Clive James’s mini-epic a major flowering of ‘honest, reliable memoirs’

Clive James describes his latest work as ‘an honest poem’ that summons memories from the past in vivid and striking detail.

Author and television personality Clive James.

Clive James makes no apology for looking unusually active for a man seemingly on the verge of death for several years. Life has a way of bubbling up, especially when Eng­lish is being spoken. “It’s that kind of language,” he explained.

With publication of a new autobiographical book-length poem this week, The River in the Sky (Picador), he sees this period as “the most fruitful” of his life, even as it inevitably “speeds towards the end”.

In a candid interview with The Weekend Australian, James, 78, discussed his new poem and ­reflected on his career as a writer and broadcaster, the debt he owes to his parents, wife and daughters, and living with a lifetime ruled by regrets.

“I would probably have functioned better as a happy man, and certainly life would have been better for all those around me,” he said.

“The really tricky aspect was that I seemed happy. I had a dumb smile that created expectations. But let’s not generate too much of an air of gloom at this point. There are moments in this poem which I would like to think are genuinely amusing, or at least lighthearted.”

He described The River in the Sky as “an honest poem”, one that summons memories from the past in vivid and striking detail, with the places, people, experiences and emotions pouring out of him, ­almost effortlessly.

“The awkward fact is that I couldn’t stop,” he said. “The only explanation I can offer for this ­effect of total recall is that my brains have slipped a hinge, releasing all the information within them simultaneously. It can be awkward, believe me. There I was trying to talk about relativity and suddenly I remembered exactly what it was like when the deputy headmaster of Kogarah Intermediate High School caned me for dumb insolence.”

The new poem, characterised as a mini-epic, is written more like “ordinary speech” than “standard set forms for poetry”. It recalls a life well lived, read and travelled, and is profoundly personal. The death of his father, returning home from the war, was when his “universe fell in”. He recalls his mother with affection. The book is dedicated to his wife, Prue, while daughter Claerwen painted the cover.

“It’s a matter of time sharpening the debt,” James said.

“My parents gave me life, and this is the payback.”

He added: “Everyone contributed, including my granddaughter’s dog, who guarded my desk when I had to be at the hospital.

“My appreciation and admiration for those around me have both increased to the point where I think I owe them the best I can do … If only I had more time.”

Possessed with formidable intelligence and wit, James is one of Australia’s most famous exports. He moved to London in 1962 and reached the heights of inter­national stardom as poet, critic, ­essayist, memoirist, novelist, translator, television and radio presenter, and interviewer. In 2012, he disclosed he had terminal cancer, and has been in and out of hospital ever since.

“I’ve loved it all, but you have to believe me that the artform I most loved to practise was the tango, even though I wasn’t even an average dancer,” he said.

“It took humility to learn it, and humility was something I didn’t have enough of, so I had to find some. With poetry, incidentally, you can’t get a choice. I was told to write this poem by a shadowy figure with a gun in his hand, who turned out, upon close inspection, to be me.”

James is writing a concluding volume of Unreliable Memoirs, the first of which was published in 1980, and he judges to be the best thing he has written in book form.

“It’s going to be scrappier than any of its predecessors, because this time most of the action will consist of lying down at various angles while I reflect on life,” he said. “I’m already working on it, and I’ve found that there are jokes creeping in. I’d be crazy to tell you anything more at this stage, because really and truly I’m not sure I’ll get very far beyond helping to launch this poem.”