slowly, the hard way, the immense and tiny details,

all the infinite touches, put down onto nothing”

The honesty of this quote, and the encouragement it offers in a world where one is constantly told that to want to make money from poetry is in some way wrong, that to expect to make a living from it is ridiculous, gives these words great strength.

“I don’t know if younger poets read a lot of, you know, the poets – the established poets. There was a lot of pretty boring stuff to put up with and to add to, to make something vital from.”

Again, true and honest in way that makes the heart leap. This is not something you will hear from many established poets.

“It’s just if you’re not disruptive everything seems to be repeated endlessly- not so much the good things but the bland things – the ordinary things – the weaker things get repeated – the stronger things get suppressed and held down and hidden.”

And this is my favourite quote of all because it is true not only of poetry but of all art, in fact of life in general.

These three quotes sum up why I think Robert Adamson is such a good role model for any young poet. They speak with such honesty and directness and somehow, an Australian-ness. There is something fundamentally Australian in their attitude, as there is in Robert’s poetry with its deep sense of place.
So, who better to be the first ever official Australian Poet Laureate, than Robert Adamson?

What are these outstanding questions about copyright? I am obviously confused because I believe in the fundamental right of the artist to ownership of the work. So I don’t see any questions.

Other people may not believe in the fundamental right of the artist to ownership of the work, cool, they can give it away and we can all use it. Where is the question? All I ask is for you to ask me for permission to use the work, like you would ask me to use my mower and I would ask you before I ate your chickens. All you have to do is ask and acknowledge your sources. Because acknowledging your sources preserves the train of thought for future generations, and it is good manners.

Or I could pull RSS feeds from every Lit Blog in the country, use an automatic aggregator and have the best lit blog anywhere, stick some adverts on it and keep all the money. No copyright, who is gonna stop me? Oh that’s right, Google, they have systems in place to stop this from happening.

I own my work. That is all there is to it. I put the work in, the thing I made is mine. The things you make are yours. If you use my work, a simple acknowledgment of that fact is all I ask.

Of course, as everyone who knows me knows, I believe the First Poet Laureate of Australia should be the legend Robert Adamson.

The Bob, as I call him, kept alive a tradition of poetry that includes lyricism and the soul, water, fishyfish, he’s been to jail, his poetry has rhyme and sounds beautiful like a river. And on and on and on I could go…

With all due respect and remembering of course that Mr Kinsella’s publisher is Melbourne University Publishing who also publish Meanjin and the editor of Overland, Jeff Sparrow.

It seems to me this would be a good thing for poetry in Australia. It is a neglected art form in the public eye and having a Poet Laureate would raise the profile considerably. A small ceremony on the television, some newspaper reports, a Poet Laureate, school tours, the possibilities are endless.

It would be a way for Australia to recognize the importance of the art form and the contribution made to the culture by poets in general.