Robert Harris (1951-1993) was indeed a "Gang of One" in the Australian poetry scene of the 1970s and 1980s. He was highly regarded by people who were often in conflict (or appeared to be). These would include, among others, Robert Adamson, who published Harris' last book, JANE, Interlinear and Other Poems, in his Paper Bark Press and Les Murray, who published Harris' penultimate book, The Cloud Passes Over. When Harris died prematurely of a heart attack, he bad published five books but there was, understandably, no Selected Poems at that point. Now Grand Parade Poets has rectified the situation. The Gang of One is edited by well-known Sydney poet, Judith Beveridge, and introduced in considerable detail by prominent specialist in Australian literature, Philip Mead.
Harris grew up in the south-eastern Melbourne and left school without finishing Year 12. He spent 10 months in the RAN but did not go to sea. After that he supported himself with a range of white and blue-collar jobs while he devoted his main energies to poetry. In his first three books, Harris appears as an ultra-Romantic, having much in common with Michael Dransfield and the early Adamson. There are considerable echoes from French Symbolism and Surrealism. We sense a young poet, something of an autodidact, feeling his way and risking excess. A few lines from "Nightfall Near Cranbourne" are indicative: "How black grows the water / transmuting slowly to soaking stone, / the rib cold, heart cold liquid; bird!" Scattered through this early poetry, and right through until his death, was a series of short poems stemming directly from his itinerant working experience. They concerned hard-pressed people who had little to do with the literary world where the poems would eventually be published. In the context of Harris' other more ambitious work, these poems may seem an aberration but there is also an argument they were at the core of his poetry. Harris is best known, however, for The Cloud Passes Over, containing a number of memorable religious poems which are explicitly Christian, and for JANE Interlinear and Other Poems, which features 29 poems about Lady Jane Grey, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, a 17-year-old who was installed as Queen of England for nine days before being executed in 1553.
The Gang of One is a rare example of literary altruism. Hardly anyone will like all its poems equally, since Harris was always developing and changing, but the book will be mandatory reading for anyone who wants a fuller appreciation of Australian poetry in those two important decades - and into the future, for that matter.
- The Gang of One: Selected Poems by Robert Harris. Grand Parade Poets. $26.95.
- Geoff Page is a Canberra poet.
