Poet
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Robert Gray 1945 country: Netherlands Engels |
groeide op aan de Noordkust van New South Wales. Hij publiceerde tot dusver acht poëziebundels en, samen met de dichter Geoffrey Lehmann, twee bloemlezingen met Australische poëzie. Over zijn werk schreef Les Murray: ‘Robert Gray is in staat met één woord of één zin een hele wereld van zintuiglijk bewustzijn op te roepen. Een van de hedendaagse meesters van de Engelstalige poëzie.’ Momenteel werkt Gray aan zijn eerste prozaboek. Van hem verscheen onlangs in Nederlandse vertaling bij J.M. Meulenhoff de bundel Grasschrift. Dinsdag 10 juni, 21.45 uur, Grote Zaal Links With his poetry début Creekwater Journal (1973) Gray at once established his name as a highly skilful and original 'imagist'. Even Les Murray, who had until then staunchly refused to review the work of a fellow-Australian, was moved to write: 'Mr Gray has an eye, and the verbal felicity which must accompany such an eye. He can use an epithet and image to perfection and catch a whole world of sensory understanding in a word or a phrase.' In illustration, he quoted one of Gray's haiku-like three-liners: '4 a.m. the Milky Way is blown along / high over the forest. / A truck changes down.' Murray, however, also wondered if Gray's talent for impressions of such hallucinatory clarity would not hamper his further development as a poet and keep him from taking on more complex themes. Murray's fears turned out to be unfounded. Apart from pure nature poetry - the play of water and light in Sydney Harbour is a recurrent theme - there are discursive and narrative poems to be found in all his collections, such as the famous 'Flames and Dangling Wire' - about a visit to a garbage dump - or 'Diptych', which paints a moving portrait of his parents. 'Things as they are are what is mystical,' says Gray in 'A Testimony' (in Lineations, 1996), 'Those who search deepest are returned to life … What is most needed is that we become more modest. And the work of art that can return us to our senses.' This modesty feeds a poetic craftsmanship of rare integrity. As Les Murray later noted: 'Robert Gray is one of the contemporary masters of poetry in English.' Author: Maarten Elzinga |
