 BiographyVivian Hopkirk Meditations of a Flawed Groom a powerful but anarchic talent |
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a
powerful
but anarchic
talent
Vivian Whiteley Hopkirk was born in Sydney. The nephew of Brett Whiteley the painter, he was educated at Christ's College, Canterbury, and Victoria University, New Zealand, he lived and studied for a decade abroad, sponsored by Cinzano in Tuscany and living as writer in residence at the Shakespeare & Company Bookshop in Paris. He returned to Australia in 1992 to write Meditations of a Flawed Groom, for which he deliberately induced a brief stay in a Sydney jail. Vivian Hopkirk was well known as a poet, publishing poems in Europe. He passed away unexpectedly on 31 May 2013.
Vivian Hopkirk recited the following poem at the Big Day Out music festival in Melbourne on 28 January 2007 as part of the John Cooper Clarke segment.
‘spring rhetoric’
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Geoff
Page, Books and
Writing, Radio National
Vivian Whiteley Hopkirk was born in Sydney. The nephew of Brett Whiteley the painter, he was educated at Christ's College, Canterbury, and Victoria University, New Zealand, he lived and studied for a decade abroad, sponsored by Cinzano in Tuscany and living as writer in residence at the Shakespeare & Company Bookshop in Paris. He returned to Australia in 1992 to write Meditations of a Flawed Groom, for which he deliberately induced a brief stay in a Sydney jail. Vivian Hopkirk was well known as a poet, publishing poems in Europe. He passed away unexpectedly on 31 May 2013.
Vivian Hopkirk recited the following poem at the Big Day Out music festival in Melbourne on 28 January 2007 as part of the John Cooper Clarke segment.
this lava packed, root-adhered
planet swings calyxed blue
glacier crammed sea-esteemed & pinnacle/geared
deep midnight, flagrant noon, vespertine gloam,
in the race of time a season, seasons burn,
infinities of systems/dialects/races/plumaged cities
& blood born, sky to the wing,
minerals deep in thought crystals sing/the amorous
bower-bird arranging its masterpiece,
& tusked boar root up shells on mountain tops:
mud elects the rose & the great azure orb
hurtles head-long spinning declining its brow
in the torque of the sun through infinite thrumming
space...
seas of atoms collaborate to an eye
light
light
light
a ton of lightning rapes the ether visions clash blood spurts
the immaculate swan drifts, immaculate, by,
an oboe cries a lover dreams his inexplicable brain
the dark sealed secret reticular mirror
& none know (the galaxies blooming perpetually apart)
none know.
glacier crammed sea-esteemed & pinnacle/geared
deep midnight, flagrant noon, vespertine gloam,
in the race of time a season, seasons burn,
infinities of systems/dialects/races/plumaged cities
& blood born, sky to the wing,
minerals deep in thought crystals sing/the amorous
bower-bird arranging its masterpiece,
& tusked boar root up shells on mountain tops:
mud elects the rose & the great azure orb
hurtles head-long spinning declining its brow
in the torque of the sun through infinite thrumming
space...
seas of atoms collaborate to an eye
light
light
light
a ton of lightning rapes the ether visions clash blood spurts
the immaculate swan drifts, immaculate, by,
an oboe cries a lover dreams his inexplicable brain
the dark sealed secret reticular mirror
& none know (the galaxies blooming perpetually apart)
none know.
‘spring rhetoric’
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