Homer and the Epic Tradition of Suburbia
Like his hero, Homer Simpson – and tribe who have maintained longevity as TV’s epic representatives of suburban life – Kelen has been true to his style and interests from his very first chapbook The Gods Ash Their Cigarettes (1978). In that doggy-poet post-romantic suburban universe, Kelen himself posed the relevance question:
How long do you think it will take before people will be reading poems rather than newspapers? (‘The Spheres’)
With the benefit of Hund-sight, the more relevant question now is perhaps whether people will be reading much, or anything?
Poetry and its occasional lucky dip winner-poets have so far been cannily prescient, which is the reasoning behind Ezra Pound’s statement “Literature is news that STAYS news” (1934) and that ‘artists are the antennae of the race.” (1967). Do we still believe that? Am I waxing a little too grim? The optimism of Kelen’s work, in general, points to his overall belief in the longer lifespan of the poem as an artifact of history, despite his specificity with popular culture images.
Fortunately, the horrors of atomic bombs, radiation cancer, crooked or inept politics, wicked wars and such-like realities that he visits, are equally matched by the small joys and perceptions gained through day-to-day activities like parenting:
Pale & cranky sick kids fall off their perches the fever suppresses the hormonal tide– a good flu, they’ll say words unheard for years. Thanks Dad, thanks Mum,’ and they are pleasant as sweet as lemon cordial until they get better. (‘Sick Kids’)
A simple poem like this, not reliant on cultural references may endure longer than even bardic Homer’s American yawp, as the voice-actors depicting the Simpson Family one day pass.
Popular culture concerns and suburban locations are at the core of the Kelen oeuvre, yet raising kids, capturing wall spiders or traipsing around the neighbourhood budge in and gain prominence as the Selected progresses and the poet ages. This blend of the erudite with the mundane may be the best of what of Australia can ever be, out there in its urban sprawl. Like the lawn-planting exercise of ‘Earthly Delights’, ‘Kulchur’, as Pound called it, has to be planted in a place of brick veneer contemporaneity. This comic positioning in living rooms is reminiscent of that iconic Leunig cartoon with bug-eyed kids glued to the sunrise on TV, while the same sun is coming up unobserved in the window. To Kelen’s credit, he sees both and writes about them. The point is, where many poets screen out their un-poetic surroundings, Kelen has always owned up to his suburban realites, yet found ways to centre himself in it as a wry commentator, and even to write modern idylls from it:
They say Canberra’s a boring town But opening the front door The fuse lights on Mission Impossible. Sheriff over the road lobs an empty A mist spreads over a land where Gardens bring tranquility ...
Kelen, then, deftly takes in immigration, job redundancy, child education, the dole, the carbon footprint of smoking chimneys during suburban winter and the need for road planning. Yet despite the social concern, the speaker of the poem hasn’t been overwhelmed by all and can still go out into the neighbourhood with an almost Zen acceptance, although not blithely unaware of the dark undercurrents, especially in the nation’s capital:
Walking the dog is the way, see Holy wattle and banksia glow. To be an oak or a cherry tree. Silver birch, golden ash. Yard dogs sulk, Cranky as the mighty sleep. (‘Back Home’)
