Not to be 'enied the excitement of a birth' : the pleasures of ordinary everyday (first) experience in Peter Skrzynecki's poetry

Essay published in 'Of Human Experience: The Life and Poetry of Peter Skrzynecki'. There are many firsts that Peter Skrzynecki's speaker delights in. We are invited to consider, through the written word, his depictions of ordinary everyday pleasures and their extraordinary challenges. Moreover, we are right there with him at these firsts. Skrzynecki's speaker takes the first bite of a 'morello variety' cherry 'in the middle/of a back garden in Berlin'; he feels 'the rays of holiness/touch' him at a daughter's first communion; and experiences his '[f]irst time out"¦/beyond the Heads' with his son on a fishing trip. The voyage out of Naples at twilight in 1949 on the General R. M. Blatchford" destination: Sydney, Australia" figures as another first: many on deck, while crossing the Red Sea, 'watch a sunset/ they would never see again -'. A long-time reader of Skrzynecki's poems, I have found the representations of firsts to be the most profound examples of the speaker's cultural and personal preoccupations with redemption. Using a language of 'metaphor, symbolism, [and] imagery',2 Skrzynecki captures and records the pleasures of first moments in his fruit poems, as well as in his poems about his personal and cultural experiences as a father, husband, son and migrant. Whether it be consuming plums or cherries, witnessing a child's birth, or crossing seas on the way to various destinations (Australia, Poland or Germany), and whether these experiences couple pleasure with shame, or joy with grief, all the firsts in Skrzynecki's poems signify the moment" the immediate now" that will never come again.