“Dinner by the River” and “Driving to the Airport”: Andrew Taylor’s Polish Ash Poems and Jacques Derrida’s Cinder

• Main Author: Ryszard W. Wolny
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of English Studies 2019-05-01
• Series: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Online Access: http://www.anglica.ia.uw.edu.pl/images/pdf/28-3-SI-articles/Anglica-28-3-11-Wolny.pdf

Andrew Taylor (b. 1940), one of the most eminent living Australian poets, has had a lasting relationship with Poland and Opole in particular. As a result of one of his several visits to Opole, he wrote two poems, “Dinner by the River,” which was later included in the volume edited by Peter Rose The Best Australian Poems 2008 (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2008), and “Driving to the Airport,” which appeared in The Unhaunting (London: Salt, 2009). Both poems were originally included in the volume Australia: Identity, Memory and Destiny (ed. Wolny and Nicieja, Opole 2008). The aim of this paper is, therefore, to explore the image of Poland, and the Odra River in particular, the Australian poet has created, alongside the memories of the past his visit to Poland evoked. The elements that unite the Polish poems are the ones connected with coal, soot, fi re, ashes, embers and what Jacques Derrida called cendre (cinder) in one of his most important books, Feu la cendre [Cinders] (Minneapolis, London 2014).