Hay Fever by A D Hope

I feel like I should have posted this already, but you know what I'm sick of, people praising the same poets. It seems like no one except poets and a few nieche readers understand how far and wide poetry is. For me what I adore about poetry is exploring secret places, but not only that as my tutor Martin Harrison said in Poetry Workshop poems should be about play as well.

Playing with the dark stuff, whipping out hillarious puns (well ocaisionally), playing with the rules of language, playing with the supposed structures of poetry, challenging yourself and challenging the reader. To me these are all ways of playing, but I also like poems that are vivid, but not in an old school sort of bush poet way. That's what I loved about A D Hope's poetry, he's an Aussie like me and honestly, he is an amazing poet. What do I like so much about his poetry, not only does he gravitate between more sprawling structures and tighter stanza fare, which I think is always an important.

He's got a real honesty and there are secrets to be found in his poems. The stupid secrets of his childhood, memory and heart. Honestly if a poem isn't capturing something powerfully and wonderfully human, I'll admit, I want to glaze over a bit, which is probably whyI roll my eyes at the idea of bush poetry, but anyone reading this feel free to post a rebuttle...I'll admit it's harsh, but a poem needs to explore something personal and raw I think for it to effect me.

That's why increasingly, I've moved back out of an odd experimental phase and back into realising that exploring one's humanity is much more than being emo and I think that's what this poem does so well. To me Hay Fever is a mixture of nostalgia and secrets and warmth and maybe just because I finished up itchy, there's something sticky and sexual in there too (hey I'm a guy so help me).

So it's my pleasure to show who I consider to be one of the less mainstream, but awesome Modern Australian Poets. Anyway without further ado here is Hay Fever by A D Hope. As the internet is acting all annoying on me, I'll have to give you a scanned copy of the poem. Anyway, expect some more A D Hope coming soon.

 P.S There's also another intriguing layer to this poem and it's something I actually wrote an extended essay on...but I'll leave that for another post. Enjoy!