Flying Blind: New and Selected Poetry 1985-2015
By Tony Scanlon
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About this ebook
Tony Scanlon has been publishing poetry since the mid-1960s. A number of poems in this collection have won major awards, including the Jesse Litchfield Award for N.T. Literature in 1990. He has twice won the Red Earth Poetry (N.T.) prize.
Tony's poems appear in many anthologies of contemporary Australian verse and he has read at poetry venues, and on AM and FM radio, Australia-wide and overseas.
Flying Blind is his latest collection and incorporates works across three decades, touching on subjects as widely spread as man's inhumanity to sun bears, to memories of High Holborn Street, shopping on the Champs Elysee and life in the deep north of Australia.
Flying Blind is one of those rare volumes with something for everyone.
Tony Scanlon
Tony Scanlon, born Surry Hills, Sydney in 1945, holds a PhD from the University of New England (NSW) in Early English Literature.His career as a teacher ranges from teaching primary children, through to supervising post-Doctoral studies. He has also worked with Aboriginal people in prisons and remote communities in Northern Australia. For several years he worked in Darwin in adult literacy education, as well as with Vietnamese "boat people" in acclimatisation programmes in the early 1980s. He retired from teaching in 2009.He has worked extensively as a reviewer for a number of publications, including a period as the N.T. correspondent for The Australian Book Review. His creative writing has been awarded the Red Earth Poetry award for Northern Territory poetry twice; his first collection, Rain at Gunn Point (Kardoorair Press, ed A.J. Bennett, 1990), won the Jesse Litchfield Award for Northern Territory Literature (1991). His work with Aboriginal people and his profound empathy with them is reflected in much of his poetry, as are his concerns with man's cataclysmic impact on the natural world and its creatures. His second collection, A Mask of Stone (Kardoorair Press, ed A.J. Bennett, 1995), was well received critically and was adopted into several senior literature English courses in NSW secondary schools.His poetry has appeared in a number of anthologies and literary journals and he has read at many poetry venues, in secondary schools, at Creative Writing seminars, and on AM and FM radio programmes in NSW and interstate.He is married, with four children, and a growing band of grandchildren.
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Book preview
Flying Blind - Tony Scanlon
FLYING BLIND
New and Selected Poetry 1985–2015
Tony Scanlon
This is an IndieMosh book
brought to you by MoshPit Publishing
an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd
PO BOX 147
Hazelbrook NSW 2779
http://www.indiemosh.com.au/
Copyright 2016 © Tony Scanlon
All rights reserved
Cover image: Inner Sanctum by Jenny Gill
Licence Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Also by Tony Scanlon
FLYING BLIND
Foreword
Preface
Relationships
Flying Blind
At First Sight
October
A Man from Prague
Kekasihku
A Game of Cards
Night Fishing
A Mask of Stone
For Belinda, on her Eighteenth
Canoeing the Murrumbidgee
Anna at Butterfly Gorge
For Susan
Second Honeymoon
Orchids in Po Wah Yuen
In December
Susan in the Garden
Anniversary
Alchemy
Service
After the Ball
At the Lights
Battered Children
January and May
Drifting
Post mortem amoris
Silence
People and Places
The Spirit of Progress
Farm Cottage
Suite
Balmoral Quartet
Backing the Teddies
Clontarf Nocturne
Suburban Train
High Holborn Street
Lost In Venice
Shopping on the Champs Elysee
In St. Paul’s
Monologue in Surabaya
The Nuns of Shwedagon
Bosnia
Jeepneys
On Shanghai Road
The Cuvu Villagers Take Communion
Woman in a Room
On the edge of every town …
Strange Towns
In the Deep North
Dry Season
Flying to Papunya
Obiri Rock
Artists
Buffalo Creek
Language Lesson
Morning Muster
Nightmares in Ward Nine
A Death in Custody
Escape Cliffs
The Hanged Man
Ghosts
Jacky Gallipoli
Radio Watch
Razor Wire
Black Kite
Storytellers
Change and Mortality
Omens
Saturday Matinee, (Lane Cove Rio)
Brandivino Days
Kept In
School Photograph
Two Red Dogs
Easter Rain at Blackheath
Coming Back to The Hill
Birnham Wood
Cub Scouts at Sirius Cove
Diggers
Elegy for the Young Dead
Domestic Tragedies
Final Exam
Ghost Tour, Port Arthur
Letters
Pipers, Knox College
Sad Pilgrimage
The Final Word
The Pilot
The Pleiades
Tintagel
Wollundry Lagoon
Phoenix
Man and Nature
Aubade
Children’s Python
Crows at West Head
Dead Horse Gap
Fire Setters
Fish
Flying Fox
Forest Kingfisher
Forest
Frigate Birds
Hooded Rat
Rainbow Lorikeets
Right Whales
Sand Paintings
Sea Wasps, Lee Point
Snow Leopard
Sun Bear
Thunderstorm, Kosciusko
Wallaby and Dogs
Wallaby
Whistling Ducks
White Cockatoos
Wild Dogs
Acknowledgements
Copyright Statement
Also by Tony Scanlon:
Rain at Gunn Point
Kardoorair Press, Armidale NSW 1990
Mask of Stone
Kardoorair Press 1995, Armidale NSW 1995
FLYING BLIND
New and Selected Poetry 1985–2015
Tony Scanlon
Edited by Sue Wildman
FOREWORD
I first recall meeting Tony at a Live Poets evening at Café L’Orangerie, a small café in North Sydney. Tony was the guest poet presenting work from his book Rain at Gunn Point. The poems had a strong emotional impact on me. Some of his poetry about social injustice in the Northern Territory written twenty-five years ago still sadly resonates with what is happening today. Many of the poems he read that night are featured in this book, Flying Blind, which spans thirty years of work.
When editing the book, we decided to place the poems according to themes and within each section in an order that follows a trajectory of Tony’s life. The poems reveal an insight that reflects the depths of his conscience, his concerns about nature and inequality and also his richly ironic humour. There is also a self-deprecating quality to many of the poems which is in turn humorous but also candidly honest.
It has been a richly rewarding experience working with Tony to produce this book. My thanks also to Jennifer Mosher who helped streamline the process and also to Jennifer Gill for use of her photograph Inner Sanctum
featured on the front cover. The strength of this work speaks for itself. I need say no more.
Sue Wildman
October 2016
PREFACE
The poems in this selection are principally those which have been published, or read at poetry venues or on radio. They cover the period 1965–2015, but are mainly drawn from Rain at Gunn Point (1990) and Mask of Stone (1995), both published by Kardoorair Press.
The poems are organised and grouped thematically, rather than chronologically, in order to provide a coherent overview of the issues and themes which have preoccupied my creative output over the last forty years. Minor editorial changes have been made to a number of the poems since they were first published
I am indebted to a great many people for their encouragement and positive suggestions, which have been integral to my development as a poet. Particular thanks must go to A.J. (Tony) Bennett, General Editor of Kardoorair Press, not only for his keen editorial sense, but for his protracted friendship and faith in my work. My thanks also to Sue Wildman for her invaluable assistance as editor of this volume.
Over the years, I have also been fortunate enough to meet, and discuss poetry with, a large number of fine Australian writers: Dymphna Cusack, Roland Robinson, Mark O’Connor, Michael Sharkey, Julian Croft, Thea Astley and the inimitable Bard of Bunyah, Les Murray – all have at some stage influenced or guided my development. I apologise to those many contemporary writers of my acquaintance whom I have not mentioned, but with whom I have shared the odd beer/coffee/wine and conversation about the