Philip Hammial
Philip Hammial Poems
Home alone, late at night, doing what I always do. I’m rowing. Sitting on my kitchen chair, chained to an oar, I’m one of a hundred slaves making sure that the galley keeps moving forward through a sea that is sometimes calm,
...
And went to one of the Glory Temples for which
our city is famous & found
a sick congregation – spitting blood
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If we assume that every third house is logical
it follows that there’s literature in abundance
on the subject of steamer trunks of the kind
that one might find in every fourth house. She
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Tony has opened a museum of madness. He’s persuaded the administrators to lease one of the rooms in the basement of the Museum of Natural History – a huge, high-ceilinged room in which the displays – in glass cases &
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Had me a word up. One. Through water
it went by some way
I could not follow. In
the depth of me was there
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Should have sent that birthday card to my sister. Did
I remember to double-lock the front door? That word –
culpable – that I used in that poem; too jarring,
& the thesaurus gone astray. opto & then
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Common graves pan out
in a felicitous escapade – a waltz
of merry widows, their gigolos done up
as clockwork thugs. Six bells
...
If yours can be substituted for several
you’re in business, says my guardian (at my side
like a shadow). But which business? Odds are
that it’s dubious. A straw concession, say – selling
...
As you would suspect the plow
of infidelity if the ox
had a human face so you would
the dead if they rehearsed their marriages
...
Without arms or legs, they wiggle out of the sea & up onto the beach shouting commands from fish-like mouths, the authorities. "Put your best & bluest eyes in the crinkled scars where our limbs were attached! Hurry up!
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I've begun to walk with a stoop. The weight of the world on my shoulders? No, not at all. It's the tunnels. Everywhere I go - out to the garage to find a tool, into a supermarket to buy some food - there's a tunnel to pass through & one that's never quite large enough for me to stand fully upright in.
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Article 12 expressly forbids the digging of traps in public gardens. Article 13, in apparent contradiction to 12, declares that all traps in public gardens must be camouflaged with the leaves of banyan trees, oak leaves never, under any circumstances, to be used for this purpose.
...
No way to account for the erratic behaviour
of your erstwhile twin unless you accept that the voice
on the loudspeaker really does have a message
for you & you alone: Let
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In the middle of the intersection of the Rue de Seine & the Rue de Buci a van stops & the driver, taking his sweet time despite the pile up of traffic, loads several cases of bottles onto his trolley & wheels them into the Bar du Marche. About
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It's my fifth birthday & I'm sitting on the present that Uncle Stan has just given me, a green Schwinn bicycle. He gives me a push & down I go, down the gentle slope in his back yard in Chicago that becomes a hill, an interminably long hill that, sixty years later, I'm still going down,
...
Two 17th Century Dutch merchants are strolling in an orchard up & down between two rows of trees. They’re discussing the recent downturn in business due to competition from their Spanish counterparts. Each time they
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Wobbles in
on stiletto heels. Rings in
with an ox for the soup. Is in
the captain’s closet & won’t come out
...
Article 12 expressly forbids the digging of traps in public gardens. Article 13, in apparent contradiction to 12, declares that all traps in public gardens must be camouflaged with the leaves of banyan trees, oak leaves never, under any circumstances, to be used for this purpose. Article 14, in apparent contradiction to 12 & 13, states that everyone, without exception, who has fallen into an oak leaf-covered trap in any public garden in the month of May is required to attend a banquet at the Town Hall on June 1, a banquet presided over by the mayor who at this solemn occasion will present keys to the city to the May trapees.
...
It's me, myself, no other who's lying
on this filthy mattress in this hospital
corridor, cloudsick, humiliated
by their procedures, by the samples
that they've taken.
&, yes,
it's me, myself, no other who has
but one intention: to make it perfectly clear
that my most ardent wish is to leave as I came -
on my hands & knees, crawling.
&, yes,
it's yours truly, this humble petitioner
that you see before you who will crawl,
naked, to each in turn, to each
of the mothers, to submit
to their wrath.
& myself, no
other who will present you, made
with my own hands, of my hair, of dirt
from under my nails, an effigy of myself
to do with as you will.
& myself, no
other, who's stripped to the waist
in this dim hole, who for twelve hours each night
shovels coal into a boiler - steam
for an engine that must be, can only be
an engine of war.
&, yes, it's
me, no other, who, entering a room
that I thought was empty, finds it full
of steamer trunks & in each, as I lift
its lid, the evidence of a failed migration -
a blue snake, hibernating, oblivious
to the intoxication of my flute.
& me,
alone, hugging myself, who's crooning
a lullaby as the ox is dismissed, as it sinks
into mist - the ox painted blue
that brought me here cradled
in its horns.
& myself, no
other who, coming among strangers,
can understand their language as if
it was my own, their discourse
of dead horses, of empire, of excrement
& tedium.
& myself, yours
truly, no other, who, at the end
of a long journey, was given a tent
in this camp of cowards, who tonight
around a fire as we warm ourselves,
in gratitude, in terror, will place on the lips
of each of my comrades a kiss
of betrayal.
...
Wobbles in
on stiletto heels. Rings in
with an ox for the soup. Is in
the captain's closet & won't come out
to lift its leg. Is
a domicile privy
to grunts. Adorns its chest
with ca-ca. All speed
to its advocates who roll
in fat. Must spank
father first, who
knew best. Mother
can wait. Accepts milk
from a surrogate only. Knows nothing
of beads but their telling. Its ball
at odds with cheering. Its catch
too close for comfort. Its plug
at the mercy of aviation. Is fraternal
to the core. Is greased
for a pole that scrawls
a nom de guerre. Its tongue
by more than half is never
exceeded. Notice how exquisite
they are, its manners while it eats
its words.
...
Philip Hammial Biography
Philip Roby Hammial (born 1937) is an Australian poet, publisher, editor, artist and art curator. He has a long list of achievements in writing, publishing and sculpting. His achievements include twenty-four collections of poetry, thirty solo sculpture exhibitions and, acting as the director/curator of The Australian Collection of Outsider Art, twenty-six exhibitions of Australian Outsider Art in five countries. Hammial's significance to Australian poetry has been recognised by the Australia Council, which awarded him a Senior Writer’s Fellowship in 1996, an Established Writer’s Fellowship in 2004 and the Nancy Keesing Studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2009. Life Hammial (born 1937) grew up in and around Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from Farmington High School in 1954. After three years in the engine rooms of US Navy ships he went to Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan, and then to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he ‘discovered’ poetry, art, philosophy and history. Graduating with honors in English Literature and Philosophy in 1963, he went on to travel the world for a total of eleven years, visiting eighty-one countries & working in three – Denmark, England and Greece. In 1972 he arrived in Sydney on a tourist visa and nine months later was granted a resident visa. He is now an Australian citizen, married to Anne Welch an English as a second language teacher, with one child, Genevieve Aloka, born in 1997, and has been living in the Blue Mountains since 1994. Hammial started work at the age of twelve and had over one hundred jobs in five countries before retiring in 2000. A member of the Woodford Bush Fire Brigade between 1995 and 2003, Hammial fought many of the fires that raged through the Blue Mountains during those years. An environmental and human rights activist, he has worked as a volunteer for the Wilderness Society and for the Free Tibet Action Group. Literary and artistic career Hammial has published twenty-four collections of poetry and is the editor of “25 poètes australiens”, an anthology published in Trois-Rivières and Paris. He is also the editor (with Ulli Beier and Rudi Krausmann) of the seminal “Outsider Art in Australia”. As the director of The Australian Collection of Outsider Art, he has curated or helped to organize twenty-six exhibitions of Australian Outsider Art – in Australia, Germany, France, Belgium and the United States. The most recent exhibition – “Australian Outsiders” (23 artists) – spent two months at the Orange Regional Gallery, seven weeks at the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and then went to the Halle St. Pierre in Paris for six months (September 2006 to February 2007) where it was very well received. Hammial himself is also an artist. He has had thirty-two solo exhibitions and his work has been included in over seventy group exhibitions. In 1979 he became the editor of Island Press. The oldest small press in Australia still publishing poetry, Island was founded in 1970 by Philip Roberts and has published fifty-eight titles to date. Two of his poetry collections were short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor Prize – “Bread” in 2001 and “In the Year of Our Lord Slaughter’s Children” in 2004 and one was short-listed for the ACT Poetry Prize - "Skin Theory" in 2010. His poems have appeared in 21 anthologies of Australian poetry and in 87 journals in 9 countries. He has represented Australia at six major international poetry festivals – Poetry Africa 2000 in Durban, South Africa; the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poesie, Paris, 2000; The World Festival of Poets, Tokyo, 2000; the Festival International de la Poésie, Trois-Rivières, 2004; the Micro Festival, Prague, 2009 and the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poesie, Melbourne, 2010. In 2001 he had a one month writer-in-residency at the Fundacion Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain and for six months in 2009/10 he was the Australian writer-in-residence at the Cite International des Arts in Paris. Awards 1988: Rothman’s Foundation Poetry Prize 2001: short-listed for a NSW Premier's Award and the Kenneth Slessor prize 2004: short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor prize)
The Best Poem Of Philip Hammial
Brothers
Home alone, late at night, doing what I always do. I’m rowing. Sitting on my kitchen chair, chained to an oar, I’m one of a hundred slaves making sure that the galley keeps moving forward through a sea that is sometimes calm, sometimes raging. Forward, to that distant port where, so rumour has it, we’ll be set free, at long last, after all these years. The others, my brothers in chains, sitting in chairs in their own kitchens in this huge sprawl of public housing, rowing ceaselessly, with a strength they didn’t know they possessed.
How much further? How many more days? It can’t be far. But what if I’m the only one who’s still rowing (the galley seems to have slowed down), the others simply sitting at their kitchen tables guzzling beer, munching on pretzels? Those lazy bloated pigs, of course they’ve stopped rowing. They’ve left it up to me. Some unspoken agreement among them to stop rowing. That fool in 108, he’s still flogging himself; he’s insatiable.
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