Jeltje
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Jeltje Fanoy (jeltje) aims to
energise everyday spoken language through explorations of syntax
and underlying rhythms of speech. She calls herself a ‘minimalist
traveller’ in her poetry, crafting everyday spoken language
into collage-like pieces marked by an apparent simplicity and emphatic
directness. Her journey has been from sound recording and film editing,
to producing interview programs with soundscapes, to radio studio
work with sound effects, to writing, performing and publishing poetry
for performance. She remains insistent about both the importance
of live performance and possibilities of how performative work can
be reproduced, in evocative ways, on the page. She has been involved
with poetry small presses since the seventies, and is a founding
member of collective effort press and Melbourne Poets Union. She
has been published nationally and internationally, and has performed
at the Melbourne Writers Festival, Melbourne International Arts
Festival, Perth Poetry Festival, Literaturfestival Berlin (Authors
for Peace) and Krikri Polypoetry Festival in Ghent (Belgium). Since
the early 1990s Jeltje has been working on collaborations with poets
and performance artists, including various performance projects
and recordings with the improvising group UQ and the music and poetry
outfit “jeltje & friends”. Jeltje Fanoy was a convenor
of poetry performances at La Mama Poetica from 2004 until 2010.
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jeltje performs and records collaborations
of poetry and musical improvisations (“polypoetry”)
in publications by F..tloose
In
the foreground
(CD 2020)
Featuring poetry and music by “jeltje & friends” based on
poems from the chapbooks “My mother and the cat” (MPU, 2020)
and “oh yes, and the emergency button” (ftloose, 2019). The
musicians on this CD are Sjaak de Jong (guitar/vocals), Graham Twist (bass),
Rob George (drums), Robert Calvert (tenor saxophone) and Harry Williamson
(keyboards).
Flying into the Hands of Strangers
(CD accompanying poetry collection, 2018)
Poetry and music based on poems from the collection “Flying
into the hands of strangers” mirroring a growing despair at the disappearing
natural world. The musicians in these collaborations of “jeltje &
friends” are Sjaak de Jong (guitar, bass), Graham Twist (bass), Robert
Calvert (soprano saxophone), Harry Williamson (six string acoustic guitar,
bass, drum program), Chris Young (flute, clarinet, bass clarinet) and Robert
George (drums), as well as the improvising group UQ (Sjaak de Jong, Mark
Lewis, Anna Fern, Eliane Montreux, Polly Christie, Edgar Loutit and Yasmine
Shoobridge).
Dreaming in English
(CD, 2005)
These poetry and music collaborations were conceived as part of a project
producing poetry for Peace. Performed and recorded during the initial period
of the conflict in Iraq, these poems were written especially for improvised
studio sessions at Spring Studios, featuring Jeltje’s poetry and music
composed by Harry Williamson. They have a dreamlike quality, moving freely
backwards and forwards in time.
Poetry
live in the House
(CD accompanying collection, 2004)
This CD of poetry and music collaborations forms part of a personalised
response to post-colonial feminist thought in the collection “Poetry live
in the house”. The improvising musicians include Robert Calvert and Sjaak
de Jong, as well as the improvising group UQ (Sjaak de Jong, Mark Lewis and
Anna Fern). Improvising musician Harry Williamson also makes an appearance,
playing guitar and synthesizer.
Dark
into light
(CD, 1996)
They called it a ‘synergetic coming-together’, a soundscape of Jeltje’s
poetry and Robert Calvert’s and Sjaak de Jong’s musical improvisations:
“It’s the city, it’s the city parks, it’s Europe and
Australia, and constantly evolving.” Jeltje saw these collaborations as
an invaluable opportunity to explore her own rhythms of speech, how much her
exposure to Jazz and Rock (especially in formative years) had actually influenced
the rhythms and structures of her poetry. As well as “3-minute”
pieces, there are compositions based on snatches of dialogue, and abstract sound
pieces which are hard to define, a bit like concrete poems put to music.
Publishing ventures:
Jeltje has edited the poetry anthologies “Blowing
out the Candles/voices from the 1988 anti-bicentenary movement” (collective
effort press, 1989) and “925 workers poetry form Australia
1978-1983” (collective effort press, 2000). She has also edited and
produced the compilation CDs “Poetry
for Peace” (2003) and “Heart
to Heart/Reconcilation Poetry at La Mama Poetica 2004-2007” (2008),
as well as edited and produced Jas H Duke’s CD accompanying the anthology
“poems of life and death” (collective effort press, 2003). She also
edited the poetry magazine “Migrant 7” (collective effort press,
1983-1987), and in 2005 translated from the Dutch Arjen Duinker’s “De
Zon en de Wereld” (“The
Sun and the World”), ftloose/ collective effort press).
Collections:
Jeltje Fanoy has been published in six collections
of poetry: “Living in Aboriginal
Australia” (collective effort press, 1988); “Catching
Worms” (collective effort press, 1993); “Poetry
live in the house”, book and CD (ftloose productions and collective
effort press, 2004); “Princes by night”
(Island Press Cooperative, 2015); “Flying into the
hands of strangers”, book and CD (collective effort press/ ftloose
productions, 2018) and “My
Mother and the Cat ” (MPU chapbook, 2020).
She also published the chapbooks “Heart
to Heart” (ftloose productions, 2019) and “oh
yes, and the emergency button!” (ftloose productions, 2019), for performance
at the Citizens Circus.
What has been said about her poetry:
“Reductive, certainly, but kinda nice”
Kerry Leves
“jeltje is one of the greats of Melbourne’s
performance poetry and workers’ poetry scene” Mike Ladd
“Forceful, unpredictable and playful, truly
Australian, referencing the post war migrant experience, connecting to current
asylum seeker policy and what it is to live in Melbourne today.” Anna
Couani
“Poetry that is never separate from a consciousness
of language as sound, as utterance, as brought forward by the breath, by the
sensate body. This, along with the mastery in lineation, lends a timelessness
and tenderness to the political statement.” Claire Gaskin
“Melbourne and its windy skies, its beaches
and its homeless, are the backdrop and also participants in Jeltje Fanoy’s
interrogations of her life and memories as an immigrant and an artist. The poems
are sharp and experimental, but also gentle and accessible” Ali Alizadeh
“jeltje’s poetry resonates with sound
at the line between poetry and story. She locates exchanges of history in moments
of home, held by the poems like fragile heirlooms that link to each other and
travel together, cover to cover.” Kerry Loughry
“Jeltje traces voices and images thru
innumerable twists and turns, and collapses of language, and comes out with
a different moon – a different landscape, grammar, vocabulary –
a great achievement.” (Pio)
“Jeltje’s poetry continues to offer
the microscopic to widen our socio-political thinking.” Angela Costi
“Poems with political resonances, but
they are also playful. They would make a wonderful resource in schools because
of their different forms and poetic method, it would send the message that poems
are about real life. A serious message embedded in joyful existence. Read and
listen to her poems.” Susan Hawthorne
Click
here for an Interview of jeltje with Ela Fornalska (on 3CR,Spoken
Word)