The view from a small room

The rooms for visiting scholars at International House in Berkeley, California, might be small, but the view is grand. In the distance the majestic Golden Gate Bridge spans the milewide entrance to San Francisco Bay, inspiring profound thoughts and lofty visions. “I was on the seventh floor,” says English master Dr Harley, recalling his time there in 2008, “in a tiny little room. I could barely fit in the bed, but every morning I’d wake up and see the bridge. It was just amazing.”

The bridge wasn’t the only thing to see. Also within sight were the quirky Bay Area neighbourhoods in which many famous American writers had lived, worked and dreamt their country’s future, including the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the experimental Language poets of the 1970s. A leader among this latter group was Lyn Hejinian, a daring writer of formidable intellect, and it was she who, decades later, would invite Dr Harley to join her at the University of California, Berkeley, as a visiting scholar.

At Sydney University in the 1990s, Dr Harley had studied both music and English and was intrigued by the relationship between the two. He wrote his honours thesis on Amiri Baraka, an African American poet, playwright and civil rights activist, and subsequently took a passionate interest in the work of Nathaniel Mackey, another African American writer. “Mackey’s essay on Baraka was one of the most brilliant things I’d read,” Dr Harley says. It was also at this time that he first encountered the writings of Hejinian. “I read her work and it was just earth shattering for me. I thought, wow, this is a totally different way of thinking and writing. Here were people describing the world in ways radically different to what I’d seen before. They were trying to critique society and come up with a better world through language.”

Pictured: Dr Luke Harley with poet Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones)

Pictured in header: View of the Golden Gate Bridge from Dr Luke Harley’s International House room

A highlight came when Hejinian invited him to a poetry reading. There, standing before him, was none other than Nathaniel Mackey himself. “They say you don’t want to meet your idols,” Dr Harley recalls, “because they’re bound to disappoint you. But in the case of Lyn and Nathaniel, they did not disappoint. They were every bit as generous, thoughtful and intellectually curious as I had imagined.”

Dr Harley was able to repay Hejinian’s kind hospitality when she visited Sydney University in 2014 as keynote speaker at a poetry conference entitled “Experimental”. Dr Harley acted not only as conference organiser but as tour guide, showing Hejinian the sights of the city, including one of its most notable attractions: Sydney Grammar School. “She spoke very admiringly of the School,” Dr Harley says.

Pictured: Poetry dinner at UC Berkeley with poets Geoffrey O’Brien, Hillary Gravendyk, CS Giscombe, Amiri Baraka and Lyn Hejinian

Dr Harley remembers his university years in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a time of optimism. “We believed in the arts; we believed there’d be jobs in academia; we believed in the whole enterprise,” he recalls. “It wasn’t really questioned. We all had a passion for writing, for music.” While he acknowledges that the world feels different today, his memories of Berkeley remain a source of encouragement. For all the changes in higher education and culture, he believes there will always be people drawn to ideas, discovery and serious scholarship. “It was an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he says.

Of course, to have a large view of life – to see the Golden Gate Bridge, and perhaps even the vast Pacific beyond – you must lift your eyes, and overseas study is an excellent way of doing just that.

CLICK HERE to view Dr Harley’s essay on Lola the Interpreter on the Rain Taxi website.

Pictured: Dr Luke Harley with writer Nathaniel Mackey