From the Archives,1989:Forget the bard,it’s true-blue Trevor

A book written by “Dr” John Clarke offered proof that Australian writers like Trevor Shakespeare had been plagiarised and discredited over the centuries by British and US writers.

First published inThe Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday,October 7,1989

The great Australian cultural cringe has been put to rest.

John Clarke,author of The Complete Book of Australian Verse.

John Clarke,author of The Complete Book of Australian Verse.Craig Golding

This news comes with the publication next week of a book that will,according to the author,mark a revolution in the study of international literature.

“The book puts to the sword,once and for all,the ancient and outmoded notion that poetry in the English language comes mainly from England,” says the book’s author,Dr John Clarke*.

“It doesn’t - Australia is the home of most of the world’s great poets.”

Dr Clarke claims to have established,from original documents,that Australian literary works have been plagiarised by British and US poets or passed off as the work of British or US writers.

He also says there is evidence that some of the world’s better known poems are based loosely on Australian originals.

“When you look at what has been done in the name of scholarship,you find a massive manipulation and a conscious attempt to masquerade the original works of Australians as proof of the literary status of the British Isles,” he said yesterday.

“It’s one of my devout hopes that Australians need no longer feel inferior or that their culture is not creative,or that they’re frightened of self-expression.”

Readings from the book,published by Allen&Unwin,will be broadcast on ABC Radio National next month.

Dr Clarke blames “this orchestrated program against Australia” on British academics,possibly with the help of MI5 and the CIA.

He said his revelations were the literary equivalent of winning back the Ashes on English soil.

His work,The Complete Book of Australian Verse,includes works by hitherto unheralded poets such as Rabbi Burns,Arnold Wordsworth,Warren Keats,Emmy-Lou Dickinson,Walter Burley Yeats,Kahlihliji Bran,T.S. (Tabby Serious) Eliot,Sir Don Betjeman,W.H. Auding,Louis “The Lip” MacNeice,Dylan Thompson and Sylvia Blath.

Dr Clarke said some authors were related to better-known international poets with similar names. Ewen Coleridge,a plumber from Annandale,who lived with Arnold Wordsworth,is not represented because his works,often written while he undertook one of the early methadone treatments,were lost. However,said Dr Clarke,it was probable that some of Ewen’s work appeared under the name of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,who smoked opium and wroteThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Arnold Wordsworth,now thought to have writtenDaffodils and most of the works usually attributed to William Wordsworth,is represented byLines Composed About Half-way Across the Pyrmont Bridge:

Earth has not anything to show more fair,

Soft would he be of swede,a quid unfull,

Who would willingly forgo such a view,

For lo,the sparrow breaketh of his wind,

And this entire joint looks not too foul,

Stand back,for when she goes,she bloody goes.

Dr Clarke pointed out that the works of writers like Chaucer and Shakespeare were not under challenge because white writers had been in Australia only 200 years and the blacks did not have a written culture.

Yet fragments had been found around Stratford,near Horsham,Victoria,of a work by a Trevor Shakespeare,beginning:“Would there be any point in my drawing some sort of comparison between yourself and an absolute scorcher?”

Why were Australians emerging as the world’s greatest writers?

“The depth and magnificence of Australian culture,the intelligence and imagination of Australian writing — and possibly the drink.”

Why should the Australian revolution end with poetry? What about novels and drama?

“Of course. The history of Australian theatre is littered with pieces cobbled together by lesser people like Chekhov and Ibsen and other impostors from places like Scandinavia,where nothing can be checked,and Russia. Who knows what’s going on there?

“We‘ve found this bloke called Gavin Tolstoy up in Darwin somewhere. He’s written 87 tonnes in one book alone. Four container trucks are bringing it from Darwin. It putsWar and Peace in the shade.”

*John Clarke says he completed his Ph D at Leipzig,and has worked recently in Bond University’s Department of Negative Gearing,and on his own agrarian reform project. He is also known as Fred Dagg,comedian.

Tony Stephens is a Walkley Award winning journalist,editor and author.

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