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    Flying Blind: New and Selected Poetry 1985-2015
    Flying Blind: New and Selected Poetry 1985-2015
    Flying Blind: New and Selected Poetry 1985-2015
    Ebook145 pages1 hour

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTellwell Talent
    Release dateOct 26, 2016
    ISBN9781925529678
    Flying Blind: New and Selected Poetry 1985-2015
    Author

    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.

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

      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

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