American poet Jason Gerrish chats with George Anderson about his book The Rough End of the Pineapple (Uncollected Press, 2020).
The consistent, authorial voice in these poems, convinces me the narrator in each piece is one in the same. I feel that I come to know the narrator as a character in the process of reading the book, and your writing style allows me to experience a comradary with the speaker in these poems and is similar to the way Kerouac and Bukowski treated the narration in their work. Are you comfortable with the idea that many readers will assume you are the speaker in these poems? What can you tell me about the narrator of these poems?
Thanks Jason for giving me the opportunity to talk about the book and also for you to take the time to carefully read my work.
In answer to your question, the poems in the collection The Rough End of the Pineapple were deliberately chosen to focus on portraits of people I have developed over the years and told from the point of view of an unnamed speaker.
The tone is typically conversational with an emphasis on subject matter rather than on conventional poetic technic. In the collection the reader will find first and third person narratives. Sure there are elements of auto-biography in my poetry but essentially it is a work of fiction. As to whether the speaker is transposing my thoughts & ideas- sometimes he is in part & at other times, not.
‘Adonis’ is the first poem in The Rough End Of The Pineapple, and it’s a good introduction to the irony at work in the collection. I particularly enjoy the setting of this piece. You positioned the two middle-aged teachers that are conversing, between the smirking old Adonis that jogs by, and the young, energetic students being herded from the athletics carnival. In the context of the poem, this setting and this image makes me feel like death walks beside us all. Did you develop this setting? Or is it based on real people and an actual place and event that you witnessed?
Adonis
At the Athletics Carnival
a few teachers stand around
talking shit
waiting for the bus
to take everyone back to school.
An Adonis with puffed up
copper tanned chest
60+ jogs by,
a self satisfied smirk on his face.
Brad totally disgusted, shoots up his arms
& says, ‘That prick reminds me
of a PE bloke I used to teach with.
‘He was superfit. He & his wife would do
50 laps of the pool every morning and three
times a week after work they’d go for a 10 k run.
Then in her late 40s she got breast cancer & died
and he moved to Queensland.’
What’s your point? I ask him.
‘Well, a few months ago I ran into him again
in Cronulla. He recently had a triple-bypass.
He showed me the scars. What surprised me
was how bitter he was, how all that strenuous
exercise he did was ‘a goddamn waste of time’
& probably only hastened his demise.’
Dead-set?
We herd the students onto the bus
& later turning right at the Kingsway
we pass the Adonis smiling broadly
as he ambles elastically across the pavement.
Brad cups his hands & whispers into my ear,
‘What a dickhead!’
*
The prose poem is based on an actual event which happened as we hopped onto a bus in Cronulla, to head back to school. I often create poems which have a clear image which illustrates a stark idea. I like the idea that people think they can ward off death through excessive exercise. They must feel great for a while. There must be plenty of healthy looking freaks in the morgue.
The PE Instructor in Adonis believed that by dedicating his life to strenuous exercise, he would preserve his health and live a long and reputable life. He prided himself for his disciplined lifestyle, and now he is humbled. His whole life is absurd. He is an unpleasant character who reminds me in some ways of the grotesque characters in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio. Have you read Winesburg Ohio? Were you influenced at all by Sherwood Anderson’s writing?
Yeah, I read the book in my early 20s. A couple of years ago I was culling some books and read the first chapter and couldn’t get into it so I donated the book to a local charity. I remember very little about the novel and can’t recall being aware of the term “grotesque characters” until you mentioned it to me a few weeks ago.
I’m simply creating character profiles of some of the people I have met or have heard about through family or friends. Occasionally, I may exaggerate or play with the traits of some of my people but if some of the profiles seem similar to the broad definitions related to Sherwood’s grotesques or others, well that is purely coincidental.
What writers do you consider to be important influences on your own writing? Early on and today?
In my early youth & young adulthood I admired many writers including London, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Brautigan, Camus, Dostoyevsky and later Bukowski. In my early 20s I attempted to write 2 novels but the stuff was too crazy apart from a short story or two.
When I started writing poetry about 20 years ago my poems were excessively wordy and it wasn’t until I started writing book reviews, interviewing writers and featuring their work on Bold Monkey in 2010 that I seriously started paring the shit back. A short list of contemporary influences would include, in no particular order what you will find on this literary blog: Wolf Carstens, Rob Plath, Henry Denander, Joe Ridgwell, John Yamrus, Bill Gainer, Todd Cirillo, Peter Bakowski, Brenton Booth, Matt Borczon, Brian Rihlmann, Luis Cuauhétemoc Berriozabal, John Sweet, Karina Bush, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Jack Henry, Wayne F. Burke, John D. Robinson, Janne Karlsson, Howie Good, Dan Provost, Terence Rissetto, Scott Wozniak, R.D. Armstrong, Ben John Smith, Mather Schneider and heaps more.
Their work represents a lived experience and reeks of blood and sweat and vomit and shit.
Getting back to your treatment of setting, many of the poems in this collection feature a highly developed setting. In Part 1of the poem Kuradji, I feel the setting is developed so well, it serves as a portrait character in the poem. Was this intended? What was your motive for writing Kuradji?
I did not originally intend Kuradji, to be a character in the poem. The name derives from an ancient Aboriginal burial site that was unearthed at Sandon Point after a massive storm in 1998. The find was archaeologically excavated and the skull and bones were considered to be those of an Aboriginal “clever man” or Kuradji: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/360/kuradji-dreaming-on-community-respect-and/3130326
See also:https://old.sandon-point.org.au/kuradji.htm
In 2000 Stocklands proposed a major development in Sandon Point to include more than 1,200 homes in its opening stages. In March 2001, a group of Illawarra residents set up a 24 hour picket on council land, who were concerned by the impact the development would have on the area. I joined the picket because I was pissed-off at how money talks and how it can be used to bulldoze carefully legislated environmental and cultural controls developed over decades.
I attended a meeting at Sandon Point near the carpark in 2003 in which an elder of the Wodi Wodi people spoke. I recorded his talk and made a few notes. At the time I was a member of the South Coast Writers in Wollongong and they were looking for 100 word poems to showcase in their ‘Take 25- Readings at Wollongong Art Gallery.’ I quickly condensed my work as the prose poem ‘Kuradji’ and sent it off.
Here’s the original poem as it appeared in the Illawarra Mercury newspaper:
I spent a few nights sleeping in the picket tent until one evening it was set ablaze and destroyed by vandals. The multi-million dollar houses which crowd the beachfront are monstrously huge and are usually vacant- probably the holiday homes of Sydney’s super rich. Very shameful and greedy but unsurprising.
Another poem with a highly developed setting is ‘Four-Leaf Clovers’. There is some very patient writing at work in this piece, and the setting provides the last image that the narrator remembers his family as whole. What can you tell me about your motive for writing this poem?
Four-Leaf Clovers
At the backdoor
I wear ice skates
shiny blue pants
with white stripes
red socks strapped
to each thigh &
protective pads.
I kick at the door.
You are by the wood
stove chopping kindling
the kitchen smells good
of apple pie and I listen
to the crackling fire as
you tug off my right skate
and then the other.
In my head
I’m still in the park
accelerating
speeding past
the awkwardly mobile
defenseman
deking the goalie
out of the net
& flipping the puck
into the top corner.
My father sits at the table
reading the Star. He grunts
unaware that his life is about
to change forever,
unaware that his life
of careful construction
will soon come
tumbling down.
Before entering the house
I knock the snow from my skates.
My feet are frozen. I want to sit by
the fire and listen to you tell me again
& again how you found that miraculous
bunch of 4 leaf clovers in the park.
The poem is a tribute to my mother who died when I was 20 years old. During the summer when I was a teenager, she would often walk to nearby Oxford Park and try to find four-leaf clovers. One year she found a huge bunch and was so amazingly happy.
In the poem I juxtapose images of a wonderful and content family life with those of an impending doom from the point of view of the speaker who desperately wants to recall the image of his mother as being extremely joyful, before her luck ran out.
‘Four-Leaf Clovers’ is one of the poems in The Rough End Of The Pineapple that struck me hard. It’s a very moving poem on its own, but reading it right after reading the poem ‘Frankie’, which precedes it, I had to take a break and collect myself. The description of the empty turtle bowl in ‘Frankie’foreshadows the emptiness in the home that appears inevitable in ‘Four-Leaf Clovers’, and “the park” also plays a role in both poems, suggesting to me that these two poems were meant to complement one another. Were these two poems written around the same time? Were they meant to resonate with each other in the ways I described?
The poems were both written in 2016 as separate entities. I lived in the same rented block of flats in N.D.G. in Montreal for 23 years only a few minutes walk from Oxford Park, as it was known then. The park even now fills me with many vivid and varied thoughts and emotions. I usually shy away from sentiment in my poetry but they were important to write to show the vulnerability we have in growing up and how one threshold event can turn our understanding of ourselves and of the world upside-down.
Death is a recurrent subject in The Rough End Of The Pineapple. There are more than fifteen poems in this collection that deal with death or dying in some way, and I enjoy that you approach the subject honestly, and from different angles. In some poems the narrator honors the deceased and he is struck by the finality of death as in ‘Chopper’ and ‘A View of A Friend’, and in others the narrator examines the absurdity of preparing for death, as in ‘Apoplexy’, ‘Uncle Giuseppe’, and ‘Switching Off The Lights’. What can you tell us about your fascination with the subject of death? What is gained by writing about it or reading about it?
Everyone is fascinated with death. It is one of the BIG topics. It is the end to our consciousness as we know it. I am fairly restrained in the collection and take care to avoid cliché and the morbid. Each take on the subject is unique and often tempered with irony or humour.
You note at the beginning of the book that the title is a common Australian colloquialism which means “to get a raw deal, or to receive unfair or inequitable treatment”. How might the term be used in Australia, in everyday conversation? Is the term most often used to refer to a freak accident or an unexpected death? Is the term usually used to convey some irony?
‘The rough end of the pineapple’ is a commonly known but is not often used expression in everyday conversations these days. It is a term which pre-dates multicultural urban Australia. I listen to a morning sports radio show sometimes and one former commentator TK in particular liked to use it often, mostly to reflect how badly a player in National Rugby League had been treated by a referee. As in “Latrell got the rough end of the pineapple on that call!” If you ever contemplated sitting on the sharp spiky points of a pineapple you will probably get a better idea what I mean. These days your local grocer removes them.
Many of the portrait poems in the collection depict people who have received a bad deal- be it through society, poor decisions, predators, alcoholism, mental illness or lax working conditions as Bernie, down the road, faced in the title poem.
In the poem ‘Shark in the Shallows’, I am fascinated by the image of the White Pointer clamped down on Ray’s leg and the image of Ray and the shark being pulled from the surf locked together, as one. It is as if Ray and the Shark are both alive and dead in this moment that is so charged with fate, and in my reading of the poem, I cannot separate life from death. This image has stuck with me for a while, and I am interested in what you intended with this image and with this poem?
Shark in the Shallows
In the
dimming light
of the muddy surf
Ray raises
the alarm
thirty yards off-shore:
‘Shark! Shark!’
An eight foot
White Pointer
has engorged
his left leg
up to the knee
its massive jaws
locked on his
ragged limb.
Ray punches &
kicks & bites its nose.
His mate Robbo smashes it
heavily over the head
with his surfboard
other blokes yank
at the shark’s tail
but the primeval brut
is unresponsive
it somehow
appears dead
and won’t let go.
It was odd
seeing the boys
carrying Ray
up to the beach
the swell
thick with blood
the shark
still firmly
attached
to his leg
its terrible
cold dead eyes
emerging
from the surf.
While the subject of death is recurrent in The Rough End Of The Pineapple, there are also several absurd and darkly humorous poems in the book. ‘Taking the Piss Out Of Her’ and ‘Gonad’ are two that come to mind. What can you tell us about these two poems? Are they based on actual people and events?
There is far too much angst and never enough humour in poetry or various forms of media these days. There are many stupid or crazy or nasty people around- and sometimes that is a good thing for literature. The woman portrayed in ‘Taking the Piss Out of Her’ was encountered while on a train to Sydney. I really had to write a poem about her when she told me she not only drank urine for health reasons but used it as a skin cleanser.
‘Gonad’ was a top flatmate of one of my sons when they shared a flat with other blokes in Bulli. Gonad’s trip to the Sydney Opera House was in response to a March 2010 gathering of more than 5000 nudists who were photographed for Spencer Tunick’s art installation- 'Mardi Gras: The Base': https://www.smh.com.au/national/thousands-gather-for-naked-opera-house-photos-20100301-pbf0.html
Gonad showed up the next day at the Opera House to craft on his own nude exhibit.
When the poem was featured in Cajun Mutt Press in 2020 I sent him a link to it: https://cajunmuttpress.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/cajun-mutt-press-featured-writer-01-03-20/
He replied, “Hey Gidge, I didn’t even know you wrote poetry!”
‘Cheeseburger Without the Pickles’, is another poem that got a good stir out of me. The impatient patron with the cell phone is aggravated that he has to wait on his burger, and he makes me think of the many ways our lives are hurried in the world we’re living in today. We’re becoming increasingly impatient and expect instant gratification. The Chef in the poem, however, is old school. He tells the agitated customer, ‘My burgers don’t make themselves. They actually take time to cook.’ Concerning your writing, how much time do you spend writing a poem? Do you have a process? Do you do much editing?
Yeah, that poem was in response to the owner/ cook’s speech he made opening night after his business had been bought out by someone I knew. As you are getting by now, every one of my poems has a backstory embedded in a real experience.
When I first started scribbling down the stuff I often wrote a dozen poems a day and made multiple drafts. These days, I strip the language back and I’m a lot more selective in what I choose to write about. Years ago, everything around me seemed to be an unfolding story or poem. Now, I often take pride in resisting the urge to get it down on the page, to add to the big heap which assails us as readers.
‘Poached Eggs On Toast’is a poem that demonstrates the narrator’s world view. I sense this poem is much larger than the small café it is set in. Would you like to elaborate on the ways that the‘suites of the world stuff things up’?
There a few alternative looking poems in the collection which reflect the world view of the speaker. “Wollemi National Park’, ‘On the Road’, ‘Suits & Ties’ and ‘Avalon’ come to mind. In ‘Poached Eggs On Toast’ I sat with my partner eating breakfast in Sydney and listened to the conversations of the enthusiastic young ones talking about office work. Buzzworks, Road Maps are just guesswork until things fuck up again- whether it be through another global financial crisis or global warming catastrophe. Most young office workers have no sense of critical awareness of how they are contributing to the demise our great planet.
What can you tell us about the cover of the book and the poem True Love?
One day he dragged out three of his specimens and I took a few shots from a balcony above. I liked the quirky mise-en-scène of the cover and how it might be an emblem for some of the weird characters to be found within the book.
True Love
The first time
I knew
he was serious
about his new girlfriend
was when I saw him
out the front
sorting thru
his home-made robots
& dismantling them
into separate piles of
steel, silicon & foam.
I don’t see a ton of your poetry published online. I did find three poems at Outlaw Poetry. Are there other online sites where one could read some of your work?
I used to publish a lot of stuff online but thankfully, many of those small press publications are now defunct. There’s still a bit of work out there if you know where to look.
Here’s a guide to some of my poems currently available online and which have been published in the collection, including the Outlaw Poetry post you mentioned:
beatnik cowboy: https://beatnikcowboy.com/2019/04/11/george-anderson/
outlaw poetry: https://outlawpoetry.com/2018/three-poems-by-george-anderson/
rye whiskey review: https://ryethewhiskeyreview.blogspot.com/2019/05/guy-son-of-alcoholic-born-with.html?m=1
http://www.guttereloquence.com/issue12/ganderson12.html
https://cajunmuttpress.wordpress.com/2019/12/13/cajun-mutt-press-featured-writer-12-13-19/
What are some of your favorite small press publications today? Have you published any poems recently or do you have any upcoming projects we can look for in the near future?
On Bold Monkey Review I include a list on the right sidebar of recommended sites readers might want to visit. I'm usually too busy to consistently read their publications and keep up to date.
I have been working on three poetry projects at the moment as time allows tentatively entitled, The Factory of Eccentric Poetics, The Beast With 3 Legs and Still Life. The collections include both new and previously published material.
In a final question, in the poem 'Jenny, the Blindman & I' the smell of KFC and Thai food awakens the speaker from his thoughts and imaginations. The smell brings the three companions together and creates an intimate moment that is so generous for me reading it, I feel like I am there. I love this poem and I read that you first moved to New Zealand from Canada, in a previous interview with Wayne F. Burke. What brought you to New Zealand at aged 23?
Terrific question. I moved to NZ because I met a Kiwi in Montreal and at the time the Parti Quebecois was on the mandate of separating from Canada. Eventually we shifted to Oz when my visa ran out. Good move.
Wow, thanks for taking the trouble to mapping out the settings of these poems. I feel honoured that you took the time to do so.
Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Rough-Pineapple-George-Douglas-Anderson/dp/1716782732
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