Part Three: An interview with Australian author, essayist and poet, Kathryn Pentecost

Janice: Kathryn, whilst reading your most recent publication Chiaroscuro, I've returned to your poem 'In Java' several times... It's like unfurling layers of tissue paper, only to discover the exquisite necklace to be found there is nestling on dry ice. Look but don't touch! This could burn you! 

Kathryn: 'In Java' is my very favourite poem EVER. Yes, in my case, I write with an awareness of the visual and the sensual world. Language has both these capacities i.e. the power to evoke these other sensory dimensions.

I was inspired by Honor de Balzac's fictitious journey to Java. His richly evocative language influenced my own.

Janice: Tell me more about the source of this material.

Kathryn: This poem also has a sound quality I like. It is one of the most well-crafted poems I've written. It means the most to me. Thematically, it connects west (Europe) and east (Asia)... playing on the idea of the European notions of 'Orientalism'... that the 'east' is exotic, sensual, a place of earthly temptations.

In my life, my mother (from Java) seemed to be one of the exotic creatures Balzac mentions. She was always different from everyone else in Australia... a remnant of a lost world... that is, 'lost' because she had to leave her country and assimilate in Australia, and she often tried to hide her identity. I have sought to recover it in some way, through my PhD on ancestral connections, and in my poetry... and possibly (unconsciously) in my art.

Janice: Recently I've been listening to some wonderful podcasts called Stories of ART by Dr. James Fox and art critic Alastair Sooke with a series on Vincent Van Gogh.

In July 1888, while living in Arles, Vincent wrote to his artist friend Emile Bernard about Woman in blue reading a Letter (1662-64) at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum: “Do you know a painter called Vermeer, who, for example, painted a very beautiful Dutch lady, pregnant? This strange painter’s palette is blue, lemon yellow, pearl grey, black, white. Of course, in his few paintings there are, if it comes to it, all the riches of a complete palette.”

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/04/14/van-gogh-was-an-early-admirer-of-vermeer-celestial-blues-and-yellows-i-cant-paint-as-beautifully-as-that

Interestingly enough, in relation to your own Netherlands story, the town of Delft came up in discussion; Van Gogh was highly influenced by the work of Vermeer who lived there and how his colour palette influenced Van Gogh's work, especially in his latter paintings whilst living in the French town of Arles. 

Kathryn: Java is visually rich. Also, the Netherlands. I've been to both places. Felt very at home in each. In my childhood home in Sydney, mum had wooden statues from Java, and a print of one of Vermeer’s paintings on the wall.

Van Gogh and Vermeer are favourites of mine too. I've mentioned Amsterdam and the Rijksmuseum in my upcoming novel, set mainly in Blue Mtns, called Black Mountain. One character in my novel is called 'Joe Vermeer'.

I like to link the visual arts, poetry, philosophy etc. in my work. In an odd way, my poetry, visual art, and novel, have common elements. In both my writing and visual art, the physical dimension of life, and the notion of life and death, are dominant themes. The idea that you can only live fully, if you are aware of your own mortality is a powerful one... and a driver of creativity (I've read).

It is said in our family that we are related to a painter from the 1600s: the Dutch artist Egbert van der Poel, famous for his depictions of the city of Delft after a fire. I am thrilled to think that all these centuries later, I am returning to a craft of my ancestors… though I haven’t been able to find any poets, Mathieu van der Poel’s champion cycling has been described as ‘poetry in motion’, and Jonas van der Poel is, I discover, an academic focusing on poetry, linguistics and aesthetics. The legend goes that ‘all the van der Poels’ in the world are connected. I hope so.

It is also said that the 'van der Poels' are connected in the past to Dutch royalty; to Javanese royalty, and oddly, perhaps, the fledgling independence movement in the early 20th century. So, our ‘mob’ were involved in the big transitions in Indonesian political, economic, and social life. 

As far as the poem ‘In Java’ goes, it captures a European idea of what the ‘east’ means to those who are simply observers; not participants in the culture. It also pays homage to Balzac’s idea of an imagined journey; and imagined journeys are the stuff of creativity itself in all its forms: poetry and the visual arts, in my case.

In Java

From Paris to Java, Honore de Balzac 

travelled in his imagination,

Like an Orientalist chapter of Le Comédie

humaine,

He coloured his world with the poetry of 

memory (or fantasy),

Painting word pictures of Javanese women 

who were so tempestuous

That to ignore their longings was akin 

To being cast out of The Garden of Eden and

into Hell.

‘No country is as delicious as the island of

Java,’ he said, (on vis dur et meurs jeune),

While boredom and the smell of stale

Bordeaux linger in the air.

In Java, death stalks your every move, but

you live with passion.

The jungle is dangerous: full of poisonous

plants and exotic creatures.

Men carry daggers and behind their gaze is a

violence that even tigers fear.

In Java, your senses are alight, and you are

willing to risk everything

To taste the delights of tea and women.

The allure of the land is alive in volcanic

hills,

Where flowers, birds, the light, the air all

vibrate,

And gamelan players in the temples of

princes

Keep time while you stroke the silken skin of

your nyai (mistress).

.

In Java, the place itself is an opiate for the

soul,

And nobody is safe from descending into

dreams so vivid,

So reckless, that you would rather die on a

hillside in Tosari,

And not return to Paris and all your friends

and old acquaintances

Who are still sitting in cafés on the banks of

the Seine,

Debating questions of philosophy and

pinching pretty waitresses.

In Java, ecstasy is an eternal state for those

lured into love,

Where the days are long and the nights too

sweet to escape

The cosmic dance of lust where life pulsates

Like a happy hummingbird in a place of

eternal spring.

In Java, you will yield to all the pleasures of

the flesh,

And never find the strength to break away

from her intense embrace.

From:  Chiaroscuro (2026, pp 22 - 24) KP van de Poel 

(aka Dr Kathryn Pentecost)