Comment from Ellis Campbell - Writing Fellow, NSW Fellowship of Australian Writers
From the Foreword to 'For All We Are'
I am always slightly bemused when some over-enthusiastic poetry competition organiser writes, “We are searching for the next Banjo Paterson”, or, “the next Henry Lawson”. Without detracting from the greatness of the Old Masters in any way, I think that day has arrived. I sincerely believe that Australia has more great Australian Traditional poets today than in any other era of our country’s history. Poets like Veronica Weal, Bruce Simpson and Ron Stevens have set a standard that a fair number of others have grasped and successfully maintained. Over the last two decades there has been a dramatic rise in the popularity of Performance Poetry, which undoubtedly played a huge part in the revival of Bush Poetry. Here again performance poets like Marco Gliori and the late Bobby Miller have set a standard for others to follow.
In all sports or arts there are under-rated performers – people who are right up with the best yet somehow miss the accolades to many of their peers. I believe Brian Beesley is one of those. Brian is a wonderful poet. While perhaps not producing the volume of some others, the quality of his work is beyond question. His rhyme and metre verge on being flawless, he chooses interesting subjects and writes in a free flowing style, which is easy to read and understand. He writes with a “tongue in cheek” type of humour and is not afraid to express his views on contentious issues. Brian does this forcefully and thoughtfully – not with the fierce aggression employed by some poets to gain their impact. He is fiercely patriotic. Love of country shine through many of Brian’s poems.
Brian is a great researcher and his historical poems are painstakingly factual. He has evinced much interest in Gilgandra and history of the Coo-ee March and written some wonderful poems on this subject.
I judged the Coo-ee Festival poetry competition for two years and Brian won the “Coo-ee-March” section on both occasions. Such was the quality of these poems that I also awarded the trophy for Best Poem over the four sections to these winners on each occasion.
Yet blood red roses cannot tell us what the fallen saw,
of squalor in the trenches and the carnage in this war.
Those men have lost their freedom out of all of what’s been done –
the world has lost its innocence and I have lost a son.
A stanza from ‘Dear Captain Holman’, one of the poems referred to above.
The trenches are all overgrown; the battle noise has died
but still the women wait and weep just like our mothers cried.
They did say that our war would be the war to end all wars
and yet the sons of our sons fall again on foreign shores.
A stanza from ‘Conscripted Coo-ee’, in memory of Private Michael J. Noonan, C Coy 4 RAR. Killed in action, South Vietnam, 13th September, 1968. This was another of Brian’s “Coo-ee Trophy” winning poems from the Gilgandra Coo-ee Festival competition.
In the following stanzas, taken from 'For All We Are', Brian empathises that we are a multi-racial country and voices his scepticism re the Republican debate.
He’s a forman out of Britain; he’s a son of Italy;
he’s a pratie famined Irishman, an Asian refugee.
He’s an exile from a red-flagged state of bourgeois pedigree –
he’s a Chinese cook from Ballarat; an Aborigine.
She’s the mother of an Anzac; she is Lawson’s drover’s wife –
she has fled the bombed out remnants of some European strife.
She arranges work and family to keep her children safe;
she is learning business management, three nights a week at TAFE.
Apart from Gilgandra, Brian has had some very good competition wins elsewhere. The Henry Lawson Soc. of NSW at Gulgong, the Bush Lantern at Bundaberg, the Henry Lawson Festival of Arts at Grenfell and the Larrikin Award for Humorous Verse at Corryong are some that come readily to mind. I believe Brian sits very comfortably among the top ten traditional poets in Australia today.
Brian and Kathy Beesley recently moved from Sydney to Oberon, where they bought a hobby farm and built a new home. They are a loving, caring couple who have adapted well to country life. Oberon is the richer for gaining such citizens.
If you are a lover of Bush Verse or Traditional Australian poetry, buy a copy of 'For All We Are'. You will find little that disappoints you.
Ellis Campbell
Writing Fellow – NSW Fellowship of Australian Writers.
I am always slightly bemused when some over-enthusiastic poetry competition organiser writes, “We are searching for the next Banjo Paterson”, or, “the next Henry Lawson”. Without detracting from the greatness of the Old Masters in any way, I think that day has arrived. I sincerely believe that Australia has more great Australian Traditional poets today than in any other era of our country’s history. Poets like Veronica Weal, Bruce Simpson and Ron Stevens have set a standard that a fair number of others have grasped and successfully maintained. Over the last two decades there has been a dramatic rise in the popularity of Performance Poetry, which undoubtedly played a huge part in the revival of Bush Poetry. Here again performance poets like Marco Gliori and the late Bobby Miller have set a standard for others to follow.
In all sports or arts there are under-rated performers – people who are right up with the best yet somehow miss the accolades to many of their peers. I believe Brian Beesley is one of those. Brian is a wonderful poet. While perhaps not producing the volume of some others, the quality of his work is beyond question. His rhyme and metre verge on being flawless, he chooses interesting subjects and writes in a free flowing style, which is easy to read and understand. He writes with a “tongue in cheek” type of humour and is not afraid to express his views on contentious issues. Brian does this forcefully and thoughtfully – not with the fierce aggression employed by some poets to gain their impact. He is fiercely patriotic. Love of country shine through many of Brian’s poems.
Brian is a great researcher and his historical poems are painstakingly factual. He has evinced much interest in Gilgandra and history of the Coo-ee March and written some wonderful poems on this subject.
I judged the Coo-ee Festival poetry competition for two years and Brian won the “Coo-ee-March” section on both occasions. Such was the quality of these poems that I also awarded the trophy for Best Poem over the four sections to these winners on each occasion.
Yet blood red roses cannot tell us what the fallen saw,
of squalor in the trenches and the carnage in this war.
Those men have lost their freedom out of all of what’s been done –
the world has lost its innocence and I have lost a son.
A stanza from ‘Dear Captain Holman’, one of the poems referred to above.
The trenches are all overgrown; the battle noise has died
but still the women wait and weep just like our mothers cried.
They did say that our war would be the war to end all wars
and yet the sons of our sons fall again on foreign shores.
A stanza from ‘Conscripted Coo-ee’, in memory of Private Michael J. Noonan, C Coy 4 RAR. Killed in action, South Vietnam, 13th September, 1968. This was another of Brian’s “Coo-ee Trophy” winning poems from the Gilgandra Coo-ee Festival competition.
In the following stanzas, taken from 'For All We Are', Brian empathises that we are a multi-racial country and voices his scepticism re the Republican debate.
He’s a forman out of Britain; he’s a son of Italy;
he’s a pratie famined Irishman, an Asian refugee.
He’s an exile from a red-flagged state of bourgeois pedigree –
he’s a Chinese cook from Ballarat; an Aborigine.
She’s the mother of an Anzac; she is Lawson’s drover’s wife –
she has fled the bombed out remnants of some European strife.
She arranges work and family to keep her children safe;
she is learning business management, three nights a week at TAFE.
Apart from Gilgandra, Brian has had some very good competition wins elsewhere. The Henry Lawson Soc. of NSW at Gulgong, the Bush Lantern at Bundaberg, the Henry Lawson Festival of Arts at Grenfell and the Larrikin Award for Humorous Verse at Corryong are some that come readily to mind. I believe Brian sits very comfortably among the top ten traditional poets in Australia today.
Brian and Kathy Beesley recently moved from Sydney to Oberon, where they bought a hobby farm and built a new home. They are a loving, caring couple who have adapted well to country life. Oberon is the richer for gaining such citizens.
If you are a lover of Bush Verse or Traditional Australian poetry, buy a copy of 'For All We Are'. You will find little that disappoints you.
Ellis Campbell
Writing Fellow – NSW Fellowship of Australian Writers.
