POETRY
The Tour
PiO
Giramondo, $29.95

PiO’s new book, The Tour, is difficult to classify. It’s described by the publishers as “a new collection of poems … composed as a diary” but this is not quite the case. It is, however, based on a journal the author kept in America on a tour there, supported by the Literature Board, in 1985. The tour consisted of four Australian poets and a manager, whom PiO reasonably calls the “Tour Organiser”.

The book does include some of the poems he read on the tour but most of it, though lineated, is best described as a non-fiction account of events as PiO saw them. It’s the America of 1985 and, as a visitor’s portrait of that now-vanished society, it’s not an unfair account. It’s significant too that the “diary” entries are undated, the year is not given, and thus the America described here is almost a platonic one before the advent of Donald Trump and the divisions he embodies and exploits. There’s still plenty of racism, sexism and class distinction, of course, but of a different order from those extant now.

At this point, it’s probably necessary to disclose that I was, in fact, one of the “other poets” on the tour, all three of whom PiO describes negatively without naming or differentiating them. It’s also worth pointing out that the poets were chosen to represent the variety of Australian poetry at the time. Hence there was a “feminist”, an “ultra-modernist”, and a (so-called) “rural conservative” with PiO as the “ethnic performance” poet.

It may have seemed a “great idea at the time” but, as PiO makes clear, things didn’t work out as planned. It’s not unfair to predict that the four poets would be at least a little “out of sympathy” with each other and might have preferred to travel with others of their own kind. PiO reveals this near the book’s beginning when he records a conversation he had with the tour organiser in which he told her who might best be chosen on any subsequent tour. He mentions several poets by name, mostly (but not all) of his own persuasion.

Approximately half of the book deals with individual Americans he met when he broke away from the group after the readings and spent time with those who came up to him saying how much they admired his work. He also describes those he encountered, at various times, walking the streets by himself.

These people are a fair, if somewhat random, selection from American society at the time. PiO’s description of his encounters with them is vivid and detailed. A reasonably typical example of his writing throughout occurs on page 189, beginning: “I saw a guy lying in the gutter, and his left leg was twitching !!! / Or spasm-ing!!! He looked dead! The crowd / then began to move in a s l o w “circle” around / the body …“

Sadly, much of the rest of The Tour is concerned with the developing conflict between PiO, the tour organiser and the “other poets”. It’s hard to see what the point of all this is. Even from his own account it’s apparent that there was some culpability on both sides.