Kris Hemensley has been a quiet but important force in Australian poetry for nearly 30 years. Larry Schwartz reports.
IT was to be “Tuesday nights forever”. So Kris Hemensley thought when asked to co-ordinate poetry readings at the La Mama theatre, in Carlton, in the late ’60s.
But though he was a key figure in the popular event that gave 300 or more an audience, helping to usher in a new generation of poets, he stresses that his involvement was brief. It ended when he returned to his native England less than a year after organising the first of the weekly readings in September 1968.
“I bump into people who say that I made a career out of La Mama,” says Hemensley, a prolific author of 10 or more poetry collections, four prose books and 10 plays. “I find that such a slander.”
A poet, novelist, critic, editor, teacher, publisher and bookstore director, he has been a quiet influence on the literary scene since migrating here three decades ago.
Hemensley is too often dismissed as a figure from the past.
“I think that there may be a perception that I’m not writing and that I gave up. Am I alive? Do I still live here?”
The good news is that though his last collection, `A Mile From Poetry’, was published way back in 1979, he has been working with renewed vigor in recent years and has enough poems for a collection or two.
While his earlier work reflected a strong interest in the formal innovations of post-War American poetry, he has broadened his range to include traditional form.
“I think I rediscovered a pleasure in poetry in its largest diversity,” he says. “It’s as simple as that.”
Hemensley is a co-director of the Collected Works bookstore.
There, you will hear him enthusing over texts and encouraging an interest in literary works.
In an arcade off Flinders Lane, it is unique in its range and depth. From the works of American Beat writers to translations from European or oriental languages or works on philosophy or religion, it offers a rare diversity.
“It wasn’t a profit-making business in the sense that we weren’t looking for turnover titles,” he says. “It was to be a resource; as much a place where people came together as a bookshop.”
The store has a vigorous mail order service for interstate writers for whom there is no equivalent at home.
Partly because of restrictions on use of the building after hours, it no longer hosts readings by local authors once held there. Still popular, though, is the annual Bloomsday celebration marking the day on which James Joyce’s `Ulysses’ is set.
On 16 June each year, Guinness is quaffed as a succession of enthusiasts read from the rich and often irreverent tome.
For Hemensley, the bookstore has become “a way for a socially shy person to be in the centre of the city”. For others, his presence is a godsend, a bridge between otherwise isolated writers both here and overseas, small publishers and ideas.
“In a sense, I’ve always enjoyed being a link,” he says.
“I have connected people. In the ’70s the job here in Melbourne was not to make a breakthrough for poetry but to show that Australian poetry had a place in the world and that world poetry had a place in Australia.”
Born on the Isle of Wight, he first came to Australia while working in the shop on board the passenger liner, Fairstar, on its voyage here via the Suez Canal. He returned in May 1966 as a Ë10 migrant. “It was a long way away from England for very little money,” he says.
Hemensley soon became acquainted with “people on the margins of Melbourne bohemia”. He met Retta at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in the city in January 1967 and through her became involved in the Melbourne New Theatre off La Trobe Street.
Months later, they were drawn to the fledgling La Mama where he organised poetry readings that were influential in what came to be known as the New Australian Poetry. For many, he is still seen in the context of the times and the poets that emerged then including Ken Taylor, Bill Beard, Charles Buckmaster and Ian Robertson.
He has edited poetry magazines including `Our Glass’, `Earth Ship’ and `Ear in the Wheatfield’ at a time when every other poet was bringing out a publication. “You typed up stencils.
Then you ran it off. Then you put it at shops and theatres and art galleries and so on. It didn’t cost anything. Just a few dollars and cents to put a mag together.” In the 1970s, he was an advisory editor to the Sydney-based `New Poetry’ and poetry editor of `Meanjin’.
He says he cringed years later when watching an award-winning film made of one of his plays. In hindsight, it seemed too precious and literary. His range is praised by the editors of `The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature’, who note his skill not just in brief, enigmatic poems, poetry-prose compositions but the long, complex `The Poem of the Clear Eye’.
Hemensley remains passionate about small press publication, which he says may be uncommercial but offers a forum in which most poets seem happiest.
Though he has written for a range of media, including radio and the stage, he sees himself primarily as a poet. As when a teenager, he still finds himself jotting down lines on buses, trains and trams.
“I have the old romantic idea still,” Hemensley says. “Poetry is that through which I know myself and know the world . . . For me, it’s in lieu of singing. I want a language of beauty in its sound and in its sense.”
THE SUNDAY AGE, 17-Sep-1995
Larry Schwartz Writer 