Poetry
The Projectionist, A Sequence
Fremantle Press, 1983
Awards:
1984 WA Literary Award for Poetry ( now Premiers Prize for Poetry)
1984 South Australian Literary Award for Poetry – second prize
A verse novel. This book uses an un-named lyric narrator who describes life in and around a strange family by the name of Benchley. It is a tautly constructed series of portraits and narratives and lyric poems of searching, suffering and psychological metaphysics. In this collection there is much experimentation with syntax and imagery. It is tensile and alternating – between raw-to-grim and rather ecstatic. There is a religious awareness running through it, made ironic by the somewhat grotesque family presence.
Praise for The Projectionist
The strength of The Projectionist can be seen in a passage such as this from ‘Mrs Benchley’:
Of her, sound comes first, deceptive:
neat tinkling, the thin steel
bell at her goats neck
But then the cursing, chiding
words gusting on the
wind. She lurches against the hill
twisted, stumbling shape,
the goats chain
wrapped in her fist like a spine
crumbled in the womb:
hunchback.
The effect is cinematic: the empty landscape, then sound, then the distant shape becoming more clearly defined, a figure and finally, in the poem as a whole, a meaning, a significance:
Unsweet imagery that angers
and attracts me: the deformity
of her goodness.
Andrew Taylor, Australian Book Review, June 1984, no.61
There is an aura emanating from this poetry that can best be described as a form of tension. Every line is taut with the hint of impending explosion … The Projectionist is a bold book. There is both technical mastery and a fine mind to be enjoyed here. Philip Salom is one of few contemporary poets who actually has something to say.
Westerly
There is something of the vast isolation of Randolph Stow’s Western Australia behind these poems, and the poet has invented in the Benchleys a powerfully suggestive family to people the landscape … Salom has the visionary sense not just of receiving but of making.
Meanjin
The book is formidable – not so much in length as in sweep and complexity …. It is very very good.
The West Australian
Taking the guided tour through Salom’s seaside township in The Projectionist can be a frightening, almost manic experience. It is also a richly fruitful experience – a voyage of poetic discovery.
Bruce Beaver