Australia, (b. 1943)
Notes from the Late Tang
for Jeremy Prynne
- On the mountain of (heaped snow, boiled rice)
- I met Tu Fu wearing a straw hat against the midday sun
- distant bridge, restless parting, rain (in, on) the woods
- [line missing]
- willows among white clouds (shirt, chemise, ghost)
- (to take the long view) parting
- away moving, mobile telephone handset
- [Bob: perhaps that’s “grief at parting”]
- my humble (borrowed, not inherited)
- cottage (pig-sty) perspective
- there is a misty view (of, from?) bridge
- the storm took three layers of thatch, so
- rain through the roof, porcine lucubrations
- (something?) pig oil study
- [Bob: “pig oil” can’t be right]
- burning the midnight oil in my study
- phantom liberty, ghost freedom view
- great ancient poet wrote for radio
- (would have written) had he known
- (subjunctive) radio receiver, milkmaid attitude
- silkscreen pastoral, pants metaphor
- looking back, sorrow (shopping) lady
- parting (hair) long voyage
- light and green woods, little pig woman
- [Bob: I think that’s “young swineherd girl”]
- she questions (annoys) the lonely traveller
- unfortunate view (of, from)
- pig liquid telephone handset
About the Poet:
John Ernest Tranter, Australia, (b. 1943), is a poet, a literary critic, editor and publisher. Tranter took his BA in 1970 after attending university sporadically. He has worked mainly in publishing, teaching and radio production, and has traveled widely, making more than twenty reading tours to venues in the U.S., Britain and Europe since the mid-1980s. He has lived in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in Australia, and overseas in London, Cambridge, Singapore, Florida, and San Francisco.
Tranter developed, with Jan Garrett, the long running ABC radio program Books and Writing; and founding in 1997 the internet quarterly literary magazine Jacket which he published and edited until 2010, when he gave it to the University of Pennsylvania.
Now living in Sydney, Tranter is a company director (with his wife Lyn) of Australian Literary Management, a leading literary agency. In 2009 he completed a Doctorate of Creative Arts University of Wollongong (conferred, highly commended). [DES-04/18]
Additional information:
- John Tranter – Australian Poetry Library
- New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (NZEPC) – John Tranter