- Dallas Angguish
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Dallas Angguish (born Dallas John Angguish Baker on 19 February 1968) is an Australian writer and academic noted for poetry, short stories and travel writing whose work deals with themes of alienation, otherness and sexuality. Angguish, who is openly gay,[1] has also written plays and screenplays some of which have been produced. He is known for a lyrical style that foregrounds feeling and the use of powerful descriptive passages. Due to his evocative short stories, he has been variously described as Truman Capote's literary heir and as reminiscent of Carson McCullers, the much lauded Southern Gothic writer [2]. His prose poetry has appeared in the journals Text[3], Lodestar Quarterly[4], Retort Magazine[5] and Polari journal.[6] His short stories have appeared in the book anthologies "Dumped",[7] "Bend, Don't Shatter",[8]"Boys In Heat"[9] and others. His collection of memoir and travel writing "Anywhere But Here",[10] released in February 2006, received very strong reviews.[11] In particular Graeme Aitken of Australian gay magazine DNA wrote:
“Angguish was born in Toowoomba, Queensland and this collection of stories is a mix of travel tales, memoir and fiction. The first section of the book, set in America’s Deep South, confirm Angguish’s talent. The stories are highly atmospheric, off-beat and absorbing. Some have gay content, but not all of them. Local readers will be interested in the final section of stories, set in Australia with locales ranging from Byron Bay to Darling Downs. It’s refreshing to read new gay-themed Australian work that isn’t set in Melbourne or Sydney. Angguish demonstrates an enviable flair for storytelling.”[12]
In the eighties and nineties Dallas Angguish performed at many spoken word events in Australia garnering a reputation as one of Australia's most enigmatic spoken word performers. A recording of his spoken word piece "The Pugilist", set to music by composer Luke Monsour, was played on Australia's national youth radio broadcaster Triple J. Angguish's poetry is in the tradition of queer poetics initiated by Walt Whitman and consolidated by Allen Ginsberg, a tradition that foregrounds the colloquial voice, a first person, personal point of view and the expression of an erotic and mystical vision.
Angguish's work is often highly evocative and self-reflexive, as in the passage below:
I am part libertine, part priest. I have dual yearnings. On the one hand I like solitude and introspection. I am a sky-gazer whose goals are universal. I crave the freedom of simplicity. On the other hand I am drawn to the communion of skin. I yearn to abandon myself, and thereby become free, in physical delight. These two impulses have often been at odds with each other. I struggle to find a balance.[13]
Much of Dallas Angguish's poetry, written primarily to be spoken, deals with themes of eroticism, alienation and mysticism. The excerpt below, from his poem 'Embrace', is a good example:
As I walk away from your embrace I feel the cold shadow of your pupils falling on the small of my back where I have that tattoo which is an emblem against you and you fire those daggers from your eyes which embed themselves like anchors under the skin of my shoulder-blades and hook me to you with long tethers that are desire not wanting to let go, that are thin streams of poison, and when, in the night as I try to arm myself against you by whispering the long and perfect names of all of my Buddhist saints, you slip your arm under my head like a pillow and your breath comes in close to me like a breeze which has on it all the saltiness of sex and the sea...[14]
This passage illustrates Angguish's use of the Beat Generation inspired flowing stream-of-consciousness style he deployed in a series of poems that fuse the paradigms of eroticism and (Tantric Buddhist) mysticism. Angguish spent five years as a Buddhist monk and is still committed to Buddhist practice.[15] Another example from his poem 'The Tempo of Shamans' makes the fusion of these twin concerns in Angguish's work explicit:
Your rap pounds on my heart like on an animal skin drum with the deep rhythm of thunder over oceans, that are the bass clarinets of our most holy thoughts, and each consonant that leaps from your tongue is a missile of enticement that heat-seeks-out my longing for you and inflames it and as your syntax evolves into ideas I feel drunk and need to close my eyes and invoke you with my mind's eye and in that picture your rap is a ballad that has tones like wet silk and you are a fierce troubador, who holds a hard hand over my mouth to keep me quiet and listening, who chants with incessant power, words that are waves of erotic assault that bring me close to that precipice that is petit morte that is silence and the dark void, that is a window into the true nature of things, and as the blitzkrieg of your thumping voice hits me square in the chest I feel explosions of ecstacy that shake my place in space and time and whir the electrons of my being into a whizz fizz sort of a thing that is just like being a mushroom cloud of mass destruction[5]
Dallas Angguish has also written erotica. His piece 'Duffle' was published in Boys In Heat (Cleis Press) in 2008. One reviewer described Duffle thus:
"Duffle by Dallas Angguish is... a clean, simple coming-of-age story about Joey Verona, a young surfer off to college in the surfing capital of Santa Cruz. He is newly freed from living under the thumbs of his conservative parents and wrestling with an inner lust for guys – especially... his good friend Dusty, his older brother's best friend who secretly taught him how to surf (of course, they have matching drool-worthy lean surfer's muscles.).... This story has a slow build to a steamy end and is written so well that I was left wanting to read more about these two."[16]
Dallas Angguish is also a scholar in the disciplines of Creative Writing, Queer Theory and Buddhism. He has recently published papers in the scholarly journals Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique [17] and Postscripts [18]. These works are published under the name Dallas J. Baker.
External links
References
- ^ Mason, Ben. "An Angguished Moment". Qnet. http://www.qnet.org.au/content/faqs_and_articles/expressions/angguish.php. Retrieved 2007-12-24
- ^ An Angguished Moment - Qnet online community
- ^ Text: Journal of the Association of Australiasion writing Programs
- ^ Lodestar Quarterly - an online journal of the finest gay, lesbian, and queer literature
- ^ a b RetortMag.com | Volume 2 Issue #2 Dec 02 - Jan 03 - Poetry
- ^ Polari Journal - A Queer Creative Writing Journal, Issue 1
- ^ Sarah Neal, ed, Bookman Press, Melbourne 1999
- ^ Rachel and Costello, eds, Soft Skull Press, NY, 2004
- ^ Richard Labont, ed, Cleis Press, 2008
- ^ Showpony Press, Brisbane, 2006
- ^ An Angguished Moment - Qnet online community
- ^ DNA Magazine
- ^ Sleep, in Dallas Angguish, Anywhere But Here, Showpony Press, 2006.
- ^ "Embrace - Dallas Angguish". Lodestar Quarterly. http://www.lodestarquarterly.com/work/85/. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
- ^ An Angguished Moment - Qnet online community
- ^ Review by T. R. Moss, go to http://outpersonals.com/intgroups/aa309/tyadmin/acprint_admin_article.html
- ^ Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique Issue 20 December 2010
- ^ Postcripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, Volume 4 Number 3 2008
Categories:- 1968 births
- Australian short story writers
- Australian poets
- Gay writers
- LGBT writers from Australia
- Living people
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