Dame Mary Gilmore – activist, radical poet, literary icon and the lady on the $10 note – is the inspiration for this week’s Poet’s Corner contribution from Erica Jolly.Compiled by John Miles
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A Portrait of an Aged Poet
Dame Mary Gilmore, 1865–1962
There’s little left except that piercing look
and bony hands, white gloved with
three black lines on each claw
resting on the arm of a chair.
That strong back holds her spine straight,
very much the undaunted woman.
Not all flesh wasted. Cheeks sharp.
Eyes seem to face what is coming.
Once described as a ‘Death’s Head’.
That skinny neck, wrinkled skin.
But there is lace at the throat,
a special broach and chain.
Born in 1865. Her black gown seems
half in the nineteenth century –
almost – half in the twentieth.
This is Dame Mary Gilmore.
Her poetry speaks to humanity.
She has pursued social justice.
It is 1957. The National Gallery
purchases Dobell’s portrait.
*William Dobell’s 1957 portrait of Dame Mary Gilmore, here, is part of the Art Gallery of NSW collection.
Erica Jolly graduated from Adelaide University with honours in history and gained her Masters in English literature from Flinders University, to teach and hold curriculum positions in secondary schools for 40 years. She was the founding secretary of the SA History Teachers Association, was elected to Flinders University’s governing council and academic senate, and helped combine faculties there to increase interdisciplinary cooperation. She has also been a Flinders’ official university donor, and supported a bursary for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. She has authored five books, two on South Australian educational history, two of her poetry, and Challenging the Divide: Approaches to Science and Poetry, which was launched by science journalist and broadcaster Robyn Williams in 2010.
Analogy and allegory timeless and timely are thoughts behind this week’s Poet’s Corner contribution from Erica Jolly.Compiled by John Miles
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Revelation
Revelation on a Good Friday.
A scholar is speaking about Hebrew,
the felt power within each single word.
This time, the word is bread.
‘Man will not live by bread alone.’
In Hebrew, there is no separation.
The spirit is within the bread,
in each bite for body and soul.
Six am! I wake to possibilities.
This scholar now goes to Greek.
‘Man shall not live by bread alone’
takes on a different interpretation.
Someone or something is outside.
So, there’s separation of body from soul.
Now I am alert to where it all began,
that damnable binary divide.
Body? Temptation. Spirit? Pure.
Emotion? Female. Eve and sin.
Intellect? Separate and male.
Philosophy? Moral or natural.
This, by the time of Galileo Galilei.
I see that odious divide go deeper.
So useful for those holding power
whether in religion or in Academe.
And down to the labels in schools.
Vocation no longer seen as a calling.
In secondary schools always lesser.
And now that other separation.
Sciences? Superior. Humanities less.
I go back to bread, baked in the oven.
Body with soul in every bite whether
it is gluten free, sourdough or rye.
Erica Jolly graduated from Adelaide University with honours in history and gained her Masters in English Literature from Flinders University, to teach and hold curriculum positions in secondary schools for 40 years. She was the founding secretary of the SA History Teachers Association, was elected to Flinders University’s governing council and academic senate, and helped combine faculties there to increase interdisciplinary cooperation. She has also been a Flinders’ official university donor, and supported a student bursary for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. She has authored five books, two on South Australian educational history, two of her poetry, and Challenging the Divide: Approaches to Science and Poetry, which was launched by science journalist and broadcaster Robyn Williams in 2010.
An Adelaide Saturday Afternoon
In his maiden speech a Senator jeers.
‘Get rid of Departments of Education
and Health. Sell off our ABC.’
Here, my coffee cup empty,
swivelling in my kitchen chair,
eyes closed, head up, I am trilling.
Following Cinderella, rejoicing
in her happiness in Rossini’s opera
I am lifting my voice to the ceiling.
I share her joy-filled triumph.
With her Prince she has a future.
But part of me is cursing.
This Senator, serving his master,
would take from us our warmth
our release, our ABC Classic FM.
If he were to have his way, for us
no happy ending. We would be
left bereft beside cold ashes. Erica Jolly
Imagine such a future
Considering the collaboration
of Catherine Truman and Ian Gibbins
I now have a wheelchair.
I’m too slow. It’s too far to reach
the Economic Botany Museum.
There is this sense of urgency.
This is the last day it is open.
Friends feel my need to see it.
‘Shared Reckonings’ – its title.
We are in luck. The artist is here.
Catherine Truman, a friend of Ian’s.
Once a neuro-scientist, now poet,
video poet. ‘Floodtide’ is in Finland!
This artist works across disciplines.
They live in the world we need.
Humanity, art, science together.
I take in what Catherine is saying.
Behind each lens – an eye, a mind,
a heart – the possibility of the new
and a deeper level of understanding.
We are seeing through a magnified
drop of water on a nasturtium leaf,
the back of it, the detail of the veins.
We are taken near the optic nerve,
inside the eye. Are we close to Iris,
once the messenger of the gods?
Erica Jolly
Poem: Thinking of Michael Faraday
Books & Poetry
Poet’s Corner’s first contribution for 2021, from Erica Jolly, pays tribute to one of history’s most influential scientists.Compiled by John MilesPrint article
Thinking of Michael Faraday
while thanking Australia’s ABC
Your gentle voice is silent now
but as I search and seek to find
the source of this wonder I learn
it is in electromagnetic waves.
Without your genius,
these voices would not be here
with me today. Once called wireless,
could you foretell its worth to me
bringing me the world outside?
Voices from bedrooms, not studios,
offering me music, stories, science.
And sharp voices asking questions.
So easy, in this past year of isolation,
to feel lost to all that feeds our lives.
Despite that awful denial of support,
performers in the arts touch hearts.
They reach me on this wavelength.
Engineers, recorders and presenters
unite the sciences and humanities
in broadcasts reviving my spirits.
Editor’s note: Physicist, chemist, mathematician, inventor and internationally-awarded professor Michael Faraday (1791–1867) is considered one of the most influential scientists of history, despite having received little formal education. His experiments contributed greatly to the understanding of electromagnetism. Albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, and Ernest Rutherford called him one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time.
Erica Jolly graduated from the University of Adelaide with honours in history and gained her Masters in English Literature from Flinders University. She taught and held curriculum positions in secondary schools for 40 years, has been elected to the Flinders University Governing Council and Academic Senate, helped combine various faculties and schools there, and supported the recognition of teaching. She has authored five books, two on South Australian educational history, two of her poetry, and ‘Challenging the Divide: Approaches to Science and Poetry.’
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Poem: A kind of love
Books & Poetry
Acclaimed Italian theoretical physicist and writer Carlo Rovelli is the subject of this week’s Poet’s Corner contribution from Erica Jolly of Adelaide.Compiled by John Miles Print article
A kind of love
For Carlo Rovelli
and ‘Seven Brief Lessons on Physics’
translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre
He treats me with courtesy,
knows I am here to learn,
respects that fact
and is kind.
There’s no condescension
and no man-made chasm.
I need to feel his joy
and share his love.
Great teachers are like this.
He is careful with his pace,
rejects – more than that –
denies any cultural divide.
Translated from Italian
he brings me connections.
With Ludwig Boltzmann
will come Beethoven.
He is moving me to chance,
probability and uncertainty
but always, with humanity,
connecting me with Nature.
Finally, ‘In closing’ he speaks
of ‘Ourselves’, tells me we all
find our being in and with Nature.
Each ‘a node in the network’.
A theoretical quantum physicist,
he has brought me to the mystery. With him,
I’m in awe of the beauty at this frontier,
at the edge of the ‘ocean of the unknown’.
Erica Jolly has been a contributor to Poet’s Corner since its Independent Weekly print days. A graduate from Adelaide University with honours in history, she gained her Masters in English Literature from Flinders University. Teaching and holding curriculum positions in secondary schools for 40 years, she has been elected to the Flinders University Governing Council and Academic Senate, and helped combine various faculties and schools there. She has authored five books, two on South Australian educational history, two of her poetry, and from Adelaide’s Lythrum Press in 2010 and launched by Robyn Williams, ‘Challenging the Divide: Approaches to Science and Poetry.’
Imagine such a future
I now have a wheelchair.
I’m too slow. It’s too far to reach
the Economic Botany Museum.
There is this sense of urgency.
This is the last day it is open.
Friends feel my need to see it.
‘Shared Reckonings’ – its title.
We are in luck. The artist is here.
Catherine Truman, a friend of Ian’s.
Once a neuro-scientist, now poet,
video poet. ‘Floodtide’ is in Finland.
This artist works across disciplines.
They live in the world we need.
Humanity, art, science together.
I take in what Catherine is saying.
Behind each lens – an eye, a mind,
a heart – the possibility of the new
and a deeper level of understanding.
We are seeing through a magnified
drop of water on a nasturtium leaf,
the back of it, the detail of the veins.
We are taken near the optic nerve,
inside the eye. Are we close to Iris,
once the messenger of the gods?
So much is worthwhile for us in life.
When curiosity and creativity unite
the ego has no place in the meeting.
Erica Jolly
Considering Chinese culture in science and mathematics
Christopher Pyne, this Coalition Minister for Education 2013
sees no value in the interdisciplinary approach that makes
connections between Asian cultures
and separate subject domains.
He has established a new Colombo Plan
one where our top students will travel
enter their universities often
without their language or
feeling for their culture
just for our profit.
He sees no need, if they study in China,
for students to feel admiration for all
those inventions that came often
along the Silk Road to change
life in Europe for everyone
in navigation, books, war.
Not just the compass, printing, gunpowder.
With the abacus and shadow clock they
might have recorded a solar eclipse
in 2137 BC or BCE as it is now.
The Chinese abacus transferred
fingers to beads on a frame.
And who needs to admire curiosity
and the capacity for adaptation
the way another nation finds
to use its natural vegetation –
bamboo to make rods for
counting before 400 BCE?
What else will he leave out to
increase our general level
of ignorance as well as
arrogance in the new
national curriculum
he will establish?
Erica Jolly
Sciences and Humanities 