Reviews
In this collected works by George Huitker we are given highlights of the poets career over the past ten years. Huitker brings together here a great variety of poems in style and form, poems that have been widely published, a number having received prizes in poetry awards. There are the talkie poems, urgent poems and poems mordant in their wit. Snappy poems about the fastness and slowness of ordinary everyday life, showy poems, funny poems like 'Hair Rufflers', lonely poems like 'Loreto', the simple yet poignant 'Christmas in the Park, San Jose', and the beautifully evocative sequence of poems titled 'Postcards from the Edge'. From the poem: -
i. Goodrich Castle
I remember following the river
as it cradled the nearby town, its
waters flowing with resolve
towards the orange fire of dusk.
Below, I noticed the mote stacked
Weet-bix slabs of broken brick,
the far banks tidied by a
neat mat of sloping green. If
there were bars up here
I'd have held them; sweeping
heights create their own brand
of melancholy and catch you, off guard.
And so my thoughts returned to you - how
I'd better send a card to where the sun
was journeying - and maybe pen something
about love and other crumbling things.
It is in some of these longer sequence poems where the poet shows the fireworks of his skills. A very powerful collection of poems gathered over a distinguished career and truly highlights the poet's body of work. A worthy book.
Tim Collins, Studio.
George Huitker's new collection, An Unfamiliar Actor, uses a quote from Terry Monagle on its front cover: “This man is having an adventure.” Certainly one could call the recording of pieces of a life an adventure but, more importantly, in this anthology George Huitker lays himself before his readers and invites them in under his skin. He drops fragments and suggestions as signposts some clearer and more obvious than others for the reader to follow.
At first the wide variety of styles and shapes of the verse on the page can be somewhat off-putting, as if the poet has compiled everything he has written into this one volume. But threaded through this seeming mish-mash is the theme of loss of people whose lives have touched his, of football games, of place and, in particular, of his father who appears and re-appears throughout this volume. Loss is the spun thread that holds the work together from the opening poem, My Father's Last Stand, to Invigilation, For Caitlin, which encapsulates the death of a student in five fine lines While the funeral files out/ hushed, her classmates/ are sitting exams/ scratching at dark corners/ finding fact in uncertainty.
These poems could only have been written by a bloke! Huitker uses football the theme of a previous book, Not Just Footy cars and movie hire to lead the reader into his world. But he also allows insight into family love and influences, as in the contemplative group of poems, The Brothers possibly this reader's favourite which are reflections on his relationship with each of his brothers. Through each individually short piece, the reader gains an indelible snapshot of the Huitker brothers and their differences. Except for Willard, who is only seen through his own son, which left this reader tantalised and wondering about family relationships.
Huitker plays with shapes on the page, as in Christmas in the Park, San Jose, which is shaped like a Christmas tree, and The Silos of Minyip which is long and thin, like a grain silo against the outback sky. Generally this works, but it's a device that needs to be handled with care in order not to become precious or pretentious, which nearly happens in the short Roadside, an ode to the wreaths seen at the sites of road fatalities. This doesn’t quite work, as the difficulty in reading the circle detracts from the emotion underpinning the verse.
In this anthology the solidity of family, children, acquaintances, city buses, first loves and, very strongly, the Australian landscape, lead the reader into the psyche of the poet. A psyche that is aware of the fine nuances of relationships and life as one would expect from someone who is also a successful actor.
Huitker’s poetry is muscular, topical and perceptive. He is a poet to watch grow into maturity, with the expectation of finely evolving work to come.
Glenda Guest, MUSE
George Huitker's third collection contains all the poems from his first two books - An Unfamiliar Sea and The Actor is Happy - as well as some new ones. The poems start from the year he turned twenty-five until he stopped writing poetry in 2002.
Huitker has a long history in the dramatic arts, and, not surprisingly, most of his best poems are monologues. For instance, there is the amusing sequence about a comical British man who drives buses ('British Bus Driver'):
I hate tha' modern shite.
BOOM BOOM BOOM
I'll bust their fockin tapes I hate tha' shite so much.
It's not music, George.
It just ain't. It's not The Monkees, is it.
It's not Daydream Believer.
During this sequence, Huitker flawlessly evinces the man's hypocrisy and fascist nature.
But overall, out of the three sections, it is his new poems that are his most accomplished - he has refined his style, which is essentially a cool, controlled, measured voice encapsulated in free voice, prose poems, rhyming verse and the aforementioned monologues. All this with a likeable cynicism which exemplifies Generation X. Not only that, Huitker's poetry is delightfully unpretentious. Possibly the best example of this is when, following a humdrum title and description of a kid leaning on his shoulder, Huitker describes a vivid landscape wherein trees, farmhouses and plains 'hurl past/at the speed of childhood.' ('The Kid on The Train') The mundane is cleverly used to address more philosophical matters.
It is possible to be complimentary about all of Huitker's poems. Both his output and development have been impressive.
Michael Byrne, Voice.
