); Cornelis’ own montage, drawings, calligraphy, typography – the same mail-art internationale, Fluxus, neo-Dada style more readily recognized from Pete Spence’s affiliations and practice, particularly relevant here because of the latter’s regular appearance in the divertimenti.
Vleeskens and Beltrametti are both Europeans who’ve crucially intersected with the anti-formal (looser, casual) English-language poetry – are they ‘casualties’ then? – especially the post WW2 Americans, progeny of Pound and Williams, New York, San Francisco, the West Coast, at a time when Europe was reaffirming its own liberatory tradition (Dada, Surrealism, etc) and, similarly, opening to new worlds. Because they’re not British or North American or Australian, except by adoption, their European origins and references are never out of mind.
Not an exact match, by any means – but somewhere along the line they’ve both decided to riff on life and not on literature, though there is a literature of just that sort of thing, and a life that contains literature, music, painting, etc. But theirs is another reminder of the efficacy of the un-made, journal-esque writing – as clear and direct as we reconstruct the Ancient Chinese and Japanese to be, and whose transparency doesn’t necessarily prefer the naive to the esoteric or the well-known to the uncommon (take the music Vleeskens listens to daily and records in his communiques, or his philately habit or the breadth of his correspondence, all noted).
Beltrametti’s poem ‘The Key’ might be a credo for Vleeskens too:
What was well started shall be finished. / What was not, should be thrown away.
Lew Welch, Hermit Poems.1 ) the place & the season : winter
2 ) somebody (myself) right here : real & unreal
3 ) what is he doing & what’s going on in his head
4 ) how & why is he saying it
5 ) to somebody else (you) elsewhere
something happens?
the circle (real & unreal)
isnt closed[27/1/72]
Divertimenti: to amuse himself and his friends, to divert and be diverted. Diverted from what? Old cliche: the bind of daily life. But hardly, since it’s all this poetry’s made of. His note, ‘These divertimenti originally appeared as individual leaflets and were written for the poet’s own amusement and that of the handful of friends who were lucky enough to receive the odd one in the mail or at a poetry reading during the last two years of his life on the Victorian coast … he now lives a totally different existence on the NSW Northern Tablelands.’
Introduction to Divertimenti
How would you know?
His latest Earthdance chapbook, Sandals in Camel (drawings & poems), is surreal as a narrative and peppered with elsewhere’s place names and distinctions (New York, Parisian, Berlin, Belgian, Catalan, Japanese, Thai, Italian etc), persuading one of his long assumed cosmopolitan ambit. Interesting inference though – ‘texts’ of the life as lived versus ‘poems’ (importantly, formed in the cross-wires of Dutch and English).
An earlier collection, Ochre Dancer (Earthdance, 1999), has the same atmosphere and tone of divertimenti or better said, the divertimenti are cut from his familiar cloth differing only in the attitude of making or framing.
That’s the discussion then, in the blur of any such distinction these day … bits of life (titles and notes of musical recordings, books, lists of food and drink bought and consumed, incoming mail) intersect with thoughts, observations, conversation.
Recalling Kath Walker’s – Oodgeroo of Noonucull – admonition not to appear like a preacher or a politician, Vleeskins muses, ‘Sometimes I wanted to PREACH / But now I just want to share / some of the ordinary things / in the days of a retired poet …’
Diversions from the notion of retirement? Retirement from poetic ambition (craft and career)? I identify with that myself. Breaking the cast but keeping one’s hand in, and surprising oneself when something more poem than antidote happens along. The list/letter/journal poetry of our time makes it harder to distinguish source from artefact, but found or made they provide as many pleasures as there are days.
‘Ah! a new month!
So I turn the calendar to March
A Corneille arial landscape
looking like a cross between
Mondriaan’s sketch of a jetty
jutting into North Sea waves
and Clifford Possum TjapaltjarriThe calendar was published
for Corneille’s 70th birthday
11 years ago but I still
flip over each month
to show that not all days are the same’
Divertimenti is a book which can be taken up anywhere. It invites flicking because of the open-endedness of its narrative.
‘Find an image
of the sun’s atmosphere
in The Nature of the Universe
by Fred Hoyle (1950)
so reach for Catherine de Zegher
Untitled Passages by Henri Michaux
hardback catalogue
of the exhibition at
The Drawing Center, New York, 2000& put on an old vinyl recording
of Peter Sculthorpe’s Sun Music #1
for Orchestra (1965)The sun sets at 5-58
Broodje haring
broodje kaas
en ‘n zure bonEnjoy a glass or two of red
& the clear sound of Marion Verbruggen
playing airs from van Eyck’s
Der Fluyten Lust-Hof‘
ah! | c'Est mon daDa series | Red Fox Press, 2011
So many dates and times of day, month, year, but the book is always written in present tense, and a sense of the present, in which historical time is subsumed, pervades. All times in diverimenti are concurrent; even the different places defer to the here of Vleeskens’ whereabouts.
Despite it being a kind of ‘in-lieu of writing’ (an ‘in-lieu-of-writing writing’?), possessing the light touch of genial conversation and a journal’s talking-to-oneself, it also teases one as a discourse on time and place, and of poem as its own place where, paradoxically, its own mercuriality might be traced.
Unsurprisingly, much of this has been the preoccupation of divertimenti‘s fellow classical and modern music afficianado Pete Spence – typically recalled by Vleeskens at one point, ‘I think up these lines / while walking home / after putting Katherine / on the 6.37 a.m. bus for Melbourne / but have to wait to write them / till the telephone wakes Pete at 10.35 / My pen & paper are on the desk / in the guestroom where he snores on’
This is an excerpt from Kris Hemensley’s blog, Poetry & Ideas.
ah, beautiful stuff kris, oh and on ‘technological ruptures’ – will we be pining for the congolese coltan blood minerals era of smart phone poetics when we’re in our dotage? i pathetically guess so. ‘i just wanna share’ – i love that too… x bless
So much to say about Cornelis. A wonderful poet, a dear friend and a singularly generous human being. As the Overload Poetry Fest machine grinds into life for another year, I’m hoping to have a tribute to Vleeskens. He and Spence read at the first Overload in 2002 at the old Blue Velvet Bar, and a long, hilarious drive back to Eltham afterwards gave me a chance to meet them both properly for the first time.
Thanks Kris.
Sad to hear of Cornelis’s passing! I published Cornelis Vleeskens’s (I think) 11th book, Nothing Kept, in 1986. (Brunswick Hills Press, ISBN0959092901.) Unfortunately, only two copies remain in my possession. Nothing Kept is now a rare book, and perhaps only available through second-hand and online rare book networks. I don’t know if Chris has any in stock at Collected Works. Perhaps he does, and that is certainly the first place I would go looking. It is a fine book, ranging across many of the poet’s concerns, which only deepened and strengthened and became more lively. Cornelis received much encouragement form painter Jenni Mitchell, and from fellow poet Pete Spence. His work should be better known, and thanks Chris for making all these interesting connections, and particularly around Divertimenti, always into the present tense!
Kent!!!! now that looks better!
and thanks for the details under Red Fox Book!
at this moment there is only the copies of Divertimenti
that Cornelis sent out to those involved in the correspondence plus a few close friends
Hendrik Kolenberg etc as soon as i have had discussions with Cornelis’ daughter Katherine
and worked out what we are doing (Hendrik and myself having been directed by Cornelis
to sort everything out answerable to Katherine) we may in fact
do a short run of the Divertamenti so anyone interested
should contact me or Kris Hemensley at Collected Works
pete spence
I just liked the guy. He had a humbleness, and he gave you copies of small pamphlets, beautifully laid out. When I met him, he was living down on the raw coast of Vic., and the poems were a small description of foods gathered, and music that came in the post, and a determined light emphatic to enjoy what he had (been given). He had a certain degree of European high taste, but no demand for coolness. I never heard him say ‘poetics’. He looked slightly like a walrus. But I never heard him say ‘interlocutory’. He might have said: ‘this mushroom is good fried in butter’. The best look in the eye reminds you of before.
John when you published Nothing Kept a book by Cornelis usually sold very quickly
Salted Herring was out of print in no time!! the amount of poetry since his Makar days
at Qld. Uni would take up a couple of 500 page volumes that not adding in the Visual Poetry
or the fine brushwork images that Cornelis did then add the many great collages hanging
the walls of his House in Glen Innes also the paintings very influence by the COBRA artists
add in the Postcards he made then find the work in various Mail-Art Archives!! i’d say very
few have seen an edge of Cornelis’ work…when i vistited Guido Vermuelin in Brussels
as i walk down the stairs off the street into Guido’s flat there as you walked in was a
large flyer for a reading in Amsterdam with Cornelis and those Dutch poets he enjoyed
translating…on translation the Douglass Meserli publication of Dutch Poetry in translation
is well worth reading for Cornelis’ translations(Sun & Moon?) and of course there is the equally rare
Naked Dreams out of POST NEO which is where Merserli discovered Cornelis’ fine translation
work…i’m hoping over the next year or so we will make some of this work available again
pete spence
going through my Archive these past few weeks turned up a few things
from the late 1990′s one a folder of my MIGHTY THIN BOOKS publications
this list is the 9 that Cornelis did and one we collaborated on
Homage. CV
Set Pieces. CV
GARWEEN Heron Songs. CV
Catch. CV
BIG JOLT FUNK. CV
Manifesto. CV
Foreshore. CV
Summer House. CV
50/50. CV
Salmon Wind. Cornelis Vleeskens & pete spence
i’m making these rarities available as a set of 10
for $20 including postage.
will make to order
e-mail pete spence
spenvis@hotmail.com
Steve Smart! i reckon we went to Sandon’s place two years running with you. Cornelis’ and i were shocked by
Sandons short illness and death!! but i remember those two evenings we drank everything we could lay our hands on including the tomato sauce! piles of coffee in the morning! Jenni Mitchell wandering in with a
not amused frown…then Cornelis and i would spend the day in Melbourne doing the Stamp Shops and
then a few beers at the bar at the old Spencer St Station Cornelis heading to Cape Paterson me off to
Ocean Grove…both of us to recover i should think!
thanks for reminding me of this!
pete
Hi Pete,
Just wanted to say thanks for the work you and Cornelis contributed to ‘core’ magazine back in the 90s. Receiving that sort of material made plugging along with a little magazine worthwhile (not to mention giving us some great covers). It gave a very naive, and very provincial, little publication a bit of gravitas. At least I hope so.
We were always excited when some Vleeskens or Spence mail arrived. The generosity was/is greatly appreciated. Deeply sorry to hear about Cornelis.
Thanks and best wishes,
Cam
Cam Lowe…the situation amazed us at that time an Australian mag
interested in our stuff!! if you can get more ignored thats how we were
feeling at the time as far as Australia goes….we were doing a lot of mail-art
at that time and enjoying it…it was a good little mag and i was recently
looking at a few while raking my archive for all the stuff Cornelis had sent
and they still look good i don’t mind if there were a few more mags like it
around now…recently i’ve been enjoying getting a few things in RABBIT
you were mentioned to me at the last launch (or was you there?)
the sort of mag like you bods had open to what might go on the pages
believe me we really enjoyed our stint at CORE
pete
i’m at a loss to why when the discussion gets interesting
on these comment pages they suddenly cease with a vengeance????
pete spence
Hi Pete,
Noting your comment, I thought I’d keep the thread going, although I make no claims for what I have to say being ‘interesting’. No, I wasn’t at the reading you mentioned – although I’ve heard reports about it from some of my students. They were in various measures impressed, bewildered, and perhaps astounded by the goings-on at poetry readings!
As to poetry mags, I’m really glad you and Cornelis enjoyed seeing your work in Core. To misquote Kenneth Koch, we ‘simply had no idea what we were doing’.
I don’t know about you (and maybe this should be opened to a more general discussion) but it does feel like the smaller, non-institutional magazines are fading away. Especially in print. But maybe I’m not paying enough attention – feel free to tell me so, ye editors/publishers.
Cam
Cam…thanks i’m always hoping more people would keep particular
comment areas going i live in hope that comment areas like this
are well used
as far as mags go i don’t know what is out there! if something
turns up asking for work my policy and also it was Cornelis’ policy
was to run with it while they were interested! i might add this didn’ty happen
too often!! at the present moment i’m working on a mag but it will more
of a networking mag for those getting in its pages than something
to be found around the few bookshops that would take such a thing
actually i don’t know why there isn’t a lot of small press publishing
going on setting and printing is so much easier these days and
publications can be stored and printed to order i think that is how
Picaro Press works for instance… of course Cornelis would work on a chapbook paste it up then wait until he was in the city to print enough
for his present mail out again networking i suppose we both came to
this way of doing things through years of doing mail-art which
is networking taken to a fine art!! we both had different networks
but they tended to overlap at the edges
ok so i hope that we see a few mags like CORE appear even
if they walk the line for a handful of issues
yeah the Rabbit launch started well and some of us ended
up at the John Curtin Hotel i left too late to catch the last train
so had a night in the travelers lounge at Southern Cross
reading M. Farrell’s books and wondering why i wasn’t special
enough to have a Special train put on for me at 3 in the morning!!
pete
The latest Vleeskens chapbook is out! An Earthdance/Donnithorne Street Press
publication. the title: BROKEN GLASS & DRIFTWOOD was written in 1974
and was published in the magazine Riverrun in 1977. Cornelis then laid the Suite
of poems out in the way he would have published it. A mock up with a hand drawn cover.
i’ve used a reduction of this cover as the cover of the chapbook and have inserted
the first page from the mock up.In the text i have followed the pages and spacing
of the complete work as it is laid out in the mock up. So a lot of white page!
The suite of poems is about Balmain circa 1974/,working as a male nurse/addiction/
crisis in his love life and in his poetry. It is written in a reduced language of crisis.
The last pages only show some glimmer of hope. It is a far different book than the
recent Trivial Pursuits. published by Press Press an elegant book!
this new one from 1974 could be seen as the direct opposite.
anyone interested in a copy of this new chapbook
can contact pete spence on:
spenvis@hotmail.com
thank you. pete spence