The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt
“It’s all silence now – the profound silence
which makes all other silences loud –
yet in the caesurae of days, I hear you listening.”
~ Terminal Lucidity
Winner of the 2023 Stella Prize, The Jaguar is the third poetry collection from contemporary Australian poet, critic, and academic Sarah Holland-Batt. The collection is divided into four parts, each tied together by Holland-Batt’s experience of processing the grief of losing her father to Parkinson’s.
The first part of the collection deals exclusively with her father’s illness and death, delivering heartfelt prose that highlights the challenges of accepting and caring for someone with a terminal illness. In ‘My Father as a Giant Koi,’ Holland-Batt likens the unravelling of her father's mind to a koi sinking into the depths:
He has been down there for years –
ancient god of the dark, keeper of the single
koan, moving in currents only he can sense,
fluent as a windsock.
The second poem in the collection, ‘The Gift,’ brought me to tears with its revelation that death when it arrives after a lengthy illness, can be a gift, but it is one that never leaves us:
First my father holding it up to his ear and shaking it,
then me helping him peel back the paper,
the weight of his death knocking,
and once the box is unwrapped it will be mine,
I will carry the gift of his death endlessly,
every day I will know it opening in me.
Her father’s passing was a highly emotionally charged experience, not least for the neglect and abuse he experienced while in care and the advocacy around these issues Holland-batt has been involved in since. While this emotional intensity is present in many of the poems, Holland-Batt is balanced in her remembering, offering us a highly human but not overly sentimentalised version of the man she clearly adored.
The titular poem ‘The Jaguar’ appears in the second part of the collection and recalls her father purchasing his dream car - an emerald green vintage 1980 XJ Jaguar - shortly after his initial diagnosis. Health already failing, he drives it recklessly, making modifications that ultimately lead to the car's demise:
Finally his modifications
killed it, the car he had always wanted and waited
so long to buy, and it sat like a carcass
in the garage, like a headstone, like a coffin –
but it’s no symbol or metaphor. I can’t make anything of it.
But, of course, there is a lot of significant symbolism in the car. In other poems, Holland-Batt writes about the changes in her father's brain and, in ‘Neurostimulator,’ recounts the implantation of a Deep Brain Stimulator device. It’s hard not to draw comparisons; her father tinkering away with the car until it can no longer be driven, just as doctors tinker away with him.
Part three of the collection moves away from death and grief and explores themes of sex, love and relationships through fifteen poems. This part of the collection is filled with strong visuals and evokes a powerful sense of place:
Bring me lemons and mint, a pitcher’s fishbowl
loaded with ice and slices of cucumber
A Tom Collins in a tumbler, the fizz of it.
Give me sulphur summer geat, tarry sidewalk
~ ‘Instructions for a Lover’
Many of these poems seem to be based on the poet's own life and experiences, offering insights into the definitive lines that are often drawn between partners - exiting and exited - from each other. In ‘The Proposal,’ one of my favourites, Holland-Batt writes of turning down a marriage proposal, and I like the claiming back of self she takes in the face of her lover's unhappiness at not getting what he wants:
You’re so hard, he told me. He said it
like an indictment, as if presenting proof
of something I did not know –
but I already knew and I did not rise
to object because I praise whatever it is
in me that is stony and unbending
In Mayan mythology, the jaguar also represents strength, ferocity and courage, three things that must not be forgotten in the face of grief. Holland-Batt’s prose speaks to these three traits in subtle ways, and the final piece, ‘In My Father’s Country’ (also the lengthiest), is a tight drawing together of the journey we’ve been taken on through the collection, impeccably summarising the endurance of her father’s life and death:
Still, I look in every skirled pane
for proof of you, a lilt, a laugh
a coat on a hook holding
the shape of an arm.
The Jaguar is an immensely beautiful collection with the right blend of raw emotion and introspection. Despite Holland-Batt advising they were very difficult to write, the poems are filled with a timeless, effortless quality that makes them a thrilling, if at times heartbreaking, reading experience.
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com.
