skipping over damaged area

At a time when we are bombarded by so much that screams ‘bullshit’, and global developments that may ruin our thinking, Paul Skec has pulled out a reality, an antithesis made of extraordinary poems - his dotosphere, his lessons to be one with, his actualities, his visions, make okay the way we might currently view life.

He writes with a vast intellect; then drops in the mundane facts - that we might be late to work, have dressed the kids in the wrong clothes - and find we have no damn petrol in the car. His balance between brain tests and life orders is this personal ‘owners’ manual’. In case you were floundering, it could just skip you over the damaged area with wit and flair. Life is spilling out a lot of no-go’s, nooses, pitfalls, dickheads and such and Paul Skec writes like he can see how these may bind you but also how to wriggle free.

His ‘tang’, and his ‘miniverse’ and his relationship with technology (exemplified by his personification in ‘cathode ray is dead’ where the once-functional TV is “one step from being a rather large/useless paperweight”) are to be read in the manner of an alchemic mix – a way to merge our humanity with, say, the vastness of Voyager’s exploration. After all, cathode may have died and “moved on to the realm/planet/dimension”, or back to ‘his’ dreaming, or perhaps been reincarnated by “guerrilla tv repairers”. This relationship between human qualities and our contemporary ‘tools’ is drawn even tighter in ‘hard drive failure’ – the metaphor on the brink of eliciting empathy for the inanimate object because we know it to be our first-world condition, yet it’s a beautifully subtle evocation. And the following poem ‘caution’ is a brilliant segue – this most basic technology – an iron – has been given a brain beyond necessary and is going to ‘blow’ if it doesn’t get to fulfil its function which, ironically, is a fairly unnecessary one in the scheme of life. This metaphor can be seen as both the rampant pointless updating of basic mechanisms and the rage of the human at the applications without our consent. And this section of the book extrapolates on this – “every event conspires/to separate us”, “a reality distinct/above beyond nature”. This aspect of evolution defining and subtracting from what we are/have been/ is so eloquently rendered and puts Paul and ourselves back in the driving seat just long enough to recognise where we might be going and that we still have enough agency to turn the wheel should we choose.

Why we should embrace this process via this particular artform - almost archaic in modern Australia which seems to want to exterminate art - he explains so beautifully in the outro of “Why Poetry Matters”, an apt coda in a book that already shows the workings.

So alive! is this book, so alive his intention - dipping into Hvratski, detailing suburban living and the grind of work-a-day essentials, the wonder of all beyond us in the vast universe and the minutiae of fractals. He dances us a Lacho Drom – safe journey - willing us to embrace our past, our difference, our challenges, and to be salvaged.

Paul messes form and wordcraft, biology, quantum physics, science-fiction, numbers and love offerings. His words are absolutely intentional, lived-through, artisanal, and will space you to another, life-giving order – there is a portal to wisdom and wonder and a life-gift here.

До живот

Do život! 😉

Megan Dunn

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