Poems by Alex Charles

Alex Charles lived and wrote in Melbourne from about 1945 to 1991, when, like so many artists and writers at that time, he succumbed to illnesses related to AIDS. An intensely private person, Alex did not seek publicity for the poems he composed and lovingly worked over.

At his death, his executor Peter Duggan and editor Robert Dalvean collated the poems and they were set up and published – but alas, the world was not ready for them. These poems are so intense, so charged with passion, that many people could be forgiven for avoiding them.

Alex’s two editors worked from drafts that may not have been final. Some were  handwritten. Others could not quite be deciphered. Regretfully, the editors had to discard some of the handwritten verses, but the ones that remain will amply repay careful reading.

Are they obscure? In one way, yes. To understand them fully we would need to know about certain events in the poet’s life that are now not recoverable. Also, there is a degree of compression in Alex’s poems that reminds one of Hart Crane, who, referring to the meandering passage of a cruise liner, used the phrase “adagios of islands”. This may be thought “obscure” until one visualises the ship and  becomes aware of the hidden metaphor in the word “adagios”.

My decision to use a blog instead of a website to present these poems to the world is purely a matter of practicality. I was already running a number of websites and did not want to add to them. There is a serio-comic website called Manfred Clootie’s Crafty Creations (www.robertdalvean.com.au) that might have been used, but that site is meant to be seriously odd and would not easily accommodate these poems. Then there is a site I maintain for the Eastern Writers Group, (www.wordsatwork.com.au) which I was going to invite Alex to join just before his illness took away his ability to write, but that site is largely reserved for the works of its fee-paying members.

Therefore, this blog.

I must mention that this collection has been published and that the original text is held by the Victorian and National libraries, and that all the poems are copyrighted, the copyright holder being Peter Duggan, Alex’s executor. Any correspondence regarding the poems or their author should be sent to robert.dalvean@gmail.com.

Now read on: