Selatan—Sur—South

This collection of poems explores the notion of the ‘south’ from locations in Indonesia, Australia, Chile and Argentina, locations in which the poems were written. Explaining his topographical approach in these poems, Campbell says:

“One of the poems, titled in the Indonesian original ‘Lejano sur’ (Ke Kejauhan Selatan), appears alongside an English version, called ‘Further South.’ This short poem takes Borges’s short story ‘Sur’ and a reference to Avenida Rivadavia that he includes in ‘Sur’ as its starting point for crossing into ‘the South’ from the centre of Buenos Aires. I then explore ideas of southness – as paradoxically moving ‘south’ away from North into a region where ‘the natural elements are supreme’. Recent Chilean poetry eg ‘Despedidas Antárticas’ by Julio Carrasco (2006) picks up this idea of ‘towards the essence’ better than recent Australian poetry. Only Tom Griffiths, the historian, has recently explored this in prose. There are Borgesian images of dust/lack of clarity, then we head into a region where eg Torre del Paine, admittedly on the Chilean side of the Andes, come to mind. The stress on the elements – stone, wind, fire – is an allusion to the way Indonesian poet, Acep Zamzam Noor, portrays these elements in a poem ‘Batu dan Angin’ (Stone and Wind) which has strong sufi/meditative elements. We head into the polar area, which because of climate change, is now melting. But there is also an allusion to Douglas Stewart’s play ‘Fire on the Snow’ about the 1911 Scott expedition and the value of ‘human failure’. Even the ‘essence’ is melting and is no longer stable.”