Lately, I seem to write a lot about ageing and old age. It makes me wonder if I’ve exhausted my earlier life as a source of ideas or whether, indeed, old age brings the focus home to the body in ways that others might only experience during illness. Old age may not be a sickness, but it is the gradual breakdown of one’s body, which increasingly demands more attention and time. It certainly brings focus into the now.
I realise old age is unromantic, often unattractive and, for some, a taboo subject like death; something they’d prefer to avoid. So, rather than rabbit on, today I’ve decided to post six of my most recent poems on some of the awkward truths of old age without comment. Make of them what you will.
Six Poems for your Consideration and Entertainment
It tickles me to write about being old. At times, I suspect people may find my interests a bit odd or of no interest whatsoever to anybody under the age of 50, 60, or even 70, when bodies are still relatively intact. But if I don’t talk about the last bit of life, who will? For what it’s worth, here are my contributions for today.
To me, stories come from the sandpit of life. When you dig your hands in, sift grains through your fingers, fleeting images and ideas appear. You try to grasp these ephemeral moments with words that may at first be inchoate. Yet your mind soon flashes with what feels like brilliance, and off you go with a story. Capturing these flashes is more complicated than it seems, but oh! what fun trying.
Sometimes, a story comes to you complete, and you quickly write or record its bones as though you are channelling. It is not yet literature, but it is the germ from which a poem or novel might grow. Unwritten ideas can dissipate fast, so it’s worth hanging onto them. I tend to record my flashes of brilliance (as they initially seem) on my iPhone when driving or those times when I wake at night. It scares me a bit to hear my sleep-ridden, old woman’s voice, but my clever Voice Memo app allows me to later save what I caught in print without having to type it up.
Ideas and Stories
I can’t remember for the life of me (sic) why I chose to write anything resembling a memoir, but my work in progress, entitled Call Me Marigold, is a novella-length piece I’m calling autofiction until someone corrects me. The only way I could think of to tackle this material was to unsettle the protagonist as a posthumous narrator, an 81-year-old woman who could not rest in death until she understood life.
As I so often do on Wattletales, I decided to write from experience about the changes that take place between childhood and old age, using my life as an example. In other words, I wanted to explore the arc of life, similar to that depicted in the following poem, to ask what it really means to grow, age and die. We can’t know death, of course, but old age is a unique journey to consider anyway, as we move from the inside out. Or, as time goes on, outside in.
The Prologue
In the novella, Marigold (clearly not her real name) is a somewhat unreliable narrator stuck in a liminal space between life and the everafter with nothing more than memories. The story unfolds as a series of vignettes, texts and poems. Marigold refuses to name her characters. In her view, she is telling her story, so others are included only by role in relation to her. This is important because although she speaks of the joy of having children, she does not want to talk about them. After all, as she tells us, their lives are not hers to discuss.
Here is an excerpt from Marigold’s Prologue.
The most significant other character in this tale is Marigold’s mother, to whom she speaks in an italicised throughline called Conversations with Mother.
As a Writer
There is no doubt that writing from one’s life while alive is no easy task. When writing close to the bone, finding the words and purpose of each story you tell takes you deeper into your emotions. Strangely enough, this teaches you what you have forgiven and what you still need to let go of. Writing intimately about your past is a bit like time travel; it takes you there, often with intense emotional impact.
Although I’m nearing the end of the first draft of Call Me Marigold, when I got bogged down a while ago, I decided to start a new novel for respite. Sometimes, letting one story rest for a while is refreshing.
Something New
My imaginary sandpit occasionally yields the oddest things for poems and stories. Still, my writing in general tends to explore ways in which we fall through the cracks. Under the heading Questions Over Coffee in my introduction to Wattletales, I ask what it means to become broke, mad, ill, destitute, deserted, disillusioned, or denounced. What happens to our sense of self and our identity when life wreaks havoc with our intentions, plans and happiness? How porous is our mind? Is there really a line between sanity and insanity, and how do we know when we tip over the edge?
In that vein, the first idea for a new novel was to write about gaslighting in marriage. My two previous books, The Publican’s Daughterand They Who Nicked the Sun, lived in me as ideas for years before coming to be on the page. Why, then, when I was seeking respite from the emotional drag of writing Marigold, did gaslighting come up?
Gaslighting
Part of me feels that the notion of gaslighting has haunted me ever since I watched the 1944 movie, Gaslight, with Ingrid Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 Dial M for Murder with Grace Kelly. I have no idea when I did that, but the portrayal of gaslighting by both actresses whom I admired and adored remains clear in my mind to this day. Another part of me knows the idea came from being raised on the idea ‘what will other people think’ which inclines one to disbelieve in oneself, and my first marriage, bearing in mind my husband was 13 years older than me at 17.
Nine Banksia Street
My gaslighting book’s working title is Nine Banksia Street. The main characters appeared in my mind simultaneously with the basic story concept, which came to me in a sandpit rush, pretty much word for word, as below. The story entices but remains unwritten for the time being.
The Latest from Lindy’s Sandpit
I was talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago, asking why I tend to focus on misery in my writing. When I suggested I might write something humorous about old age, she agreed.
One title that emerged from my sandpit years ago is The Grizzle and Giggle Club, which I’ve had in mind since middle age, when my women friends and I used to feel better after a grizzle and giggle together. But the more I think about it now, I’d rather use something like The Secrets Old Girls Take to Their Grave.
After several recent conversations with age-mates while waiting to see doctors and specialists, and in the Manson Towers Retirement Village, I’ve learned that we all have experiences that most of us would prefer to keep to ourselves. When I finish Call Me Marigold, it may come down to a toss-up between this idea and gaslighting.
This post is a slightly modified excerpt (in other words, a ripoff) from my work-in-progress, Call Me Marigold, a novella-length piece of autofiction. I’ve chosen from a section called My Six Buddhas and Three Husbands. While I may refer to husbands indirectly here, details will not be revealed until the book’s publication. However, I leave the references in because they indicate that husbands are treated in that book (in a literary sense) somewhat like ornaments, albeit with a modicum of respect.
I’m talking about ornaments because our ornaments refract time, memories and emotion. Our favourites satisfy us for years, if not a lifetime. While my Buddha figurines and statues are not my only ornaments, I have decided to discuss them primarily because they collectively create a presence or aura in my living space.
My Six Buddhas
By the time I moved into my retirement village with the mass murderer’s name (Manson Towers), I only had six Buddha statues. I donated a large brass sitting Buddha, similar to the one pictured above, which was important for teaching meditation in my post-retirement days, to a Cambodian Buddhist monk, Bhante Ly, who was a dear friend. He blessed my eldest son’s ashes before we spread them at Aldinga Bay.
A small, transparent resin statue pictured later, given to me by the head monk of Adelaide’s Sri Lankan Buddhist Vihara, found a new home with my youngest son.
My First Buddha Statue
My first Buddha statue, shown in the lead photo of this post, entered my life half a lifetime ago, when I was in my early forties. I bought it in Chinatown while in Sydney to attend my first academic conference as a postgraduate. (My paper entitled ‘The Booze, the Bouncer and Adolescence Down Under’ (1994) was accepted immediately for publication and is still often accessed.)
Looking back, I fell in love with it, not because it sort of reminded me of my second husband’s desertion, but because this rotund Chinese laughing Buddha in blue robes has five little children crawling all over his bare shoulders, a profound symbol of the love and joy I felt for my three young children. At the time, I had not discovered Buddhism; my choice was both aesthetic and emotional.
Place is Important
The place of purchase carries more significance. I found the blue Buddha near Paddy’s Markets, where I worked when I was about 18, after the first of my three failed marriages ended. I found a job there with Pardy Providors as a stenographer and cord-and-plug telephone console operator. My boss was a tall, well-statured man who constantly hitched his brown trousers at the crotch. Being in my late teens, I had to stifle the urge to giggle at this unfortunate habit.
Still, I never mocked, as he was a kindly soul who looked after me when I had a telephone flirtation on the console with a supply officer from Ingleburn Army Camp, a WWII, purpose-built training centre that was wound down in the mid-1990s. I don’t recall his name, but we flirted when he called to place an order. The soldier finally persuaded me to meet him, until my darling boss saved me by telling me the guy was married with two little ones.
I was going to suggest we meet at The Broadway Hotel on George Street, where I worked a second job as a barmaid at night. Being a publican’s daughter had its benefits for much of my life; I could always get a pub job for extra money. In Sydney at the time, I first lived with my aunt, my father’s sister, in North Ryde, which was then considered the countryside. We had an outhouse and a dunny can.
Much as I loved my aunt, I disliked going to the loo on cold or wet nights with spiders and newspaper for toilet paper, or travelling to work and back each day, which entailed long, hilly walks, trains, and trams. With a second job, I was able to move into a rooming house right on the curve of Bondi Beach, next to the saltwater pool.
My first Buddha holds all of these memories.
In My Sixties
When I was in my sixties, after encountering Buddhism in Sri Lanka, I bought a 60cm-high, gold-coloured resin standing Buddha, with a ball aloft in each hand, held high, representing prosperity, happiness, and good luck. I found it one day after wandering the length of Melbourne’s Victoria Markets, already a lost soul after leaving the Northern Territory and the workforce for what seemed like forever, and looking for my car on the wrong side of the vast, sprawling marketplace. The statue’s golden smile winked at me from the window of a shop, drawing me in.
Inside, the shop was cool and calming. The old Chinese shopkeeper was dressed in what I guessed was traditional Chinese rural garb of loose trousers and a top made of rough hemp or cotton. He greeted me with a smile. ‘You like?’ he asked. ‘I’ll give it to you for a special price. You are my first customer, and that is my good luck.’ It was good luck for me, too, at a time when I was utterly drained by life, having found myself on an invalid pension and living in high-rise public housing in Prahran.
The luck of my gold Buddha was pivotal. It served me well in my transition from anthropology to a retirement filled with meditation, poetry and writing. And, as it turned out, the high-rise experience was a special time that both led to and informed my second novel, launched in 2024, They Who Nicked the Sun, set in Prahran, in Melbourne.
What may seem bad at the time often augurs better times to come.
From Sri Lanka
I concede there was an aesthetic impulse behind the purchase of the beautiful King Ebony figurine seen to the right below, which I bought for Rs 900 in the early 1980s from an expensive jeweller close to Colombo’s vibrant outdoor market, the Pettah. It is exquisitely carved to the correct proportions for a sitting Buddha and represents a country I lived in and loved, and where I met my third husband. On the left is the clear resin Buddha now treasured by my son.
From my meditation room at Aldinga Beach
The central Buddha in the photo above is a traditional Sinhalese Buddhist statue crafted by artisans as a gift from the man who was my research assistant back in the 1980s, with whom I became friends during my PhD research in Sri Lanka—a time and place that changed my life. My friend went on to become an international consultant and lifelong friend. He sent the statue unannounced, close to 30 years later. Even in our old age, we email a few times a year to stay in touch. He has a very special place in my heart.
Aldinga Beach
The Chinese gold and white porcelain meditating Buddha in the next photo evokes memories of my 16 years in Aldinga Beach. After being blocked for many years by local protests and the Council’s ignorance, the Nan Hai Pu Tuo Temple was built at Sellicks Beach.
At that time, I led three meditation groups: one at Aldinga U3A, another at the Aldinga Community Centre, and a private group at home. With my meditation students, I occasionally visited the Temple on Sundays to participate in the Temple’s Dana lunch. They were good years. People from all three groups also came together at my place monthly to share a vegetarian meal.
Childhood Memories
A few years ago, I scoured the internet to find a miniature Daibutsu Buddha, a replica of the giant bronze statue in Kamakura, Japan, built during the Kamakura period. It was first constructed in wood in 1243 and later recast in bronze circa 1252. We visited the giant Daibutsu Buddha when I was an Army kid, and I adored it even then. My tiny bronze statue, at 60mm high, is smooth, cool, and weighty in the palm of my hand. It calms me.
There’ll be more about my three husbands in Call Me Marigold, coming as fast as I can write it. They, too, have times and places that evoke experiences that, in retrospect, were transformative. Even taking into account the sad and bad bits, my memories come together in glistening vignettes, like brilliant gems of life. Till then —
On Ornaments
Ornaments are serious business. While I’ve focused on my Buddha statues today, my home contains a number of other special artefacts from my life, including wall hangings passed down to me by my mother, brother, and lost son, as well as gifts from my other children. We also keep mementos, such as letters, emails, and perhaps books by friends, as well as our own publications.
Just as museums are a testament to a culture, our ornaments give witness to our lives. What do you see when you look around at home? Do you have a favourite item that tells a deep story? Which pieces do you hope your children will cherish when you’ve gone? Do they know your history?
I was going to call this post Things I Ponder and had to change to ‘think about’ because there are so many ways of using ‘ponder’; ‘ponder upon’ (a little old fashioned), ‘ponder on’, which, like ‘ponder’ suggests particular topics and is therefore constraining), and ‘ponder about’ which is silly because the word ‘ponder’ means’ think about’, but after reading these variations online, I decided that, if I leave the word ponder dangling, it might be confusing. These are a few things that literally stick in my mind.
I mention this tiny research moment on pondering as a way to show how my mind works. Where once, post-childhood, when I daydreamed a lot, I didn’t ponder anything much, preferring to think I was right (which I often was, although it made me unpopular). Now, in old age, I find I second-guess myself to the extent that I search the World Wide Web to check most thoughts that may, to my shame, go viral if they’re wrong, like my poor failing body, so often told it’s not right by medical science. While I don’t like to be incorrect, I am aware that few things in life are straightforward, as my little ponderings today exemplify.
Welcome to Country
The Idea
The idea to ponder Welcome to Country ceremonies in a post originated from my son, who encouraged me. These traditional ceremonies got a lot of bad press in the pre-election political discourse. Unlike me, he has travelled to New Zealand, where he was impressed by the way traditional Māori culture is integrated into daily life, from a visitor’s perspective. He wishes Australia could be like that towards First Nations culture and peoples here, as do I.
I am not an authority on this matter, but I am, as many know, an anthropologist and have worked with First Nations people across Australia. So, while it is not my place to speak for them or on their behalf, I can say, both as an anthropologist and as a publican’s daughter who was raised and worked in pubs for the first half of my life, I understand Australian culture at various levels. Well enough, I trust, to make a few general observations while sidestepping the specifics of recent journalistic and political discourse and similarly grossly ill-informed social media discourse.
It’s All To Do With Semantics
Much like my earlier discussion on the effective use of the word ‘ponder’. The term ‘country’ appears to be the main sticking point for those who perhaps operate under the notion that it means the same thing as ‘nation’. Such a flawed conflation leads many people to ask why the Australian population at large should be invited to their own country. They find it offensive.
The answer depends on what you mean by ‘country. Failing to understand this fuels racism.
Welcome Ceremonies
Bear with me if you know this already. A Welcome to Country ceremony is offered by a small group of people whose ‘country’ is defined by the stories they hold for a particular tract of land. The traditions of that land are part of their being, defining First Nations people as who they are. Tradition places the responsibility on them to take care of that land, their ‘county’, just as we look after ourselves and our homes.
Seen like this, it is easy to see that Welcome Ceremonies are more like opening the front door to welcome someone into your home than taking over Australia or speaking on behalf of the nation to which we all belong equally. Indigenous country is the literal territory of ‘their mob’ or ‘my mob’, and it does not threaten anybody’s rights as a citizen one iota. Everyone should know this by now. Those with a public megaphone should report it that way instead of fuelling division. After all, most of us are by now familiar with the name of the First Nations area in which we live.
Compiled over many years of research by the anthropologist Norman Tindale, the Adelaide Museum’s Map of Tribal Australia shows us the traditional lands occupied before conquest. You can find what is likely to be an updated version of this map in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Library (AIATSIS) if you want to scroll through it for a closer look.
Other historical maps show First Nations songlines crisscrossing the entire continent like a great big web. It is a shame that these trade and ceremony routes are rarely shown or talked about by the mainstream media, as they would encourage understanding and a greater respect for First Nations traditions.
Smoking ceremonies are a special gift from those who still live in or know the ancient stories handed down over generations about the lands of their ancestors. It is the gift of welcome to a history that precedes the nation we all compose, and now resides within the island of Australia defined by national borders.
In Conclusion
I think the confusion comes because we tend to think of Australia as a country, our country. Whereas we are, strictly speaking, a nation, which is a nation-state. It says so on our passports. And, as an aside, the whole concept of nation and nationality is itself fraught when you look into it. We all get into high dudgeon about ‘my country’ and ‘my nationality’, but, after all, as Benedict Anderson said long ago in 1983, nations are imagined communities.
Historically and politically, a nation is far removed from the face-to-face networks of traditional community life, where kinship-bound people together as political entities. We divide ourselves by class, political persuasions, sports affiliations, and other cultural identities, including race, as well as age. Such cultural distinctions serve capitalism’s marketing purposes well. Extended kinship ties would be a threat to that.
Our island provides a natural national boundary, and our states are clearly delineated by jurisdictional boundaries. Anyone wishing to cross our national border must hold a passport or have the necessary right of entry (and exit) documentation. Crossing state lines requires us to comply with that state’s jurisdiction on entry. If our move is permanent, we must change our electoral entry, our driving licence and so on. Though we roundly resisted carrying a national ID card when the idea was mooted in the 1980s, we take all this jurisdictional ID stuff for granted. Our strings are pulled by bureaucracy.
In traditional Aboriginal society, as I understand it in the simplest of terms, groups passing through the ‘country’ of others don’t simply crash the campfire; they wait to be invited in. Now, all Australians are welcomed into traditional local areas (a First Nation’s traditional ‘country’) with a smoking ceremony that has transformed to meet the contemporary world. Things have to change to stay the same (a phrase that stuck with me from a book I read many years ago about Sicily as it moved away from landlords and peasants, giving rise to the Mafiosi and political bureaucracy).
Thoughts that end up in poems
This first poem came from my meditative ponderings on living in a high-rise retirement unit that was built before soundproofing became a thing. It reminds me of old hotels in George Street and Chinatown in Sydney, many, many years ago. You didn’t need a glass to the wall to hear what was going on next door or anywhere else, for that matter. Even pipes creaked.
My Turn is something of a contemplative dream sequence predicated on my love for and experience of camping in the outback, often when working with First Nations people on their country. How could anyone forget such a privilege?
Thoughts about Hospital Stays
Toast
Toast has vanished from Flinders Medical Centre’s (FMC) breakfast menu.
Nobody will starve with cereal, fruit and a cuppa, but who eats pale white bread, butter and jam for breakfast? That was a treat (sans butter) for my father, born in 1910 to an impoverished family living in Sydney’s Glebe, then a slum, after his barefoot walk of three miles each way to school. To me, therefore, a single slice of white plastic bread is tantamount to workhouse food. Have hospital authorities never heard of croissants or muffins? I don’t like either—I’m a toast girl in the morning—but hey, I’d put that dislike aside in favour of flavour.
Showering
What has also disappeared, at least from the public wards at FMC, are white shower-chairs for the frail and elderly. Instead, some bright spark in finance has decided to give commodes a second use, minus the potty.
At 152 cm nowadays, I’m not very tall, so my feet do not hit the floor when I’m perched on the front edge of a bariatric-sized commode. (Most wheelchairs nowadays are bariatric too.) Furthermore, because of its size, the commode must face outwards from the cubicle, which requires you to shower sideways using a handheld shower rose; your arms are constrained by high armrests from which soap slips to the floor. A commode might almost be acceptable when someone else is washing you, but on your own, it’s a bugger. And yukky, too.
FMC’s commodes also feature shiny metal footrests resembling those of a wheelchair. Without a counterbalancing weight, these make it extremely hazardous to stand up. They cut into the back of your legs as you reach for the floor. You dare not put weight on them.
I was so appalled by this turn of events that the matter went beyond mere pondering. I wrote a letter of complaint to SA Health.
Unexpected Germs
I’ve since learned that I have been colonised, yes, that’s the right word, by pneumonitis. Although it is a non-contagious inflammation of the lungs, I must now advise hospital staff of this, if and when I am admitted again, as it can exacerbate other afflictions. I also had to undergo tests for a bug that colonises the digestive tract because SA’s Local Area Health Network (SAHLHN) advised that I may have been exposed during my last stay at FMC. Fortunately, that little bugger did not gain traction in my old body.
Ironically, hospitals were historically built to remove the populace from infectious community environments to promote healing and reduce the spread of disease. It would appear that this cycle is reversing.
Another Surprise
In addition to sneaking in their mandatory cognitive test for the elderly and the insane, no matter how cogent and intelligent you might be, one is always weighed on admittance to a ward at FMC.
It turned out that I had lost 6 kilos since my previous stay a few months earlier, without realising it. (I gave up on home scales 40 years ago.) Instead of congratulations, however, I was advised that I would be put on a special diet, because such rapid weight loss indicated that I was malnourished.
The nurse and I had been talking about white bread for breakfast until her remark about my weight loss had me roaring with incredulous laughter.
‘At least you’ll get scrambled eggs for breakfast,’ she said, laughing with me.
Can you imagine scrambled eggs on plain white sliced bread?
Happy Writing
Wattletales
If you'd like to be added to the Wattletales post mailing list, make a request in the comments below, your email address is always hidden from public view. Lindy
We live in a world that encourages us to grow, follow our dreams, develop our creativity or achieve goals, pushing on to change, renew or better ourselves, but is there a time to stop? Moneymakers. powerbrokers and insane world leaders governed by iron egos don’t change as they wreak havoc upon us all. But as mere mortals, should we persist in seeking acclaim or find acceptance by turning inwards as we face the inevitability of death?
Does moving into a retirement home develop or limit our potential? What does it say about our society that the elderly gather, locked away, albeit in comfortable circumstances? We may be isolated from family, but we can reach out and do community work and creative stuff despite being subtly pointed towards the grave the moment we retire. TV ads don’t tell the full story.
We move into retirement living voluntarily in the expectation that smaller dwellings might save us from a nursing home. People in my building certainly live longer. One man will be 100 in February 2025. But who are we, really, when we leave our houses and pets behind? The overarching aura of independent retirement living often feels more like being institutionalised than independent, as I’ve written before.
What Does it Mean to be Old?
I first thought I was old at 30, fearing I’d lose my figure with my imminent third baby (born on Cyclone Tracy’s cusp of fury). When I turned 50, that same baby boy gave his mother a single red rose when I hosted a party for women friends; a powerful women’s party. After a tipple or three, some guests broke down at the thought that they had, indeed, achieved power and insight through tertiary education yet wondered who they’d become and mourned the innocence they’d left behind. Others bemoaned their failure to follow suit with excuses for not having achieved anything because of children and bad choices in men. It was an interesting evening.
Rejuvenated at 75, I published my first poetry chapbook with two novels and several other poetry collections to follow. Living the dream. I turned 80 on the Marina Boardwalk in Glenelg over lunch with my daughter, but this year, my 81st has seen me turn inwards. I find myself wondering whether that is a natural progression or a portend of decline.
I have come to believe we tend to settle into ourselves more as we age, but is that by adaptation, cultural isolation as we drop out of social things or something else altogether? When I see elderly friends who are younger than me but with healthy pockets and living partners tripping around the world or visiting interstate all the time, going places and doing things as though nothing has changed, I can’t help but wonder if the changes I see in myself are peculiar. But, changed I am.
Change Brings Grief
When I look back over the posts I’ve written over the years on Wattletales, I realise that I have often summarised those parts of my life that I’ve most valued, using them as a trigger to make a point about something that was niggling me at the time.
Recently, however, I’ve worried because, since the publication of my second novel, They Who Nicked the Sun and its recent launch at Manson Towers, where I live, I have not written a word until today. An article on grief gave me a clue as to what’s going on.
When I told my doctor recently that I often cried for no apparent reason first thing in the morning, she looked at me blankly. The topic got lost in the more important stuff that she thought a test or a different pill might assuage. It must be hard being a GP for the elderly in a discipline predicated on the heroics of scientific medicine more suited to acute conditions. You simply cannot fix ageing; most conditions thereof resist the force of nature.
But the grief article showed me that I am grieving for parts of myself now defunct, and living in the confined space of my independent unit seemed the most suitable thing to grizzle about. Instead of taking pride in myself for being content with my lot and commending myself as I usually do for not fearing death, I sought to blame.
Like those women at my powerful women’s party years ago who blamed husbands and children for their failure to achieve, I have been blaming retirement living for pretty well all the changes my mind and body have experienced of late. My tears dried up the moment I understood that fact and once again accepted who and what I am at this moment. Then, my words —these words — began to flow.
The Truth Is
I grieve the diminishment of my mental acuity, my way with words (when speaking), and the decline of my physical strength and energy. I have been independent for so many years and now have to go slow, take it easy and ask (or pay ) others to help. Yikes! We need to listen when they say ageing is not for cissies. Frailty and weakness are simply not valued in our world, and I’m not too shy to report that old age sucks at times. But, then, so can life.
Nevertheless, old age has rewards. I am content not to be on the constant ‘doing and going’ merry-go-round. Even if I had the money and energy, I know I’ve had my turn, and I’m still here. My mental meanderings always find answers, and there’s nobody around to tell me I’m wrong. In writing, I found my home, and that is true freedom.
Happy Writing
Wattletales
If you'd like to be added to the Wattletales post list, make a request in the comments below, where your email is hidden. Lindy
I ask the title’s question because I have long known that my words reveal me, they are keys to knowing who I am. Some people hide behind their words. I guess it comes down to whether you write from the heart or the intellect. Either way, as a reader, I tend to believe I have a poet’s measure from their words. This is, of course, an introductory palaver because I haven’t really got a proper topic today. Rather, I’m posting a few of my recent poems because, being a creature of habit, I find it hard to skip a month when I’ve been writing regular monthly posts for around five years, and this month, I have nothing to say.
Poems Past
Some of the poems here will be familiar to those who follow me on Instagram. Some are new, and the first one, ‘Brain Dead’, sums up my current situation quite nicely. I have just finished my second novel, They Who Nicked the Sun, which (see below) will become available soon, and until its launch in May, I feel in limbo.
‘The Shape of a Tree’ was written just before I finished my novel. Trees feature in my book, but the way the poem developed, I can now see, describes me writhing away, hiding from criticism, not that I knew it at the time of writing.
The next poem comes from meandering around the streets of Glenelg and the transformation of a lovely old colonial house that I dreamed of living in for many years. As I read it now, I think it is also a metaphor for ageing or being supplanted.
The next two poems are about trees. Funny that they formed in my mind as I wrote my tree-full novel.
I hope the following two poems are not too bleak. Death and dying have become central to my thinking as I age, and reflecting upon them fills me with love for this wonderful planet we share. My life has been enriched by many different landscapes, from the desert to the tropics.
It is a truism to say that life is fleeting, but I remember something the Dalai Lama once said when a journalist asked him if he got lonely travelling all the time as he then did. The monk replied, how could he be lonely, for every chair he sat on connected him to the carpenter who made it, every mouthful of food put him in the company of a farmer. I wish I could recall his actual words, but his point is that the world around us is alive with the history, activities and even personalities of people who are integral to our surroundings and his argument was therefore a question. How can we be lonely if we pay full attention?
Although this last poem was not consciously written with the Dalai Lama’s philosophy in mind, it echoes it.
So, did these poems tell you something about me or offer something to you? Please click below to download a free ebook collection entitled Dressed & Uploaded, where I offer the stories that underpin many of the illustrated poems on Wattletales and Instagram.
If you wish to purchase any of my other poetry books featured in the opening image, leave a message in the comments section below, and I’ll get in touch.
My novel, The Publican’s Daughter is available from Amazon and other print-on-demand outlets and Kindle. They Who Nicked the Sun will similarly be available as of 21 April. However, you can also purchase either or both books directly from me by leaving a message in the comments below or emailing me at lindy@wattletales.com.au.
Novel
Happy Writing
Wattletales
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In the past few years, I’ve so enjoyed finding suitable background images for the poems in my posts (and those of my guests) that they started to appear together in a colourful, recurring dream that gave me the idea of creating a little eBook. This month, that dream became a new publication called Dressed & Uploaded. The subtitle, Poem Stories, refers to how I reverse the way I illustrate poems in my posts to comment instead on each poem’s significance to me.
A Small Gift
Dressed & Uploaded is free to download below as my little gift. You are also welcome to share the file if you wish. Many of you will recognise some poems, but I hope you find the presentation and commentary titillating.
The eBook is also available to purchase through Apple, Kobo, Libreka, OverDrive and Scribd or to borrow from SA Libraries on Libby.
The Launch
This post is Dressed & Uploaded’s official launch, giving me a chance to publicly thank my daughter, Vanessa Warrell, for copy editing and Jude Aquilina, Veronica Cookson and Susan Thrun Willett for writing wonderful promotional words for the inside cover. To give you a taste, this is from Jude —
Dressed and Uploaded speaks from the big fiery heart of a poet whose raw honesty, original imagery and no-holds-barred subject matter make for memorable reading. Lindy Warrell gives voice to the people of our era, to women, to the marginalised and to the forgotten. Lindy’s poetry also speaks to the inner self, especially through this genre of poetic memoir. Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom, wrote Aristotle. Lindy’s blog Wattletales and this collection, Dressed and Uploaded, are visually attractive records of our time and valuable additions to South Australia’s poetic wealth. Jude Aquilina
Formal acknowledgements are, of course, in the book itself. Here is the cover poem writ large.
While You’re Here
As this is a short post, I decided to celebrate the launch of Dressed & Uploaded by promoting my other publications, starting with my three chapbooks published in 2018 and 2019 by Ginninderra Press. To read a little more about each, click on the links below. To buy a copy, email me at lindy@wattletales.com.au. The books are $5 each, and postage for a single item is $1.50.
My poetry collection and debut novel were both self-published in 2022 under my imprint, Wattletales Publishing. The link for A Curious Mix takes you to a record of its wonderful launch party. The Publican’s Daughter link offers several reader reviews.
You will find these books in the South Australian Libraries collection in paperback and ebook.
You can also purchase both books (or eBooks) from your favourite supplier. Dymocks has priced the paperbacks of A Curious Mix at $29.33 and The Publican’s Daughter at $42.78. Booktopia is closer to the mark at $23.50 and $32.63.
To celebrate the launch of Dressed & Uploaded, I offer A Curious Mix and The Publican’s Daughter at the author price of $20.00 and $25.00, respectively, plus postage — email me at lindy@wattletales.com.au.
A little girl, aged 23 months, recently smiled at me from beneath her bonnet as she toddled by with her parents on Glenelg Jetty in a fashionable pink gingham dress. I smiled back, saying, ‘hello baby,’ and the family stopped to chat. The little girl was carrying a baby-sized boy doll in preparation for her new brother, due to arrive soon. That moment was as satisfying for me as it was going to nightclubs, achieving professional goals or, more recently, standing up in front of an audience to get its take on my poetry.
My daughter, Vanessa, at the same age in a party dress made by her Oma.
To see such a happy family brought memories of my childbearing years. By the time I was 31, I had two toddlers, thirteen months apart, and a miscarriage soon after. A year later, I had a third child who liked to poke his head high under my ribs for the last few months of the pregnancy. My mother scolded me for breeding like a rabbit. I wondered as I waddled past a dress shop in discomfort one day if I’d ever get back into the sleek little number on display. I did until time took its chance with me.
A Long Life Has Benefits
The diversity of baby bumps around today fascinates me; some protrude naked from bikinis, others are swathed in Lycra, and a few, perhaps less fashionable, reside beneath loose summer dresses. I wonder whether appearing sexy while pregnant is easy.
Being pregnant was not all about baby bumps or glamour in my generation. We wore maternity dresses that hung stiff as an A-frame from neck to knee to hide our changing bodies with what felt like shame. On reflection, I give thanks that we were at least physically comfortable.
I reflect a lot now. My mind bobs from present to past and back in a way that revises views. There’s much to play with after a long life, and it brings joy to view things in perspective to find they don’t matter too much now. Shame diminishes with age, too, when one’s vital force has pretty much left the building, like Elvis.
Body image has always been an issue for women, but I suspect it is a transforming one. When I was 13, I wore a blue check halter-neck dress once before throwing it away. So ashamed was I of my budding breasts that 50 odd years later, I wrote this poem.
The Inevitability of Ageing
Most people my age quit work long ago, and what younger people may not know is that being old is itself a job; it takes work to maintain body and mind. It does not matter how good one’s diet is, how well we exercise or follow health rules. The aging body declines.
In the medical world of the ageing and elderly, not everything is as it seems.
So, I decided to introduce the article below entitled ‘Body Ritual Among the Nacirema’, which was on the syllabus as a cruel joke to tease first-year anthropology students in my day. ‘Nacirema’ is, of course, ‘America’ spelt backwards, but the detail is precisely how an anthropologist might render the lives and activities of what was once called primitive society.
Taking an indirect queue from the article, I describe below some taken-for-granted medical processes to explore their power to disempower the elderly.
Age Stripped Bare…
Patients must strip then don a blue gown that opens at the back for day surgery. Our heads sport a blue mob cap, with feet covered in matching disposable slippers, like those used at crime scenes.
Thus clad, patients are invited into a nurse’s room for a consult about ailments and medications. This is followed by cognitive testing. My nurse told me she had to ask some ‘silly questions’ without advising me that she was actually measuring my mental acuity. Notably, cognitive testing is a treat reserved for concussion patients and, without discrimination or consent, the elderly.
When the nurse is finished with us, we return to the waiting area to be summoned next by an anaesthetist. My young male doctor explained what he would do to me in breathless haste designed to defray questions. So keen was he to be in command, he literally arced up when I asked what sedative he proposed to use.
At the Noarlunga Hospital’s day surgery hub (which offers a splendid service), patients (young and old) in blue are each issued a warm white cotton blanket to keep them from shivering while they wait in anonymity to be called for their procedure. I counted about 20 blue and white figures sitting in rows on straight back chairs with me, facing a blank wall with blank eyes as though attending the theatre. I experienced a strong urge to take a photo, but my iPhone was under lock and key. The identity strip is complete.
The only trace one leaves as an oldie, it seems, is the unknown result of an involuntary cognitive test.
…then Trapped
Whatever our age, as humans, our backs are vulnerable. We keep them to the wall when confronted, and most people don’t like having an open door behind them, but on the operating table, our backs and bums are exposed under bright lights, open to the gaze of several strangers.
Whether for day or life-saving surgery, the moments before you lose consciousness are curious. As you lie on the operating table, unable to move, a nurse’s hand creeps beneath your gown to affix sticky heart monitor leads to your chest while the anaesthetist inserts a cannula in your arm from behind. Your masked surgeon hovers above, asking if you consent to the procedure. Another nurse tells you to recite why you are where you are, what is about to take place and to repeat your full name and date of birth for the umpteenth time while checking your armband; probably a good idea.
Recovery team members are always friendly. It is nice to come back into the world to the sound of your name, a call that proves you’ve survived. That first cuppa is sweet and hospital sandwiches remain one of my favourite old-fashioned foods.
Medical Pin-ball
At home, we oldies begin to feel like the ball in a pinball machine as our declining bodies usurp our time. Our calendars fill with appointments; for the GP, specialist clinics, podiatrists, dentists, ophthalmologists, physiotherapists and more. Hospital admissions become more frequent, and the possibility of ending up in a nursing home lurks.
Death is on the horizon as we spin from one speciality to the next, none of which communicates with the other. The risk is high for losing our sense of identity in proportion to the increasing height and weight of our medical files. The myriad determinants of what we are in various doctors’ notes in these bulging documents begin to define us.
Measuring the Mind
In youth and middle years, a therapist might be helpful as we confront disturbing things or need to find direction. However, at my age, it becomes tedious to repeat well-rehearsed stories that have long lost heat, as it were. Time, as they say, does heal even though memories linger and are frequently triggered, as I found with my little girl in pink gingham.
We spend more time reflecting on the past, but that does not mean that we have abdicated our former intelligent self. Indeed, it would be nice at times if others would treat us as people. Being old suffers more than invisibility; being unseen and unheard is dehumanising.
Yes, we make typos in emails and social media, but they are arguably more signs of deformed, arthritic fingers than a loss of faculties. Failing eyesight and forgetting the specs don’t help. And, senior moments are trivial in the scheme of things when one’s memory has reached capacity.
Comprehensively ignored is the wisdom that accumulates in a long life. Few are interested. We live in ‘going forward’ mode where specialist and expert knowledge abounds; reified. We search Google before we ask an older person anything of note. Valuing the experience of elders does not pertain.
Care
The assumption that we are unsafe to ourselves and others increases in medical circles as we age. At 70, 75 and 80+, we are again measured like we were as babies. Our General Practice nurse visits us at home to make sure we are coping with things like shopping, diet, personal hygiene, etc. These jollified interviews with kind practitioners make for a nice visit and may produce official supports you didn’t know about. But, it all adds up as a way of seeing old people as diminished physically and mentally.
Any recognition of intellect is predicated on age. Our achievements are deemed significant because we are old (aren’t you clever for your age), not because we are good at what we do. For the elderly, such thinking infantilises; denies old people their full status as adults.
Most people think I’m nuts when I say these things, but how could we describe it when someone asks with a false smile and the royal plural, ‘how are we today?’ Well, lady, I’m fine, I want to say, and I don’t care a whit about you. But we behave. We accept and say nothing. It’s easier than fighting with people in power who cannot understand or won’t listen (as my aunt used to say when her husband abused her). Any sign of anger risks a mental health assessment.
Of course, dementia can take us away.
Current studies are ongoing into the extent of ageism in health care in Australia. The health sector is the second most likely place for the elderly to experience ageism.
Over Time
When my children were little, I remember thinking about how they first moved out from my body and into the room, then moving from cradle to school in graduated steps towards the wider world. Being old — if we are lucky enough to make it to this unlikely state of grace — is the reverse.
I watched my mother approach her dying by closing in on herself. Where previously she walked longish distances every day, she ordered Meals on Wheels. No more shopping, no need to go out.
She started taking the phone off the hook to make a cuppa, eat and shower. ‘Sure enough,’ she’d say of a phone that never rang, ‘someone will ring the minute I can’t get to it.’ Bit by tiny bit, she moved closer to her inner world where there was no more worry. She didn’t entertain, had less need for people and towards the end, became peaceful in herself.
My gradual social withdrawal over the past couple of years could be due to COVID or be the result of my having to take greater care of my pennies. The pension doesn’t stretch to as many coffees and lunches with friends as I would like. But there’s also the fact that my calendar is filled with increasing numbers of medical appointments. Given how long it takes to get to the top of a specialist’s list, you can’t mess with those.
A Last Word
We who live long lives are lucky to experience the distress and wonder of human life. We are also fortunate to have the health care system that exists in Australia. Abroad, I once witnessed a patient die alone on a corridor floor, mewling in vain for succour. Here, infants, children, young people and adults of all ages with chronic and life-threatening conditions have a robust medical system that works well most of the time; often for free. It has its flaws, but doesn’t everything?
Writing Tip
Never fear grovelling in the underbelly of things when you write. It is so important to reveal what goes on beneath the surface, to open wounds and have a good look. We would never know what the sunnyside is, without the rain.
My mother’s songs seeded the starburst of my poetry. Like a bird sings to its eggs, she sang the melodically and rhythmically fertile songs of the Aegean Islands while I was in her womb. When I hatched, she continued to prime me through infancy and childhood. I still sing and drum the haunting modes and hiccupping rhythms of Greek music. They feed my poetry with metre and syncopation.
Maria reading at SPIN 2018
Oral and Musical Roots
It’s tempting to believe my pilgrimage with poetry began at Flinders University, where I completed a Creative Writing Graduate Diploma. Academic learning validates. It teaches the craft, but the richest source for poetry for most poets is ancestral.
I inherited a deep, unconscious, but musical and poetic pulse from my family; my mother’s voice permeates my writing. More than theory, I draw power from this heritage. It lends authenticity to my poetic voice, which comes from deep within.
Many cultures, Greek, Ethiopian, Arabic, and Irish, to name a few, have strong oral traditions. Poetry in our Anglo-Celtic society does too, both in form and musicality.
Before Europe invented the Guttenberg Press, poetry was sung and recited in communal groups. The rhyme and metre we know from traditional poetry were mnemonic devices. Today, slam poetry which is almost a sport, has a similar musicality. Being performance, it is popular among young people and attracts large audiences and cash prizes.
I run an open mic with Julia Wakefield called SPIN (Southern Performers Interactive Network). We celebrate the connection between music and poetry and support early and emerging poets and musicians to develop their craft and confidence. I performed at the Goolwa Poetry Cup in 2017 with my show, Little Poems about Kisses. It was thrilling to win an award for Mr Lizard Lips.
Stones of Dislocation
My father’s forced migration as a political refugee is a troubling childhood memory. My family travelled from cosmopolitan Piraeus, a traditionally built home, to a Housing Trust duplex in Whyalla, South Australia, where Dad worked at the BHP steelyards as a rigger. His ship’s captain qualifications were not accepted.
Dislocated like many migrant families, fractured clan roots caused suffering. I felt I did not belong. Already bi-lingual, my father picked up English as his third language of necessity. My mother struggled.
The Strange Gift of a Double Tongue
Torn as a child between my Greek mother tongue and English was bewildering. I morphed into a bi-lingual child and quickly qualified to act as an amateur translator of adult medical mysteries, a junior social worker for my mother and a legal document reader for my father: a common situation for migrant children.
School classified me as ‘English-less’, which was a shock at five years of age. However, I graduated with the Year 12 English prize and have written mainly in English since. I gravitated towards creative writing and drama and was always the top performer in most English classes. Sadly, my Greek language is now much weaker than English, an expected loss for migrant children.
A Life Raft
Poetry was a life raft for me during my mid-thirties when I experienced a series of traumatic losses. My father died of cardiac arrest on a public health waiting list. My mother committed suicide. I left my de-facto husband, lost the job I held in our business then lost my own business and singing career. Even my cat died. For a time, I was homeless. Grief choked my song. Anxiety set in, and panic attacks still plague me.
Poetry, for me, was firstly a therapeutic tool. Though I rolled punch-drunk with grief, I scratched my sorrow into journal scribbles. Later, many of those raw feelings turned into published poems. I captured trauma in words, which eased the pressure of that catastrophic period. As Bessel Van Der Kolk notes in The Body Keeps the Score, trauma is visceral. Creative practices such as writing, painting, singing, and exercises like yoga, dance, walking in nature and ocean swimming are healing remedies.
What is poetry? Who knows?
Poetry can be anything, everything and something in words. It is mercurial. I use Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s definition to guide me: ‘The best words in the best order.’ His words are my mantra, and I ask the question constantly as I practice. Is this the best word in its best place? It helps me progress through a poem, especially if my writing is stuck. Of course, the judgement of ‘best’ is often a personal one.
As a poet, I like traditional poetic forms. Form in poetry is like a corset: it restricts but gives support and shape. I enjoy the challenge and practice of villanelles, haiku, sonnets, tanka and sestina.
Even free verse is not as liberating as its name might suggest. When I write freeform poetry, which I do a lot, it forces me to make an oppressive number of personal choices about rhyme, metre, lineation, punctuation and many other things. Decision fatigue happens even before the engine of a poem — its literary tropes, metaphors, similes, hyperbole, personification and others — fires up.
How I Craft a Poem
In 2007 I returned to university to study poetic craft, history, and traditional forms with Professor Jeri Kroll and A/Professor Steve Evans. Learning poetics enhanced the instinctive skill I inherited from my ancestral heritage.
While studying, I held down a job and acquired my first dog, Dora, a beautiful companion. The discipline of crafting a poem helped me order my thoughts and shape my journal scribbles into readable poems. It also aided my recovery from the previous decade’s ‘personal holocaust’, as I now call it.
My best poems, I think, do two things at once. They draw with clarity on raw personal situations and emotions that link to human universals when honed. My first poetry collection, Eye Print, won the Friendly Street New Poets 19 manuscript prize.
Keeping Poetry Muscles Fit
Poetry is a continual practice for me. I often get it wrong and sometimes get it right. Some helpful things are participating in critique groups such as Ochre Coast Poets and TramsEnd Poets and elsewhere. Collaboration and critique are invaluable in the journey to polished poetry.
A poem in GRIEVE
Musical Trio, Maria on Drum
L — Parents, Antonios and Kalliope Koukovas R —The Trio includes Demeter Tsounis and Mary Raptis
In the Community
But, all engagement in poetry helps me learn as I build my profile as a practising poet.
I professionally edit manuscripts and mentor young and emerging poets like Asher Seiler Simmons, a Year 12 Steiner student whose project culminated in a published poetry collection.
Between 2019 and 2020, I conceived the idea of poetry as a Life Writing project for seniors. The seed for this came through many fruitful conversations with Dr Lindy Warrell, who successfully ran Life Writing workshops in her local community.
In creative partnership with Steve Evans, I successfully sought funding from the Onkaparinga Council and SA Health, resulting in ‘Your Story Life Writing’, a workshop series we delivered throughout regional South Australia. I used poetry, mainly haibun, and prose to help participants create memoirs and record family histories. I loved working one-on-one with participants; the learning went both ways. We had fun.
Another initiative was my‘Frolic with Forms’workshop. In 2020, I collaborated in the publication of Ochre 10,an Anthology. Running school-based workshops in poetry across four schools in the South was an exciting experience. The local poet Virgil Concalves won an Onkaparinga Council grant for this project.
Where to now?
Over the last fourteen years, I have poured a lot of money, time and energy into poetry. But poetry is a fragile axle to drive your life on. Very few people earn money from it, and the satisfaction derived from publications and prizes is fleeting. Banging your odes against gatekeepers like editors and judges is a formula for disgruntled disappointment. To run the long race and stay sane, a poet needs to have a deeper purpose for writing poetry than publication.
The pilgrimage is about binding the ephemeral to words then sending them out to bond with another. It is a sacred linguistic process.
Poetry continues to lure and torment me. Its language compression, sinuous syntax, magic metaphors and rhythmic heart prey on my time and energy.
Like a true addict, I quit poetry 20 times a day and return to it for one more line.
AUTHOR BIO
Maria is a child migrant. The schism of a two-tongue world fuels her poems. Maria is polishing her manuscripts Two Tongue World and Dogolalia, bothering editors, publishers, and literary friends alike.
Her poetry won a place in the Newcastle Poetry Prize 2020 Anthology and a manuscript prize for Friendly StreetNew Poets 19. Maria’s poems are also in the Canberra Times, Victorian Writer and SCUM Magazine, Poetica Christie, Friendly Street and Ochre Coast Anthologies.
The night I first stepped from the plane into Sri Lanka’s humid midnight arms, I fell in love with the lush greenery, tropical fragrances, and warm-hearted, welcoming people. This beautiful, bejewelled island, shaped like a teardrop at the southeastern tip of India, hosts an annual caparisoned elephant procession that parades the Buddha Dalada (eyetooth relic) surrounded by costumed dancers, drummers, and fire throwers, attracting huge local and international crowds every year. Such an adventure.
Kandy Asala Perahara (Agence France-Press). The Palace of the Tooth (Dalada Maligawa) in the background.
I returned to Sri Lanka in 1984 as a postgraduate researcher to examine the Perahara and another large-scale ritual called the Gam Maduwa or village hut. The Gam Maduwa celebrates and propitiates the only female deity in the Sinhala pantheon, Pattini Amma.
Once sponsored by kings, the Perahara has proliferated. As one famous dancer once told me, nowadays, everyman is king. Similarly, individuals may now host what was a community and harvest festival, the Gam Maduwa, for a small crowd or an entire village for personal reasons. Ritual has democratised.
Where to Start?
With one suitcase apiece, my children Grant, 12, Vanessa, 11 and Mark, 9 and I spent 18 months In Sri Lanka while I did postgraduate research. When we arrived, we first stayed in homeshare accommodation in Colombo. Our hosts helped us find a place to live. My landlord then introduced me to a marvellous woman called Soma who cleaned, cooked and otherwise looked after my family. My children attended Alethea International School, an English medium school for Sri Lankans near the beach in Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia.
We were thus kindly facilitated to where we were supposed to be, in Sri Lanka, by Sri Lanka.
L-R Mark, Grant and Vanessa
Soma with her charges
Sri Lankan school uniform
Once settled in our home in Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, my precious children took the bus to and from school each day. My youngest, Mark, learned to recite the conductor’s spiel, rapidly naming one suburb after another at each stop, much to our delight.
I could not have done fieldwork without Soma who, sadly died many years ago. I was away a lot, travelling on jam-packed buses to attend more than 54 rituals of different types, big and small. Many were all-night affairs. Others took longer, always somewhere different.
Mine was a peripatetic life. Following ritual performers across the southern littoral, I walked many tropical miles through jungles, paddy fields (and occasional leeches) in flat leather thongs to attend magical nights of ritual drumming, dancing, and deity propitiation. Large crowds gathered in delight and devotion at these events (more of which later). In this adventure, I was never alone.
The Best Assistant is a Friend
Once I’d sorted accommodation and schooling, I had to find an assistant. One applicant whose resume was perfect didn’t show for his interview. I ended up engaging someone with whom I struggled because he insisted that the people we met pay me deference, find me a chair and so on. I did not want that. It went against the Aussie spirit for one thing and was alienating for my purposes. I began to panic.
A small village deity shrine. This faded little photo won a prize at the time.
Three weeks later, the missing applicant, LR Perera, showed up unannounced to apologise for not attending for interview. A shy man with a Batchelor’s degree majoring in Sinhalese Language and Literature, LR taught himself to speak and write English in his remote home village by reading English novels and poetry. In Colombo later, he studied newspapers too. LR said he stayed away because he’d been teased for his spoken-English accent and lacked confidence. Our people, he said, are very cruel. LR went on to achieve acclaim as an international consultant.
LR’s English was then (and is) excellent, and having similar interests, we got on like a house on fire, travelling everywhere together month after month. To this day, nearly 40 years later, LR and I remain in touch. As you do in Sri Lanka, we became siblings where, as anywhere, kinship terms define a moral code that structures appropriate behaviour. The use of kinship terms there, however, extends to strangers as well as actual kin. (Do we still call daddy’s girlfriend aunty?)
Under Scrutiny
Speaking of kinship, What I hadn’t realised, and nobody thought to warn me, was that it was probably thoughtless of me a single woman to do fieldwork alone among male ritual performers. Not because I’d be unsafe, for that was never and could never be the case, but because my presence could compromise those with whom I worked. I am grateful for how well everybody looked after me.
Still, the predominant question I got until people knew my circumstances was, where is your husband, Madam. I told the truth (that I was divorced), and I think that earned some respect but, I should have read the clues. How could I not guess from a visa application process requiring the name of my husband or father? No wonder touts called a white woman travelling on her own, Tani Aliya (lone elephant).
Methods and Possibilities
When I did my research, anthropological fieldwork employed a participant-observation methodology. I didn’t speak Sinhala, and back then, such research did not yet require ethical clearance. The idea was not to become the Other (I didn’t wear a sari) but to hang around and watch others live their lives.
Even then, I used to wonder how I’d feel if a foreigner knocked on my door to ask if they could live with me and follow me around for months on end, recording minutiae of my daily life to get a degree. (In Australia, we can only empathise with our First Nations people on this.)
Fortunately, the ritual practitioners I worked with welcomed the chance to share their traditional knowledge, their cultural gems, and they were always in charge of how much they divulged!
Both of my boys wanted to learn the traditional arts. The drums especially fascinated them. Here is a small taste of the sound of Sinhalese ritual drumming. In performance, it gets louder and faster as it goes, especially for trance dances.
(press twice to play if necessary)
Unfortunately, Grant was already too tall to dance, being taller than many performers. However, Mark learned the traditional dances of the Gam Maduwa. The press got wind of this just before we left.
Media release — Mark in costume
Elaris Weerasinghe with Mark and son, Chaminda, off to work
Life Bleeds Into Research
I was in Sri Lanka to research myth, ritual and religion. Strictly speaking, it was about the politics of specific rites, but that did not stop me from learning about Sri Lankan food, social mores and everyday customs. It took me years and being back in Australia before I was game to serve rice to anyone. In Sri Lanka, a woman who can’t steam rice properly is almost inconceivable. I learned to cook decent chicken curry, Kukulmas (chicken meat), but, as this poem attests, I couldn’t help but contextualise the recipe in my world.
The Gam Maduwa
One of the most spectacular aspects of a Gam Maduwa is a trance dance performed by a deity priest, dressed in a strict ritual process as the Goddess.
Early in the proceedings, members of the dance troupe wear white sarongs to propitiate the deities and invite their presence. In the poem below, you will see them in silhouette. Such ritually washed white cloth separates the sacred from the profane and pure from impure. Boundaries abound if only we look. In church, a woman must cover her head in the sight of God, but men may go bareheaded.
Dancers introduce their intricate hand-made, glass-beaded costumes later in the performance as a build-up to the main event. They gradually dance faster and the drums get louder although drummers stay in white throughout. Their music mediates sacred and profane as they facilitate performance and costumes indicate that we are in the presence of the divine (or demonic).
Performers worship their costumes and instruments before use, and dressing the priest is a sacred duty. In this photo, a drummer dresses Sirisena Kapumahattea (a diety priest is a kapurala, and mahattea is ‘sir’) in preparation for Pattini’s midnight dance. The priest fasts for a specified time to ritually cleanse before the event. In dance, his sari instantiates the Goddess.
Sirisena Kapumahattea.
The Goddess and the Demon
Pattini Amma was once a village goddess overseeing harvest and community wellbeing. Pregnant women propitiate the divine mother to this day, but she has historically become one of the four major deities of the Sinhalese pantheon. In a Perahara, where male deities (their icons) sit atop caparisoned elephants, Pattini travels in a palanquin. (Remember hats and no hats?)
A Gam Maduwa of any size may be a votive offering, but mostly they give thanks for good fortune. Their size varies according to a host’s wealth. Some feed their entire village, the many performers and an occasional anthropologist and assistant. Dignitaries and Buddhist monks sometimes attend.
The Gam Maduwa is an elaborate affair. Ritual practitioners spend days preparing the arena to build the coconut-frond palace for the gods, in which Pattini appears at midnight. This poem gives an idea of what it’s like to be there.
Photo of Gara Yakka in comic performance.
This is my Gara Yakka. He hangs over the door inside my flat. I was humbled when an internationally renowned dancer took his mask off after a tiring performance to present it to me publicly.
Gara Yakka (Benign Demon Gara)
Sri Jayawardenapura Rajamaha Viharaya (Kotte Temple)
At the spectacular Kotte Perahara, after I’d worked closely for some time with the same loose coalition of Low Country ritual practitioners, something changed.
Back then, I used to smoke — we all used to smoke — and in the beginning, I got into the habit of taking a couple of extra packets of cigarettes to rituals to share. Over time, people who knew me started offering me a cigarette, and I’d take the extras home.
However, at this particular perahara, performers from the central highlands (Up Country or Hill Country), the home of the original royal Perahara, were also performing. Quite rightly, they saw me as a stranger and approached me for a cigarette en masse. As though by magic, familiar faces surrounded me and shooed them away. Funny how unspoken gestures like this still touch so deeply, years later.
The first two stanzas refer respectively to the Perahara and the Gam Maduwa. I structured the poem to echo the perahara (procession).
In the Crowd
Bigger Peraharas like the one in Kandy, where the Dalada resides throughout the year, and those in cities like Sri Jayawardenapura and regional centres, take many days (up to three weeks) to complete. Even small processions in villages are at least all-night affairs. They take place on or around the full moon night of Asala in the Buddhist lunar calendar. In Sri Lanka, every full moon commemorates an event in the life of Buddha and full moon (poya) days are public holidays.
Maybe COVID has stopped the Perahara in recent years. But I used to imagine multiple brightly lit, vibrant clockwise processions as auspicious spinning wheels illuminating the entire island, an apt metaphor for ancient South Asian Chakravartin Kings and Buddhism’s Dhamma Wheel (Dhammachakra).
Perahara processions of elephants, dignitaries, dancers, drummers, acrobats, flame-throwers and more can be a mile long on the critical night when the Buddha relic joins the parade. When I was there, kerosine lanterns lit the procession on the bare shoulders of men. Gone were the dangerous oil lamps of old and the sweet smell of burning coconut oil.
A Perahara is far too big to describe in full. They are exhausting. Yet, people line up for hours to get a good vantage point, and police cars drive very close to their toes to keep them in line. Before it all starts, young men promenade along cleared streets, making subtle eyes at girls who giggle behind their families behind the line.
Stands are built, primarily for dignitaries (and tourists). Through high-volume loudspeakers, a voice endlessly recites the names and status of event donors and how much they contributed, an act that brings merit. It’s a hot, humid crush of humanity that takes getting used to after the open plains of Australia. LR and I devised means to make it fun.
Back Home
The line between life and fieldwork is tenuous. Many who know me know I married Mark’s teacher, Elaris Weerasinghe. Sadly, Elaris died some years ago, but his children in Sri Lanka are in touch with me on Facebook. When I heard the news, I organised a Buddhist rite called Dana, a giving which can be a big public event or as simple as a gift of food or personal donation to a Buddhist monk or temple.
Remember, the Buddhist Order (Sangha) is a mendicant order, reliant on donations to survive. Dana creates merit for the giver. Sponsoring a ritual puts the giver in a symbiotic relationship with Buddhism, like that between the Sangha and Kings of old. The last paragraph of my poem, The Tourist, equates begging with Dana. Beggars offer an opportunity to give, to earn merit, which is the logic of Dana.
My Dana at Aldinga Beach in February 2010 honoured my parents, my brother, Phillip and Elaris. Four Buddhist monks officiated, and about 35 people came. It was such a special day.
Four monks (see below)
Bhantes showing me what to do
Chairs filled, some outside
Pic. 1, L-R — Thay Thich Thong Phap Vietnam, Bhante U-Sumedha Sri Lanka, Cambodians Bhantes Ly and John.
Writing Tip
As for an anthropologist, observation is an invaluable skill for a writer to develop. But, it doesn’t always bring heart and soul into the picture. Always remember the little things and share them with your readers.
Happy Writing
Wattletales
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The photo of the caparisoned elephant in Kandy is licenced to AFP.
‘The Tourist’ is published Kaleidoscope, 2019, Friendly Street Anthology edited by Nigel Ford and Valerie Volk.
There is a lot to be said about having a comfortable place to go. For me, it’s my red armchair. Most of my writing and digital art happens from there.
Living with a rare and chronic disease, daily nausea, cramps, bone pain, joint and muscle pain, gut problems, headaches, PTSD, anxiety and depression, I often retreat to the embrace of the red armchair.
It was from this place of chronic disarray, impacted by COVID restrictions, that just over a year ago, at the tender age of sixty, I found my creative side.
I started to write somewhat prolifically, a few short stories and lots of poetry. This productivity coincided with my digital doodling becoming full-on abstract digital art.
On Poetry
Throughout my life, I’ve admired and somewhat envied talented people who could paint, sing, play a musical instrument or write. For me, poetry was a flowery thing requiring a dictionary to understand strange words. It therefore never appealed to me, so to be a year down the track, having had multiple poems published in journals, blogs, online newspapers and read on the radio, and having some of my art exhibited in galleries, is surreal.
Now, I find poetry a great way to tell a story or explain something, as in this poem, ‘I Look OK’, one of my earliest about the rare disease I have.
Poetry over this last year hasn’t been one-sided. I’ve found great enjoyment in reading other poets’ works. I joined Friendly Street Poets and, with my wife, went to a few open mics at Goolwa. There we met a wonderful and charismatic man, Nigel Ford. He is a wonderful poet and has been very encouraging to new poets.
I don’t go to many poetry events due to my poor health, but for several months I was involved in a weekly Zoom poetry workshop with a group of poets in New Jersey, USA. Here I the first poem I had published in Pinky Thinker Press, Mignolo Arts Group, New Jersey.
One of the first poets I read was Geoff Goodfellow. His writing inspired me. A few months after my writing started, I was very fortunate to have a phone conversation with Geoff, who was very encouraging and gave me a few tips.
I’m a storyteller who has a lot to learn. However, after a long life, I have a lot of words trying to escape. So hopefully, I will be writing for some time to come.
Over Last Year
Abstract digital art, sometimes combined with photo manipulation, has exploded with colour over the last year. From digital doodling, I’ve created brightly coloured abstracts like those below. Art and writing have been therapeutic for both my physical and mental health.
What I Write
I’m sixty-one years old, a husband, son, proud father, and grandfather. While a lot of what I write is about life and actual events, albeit somewhat patchwork, I’m not yet quite prepared to write about some things.
Last winter, I emerged from boredom and depression when a counsellor suggested that I look for something to do as a hobby. Working with my hands like woodwork or some craft was very quickly ruled out as I have ten thumbs and would have lost fingers.
So, I joined the University of the Third Age (U3A) online. The first course that caught my eye was about writing creatively. I thought I could try that. In my first effort, I sat down and wrote a concise story, a bit over seven hundred words, about a crazy Irish guy I had known in the Navy.
I started writing poems when I learned that poetry didn’t have to be flowery and rhyming but could be a conduit to tell a tale. The floodgates opened, and in just one year, I wrote over two hundred poems.
In addition to my health, I’ve written about life events. For example, a poem entitled, ‘What Could Possibly Go Wrong’, emerged from the time when my wife and I were swept out to sea with friends in our kayaks. We had to be rescued by sea rescue and ended up in the news.
“Sorry To Say” is the title of a poem written about a friend we took in and cared for in his last eighteen months of life before he died from bowel cancer. Last year a different friend died from a stroke in her fifties, way too young. I wrote this little poem.
Poems and Art are My Life
‘Love Me Forever is the title of a poem I wrote for my wife based on when she agreed to marry me sitting next to a campfire on the bank of a creek in the Flinders Ranges where we had witnessed a flash-flood a few hours earlier.
After pumping out poems, I first posted them to Facebook then set up my first Instagram account, where my digital art took off. I used the art as a background for poems and ended up with an Instagram following. The poetry didn’t take off, but the art certainly did.
Earlier this year learned of a weekly veterans’ art group. As I served in the Royal Australian Navy for over 11 years, I was eligible, and the group encouraged me to exhibit my art. I’m also learning about other art forms like flow painting and mosaic’s which I enjoy even with ten thumbs. I wrote ‘Bloom’ to honour this group.
I haven’t found it easy to write about myself. But, writing about it in poetry feels like I’m writing outside of myself, freeing me up to release the words. So maybe as I continue, I’ll be able to explore the more challenging parts of my life poetically.
AUTHOR BIO
Andrew Ballard lives in Adelaide. He was a Petty Officer Medical in the Royal Australian Navy for 11 years. He worked for medical companies selling devices and instruments, then as a support worker in mental health and first aid and aged care trainer. Diagnosed with Systemic Macrocytosis, he took early retirement. In 2020, with activities curtailed, Andrew turned to writing and digital art. He has published In quick succession, in the US in the inaugural edition of the New Jersey Mignolo Arts Group’s journal, the New York poetry journal ‘Open Skies’, The Beckindale Poetry Journal and InDaily, Poets Corner.
We live in a world that invites us to plan, develop, strive, grow, improve and make things better on the assumption that we can right all wrongs. We compare today with yesterday when we exclaim — how can such and such still happen? It’s 2021— as though history somehow will deliver — or ought to have delivered us — from ignorance and evil. We tend to use history as a measure of progress. Yet, we play with time to hold it in place.
How long since you just allowed your mind and attention to alight upon anything that took your fancy? Were you able to pay full attention without a guilty voice saying you must be somewhere, doing something? We always seem too busy for stillness.
Even if we are not industriously engaged, we create habits and routines that shore ourselves up with the appearance of being so. As any monastic will tell you, it takes routine — and discipline — to find the time to do or produce nothing with equanimity.
Common Routines
We play with time without knowing that is what we do. For example, most of us move unconsciously through daily routines that cradle us from morning to night, week to week or year to year. If we don’t have behaviour patterns, why do we drive the same way to work and get upset if roadworks block our path? Why do we panic if we miss our regular bus or tram?
We tend to either have a packed lunch or go to a favourite café every day. After work, we go home anticipating what we must do and how others should do things. When our expectations are not met, we are discomforted. On weekends, we patronise our favourite pub or club. Saturdays are religiously dedicated to beloved codes, and Sundays see many family get-togethers. Variations exist, of course, but this is the collective pattern.
Of course, annual events like Christmas, New Year, anniversaries and birthdays are negotiated or fought over. Still, the imperative to celebrate, to mark out those times, remains part of the festive routine that helps us feel like we are part of something bigger than ourselves.
Many of us, especially writers who write about this stuff, get stuck somewhere between the routines of daily living and wanting to be disciplined enough to write a set number of words every day. The need to clean or cook or do household chores makes procrastination acceptable whenever we allow habit or a different routine to prevail over the active discipline of writing at a set time. Most of us struggle with priorities.
Contemplative Routines
I admire those who can live in profound peace with their habits and routines. I first pondered these things years ago in Sri Lanka, where I became fascinated by a grandfather who lived with his daughter and her family in a place where I stayed for a while. The old man took tea (made by his daughter) at the same time every morning, read the paper, then meditated before settling into a day of rumination, alone and in silence, albeit sometimes in the village square. His uncomplaining dignity has inspired me ever since.
Maybe I’ve taken less notice of women. I mean, the Sri Lankan daughter had a domestic routine that included giving her father his tea at the right time. But there is something about these male practices that stand out for me. I think because they occur more often in public spaces.
The practices of bushmen I have worked with and old bushies living in single-men’s quarters are a case in point. Making their first cup of tea bordered on ritual, such was the reverence given to each moment: fill the billy, roll a cigarette, stoke the fire and stare at the embers in contemplative silence until the water boils. My cuppa, when it came, tasted like nectar.
Even in towns and suburbs in various parts of Australia, I’ve noticed men (again), not only the old but younger men, with an early-morning routine of walking to the service station to pick up a pack of cigarettes and the day’s paper. This was during my bush-working years when I filled the SUV tank before heading out.
Habits Become Routines
When I lived for a year in high-rise housing in Melbourne in 2005, I settled into a park routine with doggy-loving souls to walk my dog Lolo every day. The novel I’m writing now, High Rise Society, is based on that time.
Lolo in Aldinga Beach
One man, a Vietnam veteran in his early 70s, always headed to Coles after walkies to buy the paper and a day’s supply of beer. After the evening doggy-walk, he’d settle in to drink himself to sleep. He proudly informed me that he changed his own bed linen and did the washing every Monday at 9 am. And, on the last day of every month, he defrosted his refrigerator without fail.
This man had no family or friends apart from his dog-walking companions. It made sense to me that a solitary person might create a routine to give meaning to an otherwise disconnected life. It is as if having to do something makes one feel needed. The absence of structure leaves humans emotionally adrift, and that can be terrifying.
As she aged, my mother got into the habit of lifting the phone off the hook (no mobiles then) for various activities. It might not ring all week, but Mum insisted it would inevitably do so at mealtimes or when she was taking a shower or having morning tea. She certainly didn’t like surprises or changes of plan, which left her feeling out of control. Vulnerable.
Although I have a daily writing habit, age has commandeered the content.
Turning Inwards
For some, habits might be age or circumstance-induced or sub-consciously selected for comfort or sanity. Our nature may determine how we establish control over our environment. Monks choose an inward journey, and religions of all persuasions provide the monastic context. Monastic discipline forces one to confront fears, guilts and regrets, to come to know ourselves with all our failings.
I’ve always been attracted by silence and recommend the three-hour silent documentary, Into Great Silence if such things appeal to you. A related but far more relaxing look at a Buddhist contemplative tradition in Nepal is the movie Samsara, now on Netflix.
For ordinary mortals, having the discipline to meditate may bring about healing, but like any habit or routine that involves withdrawing from distraction, making time for it requires the same prioritising as making time to write.
Living as we do frenetically outside of ourselves through selfies and self-representations of one sort or another at work and play, we are often distracted to the point that we lose a sense of who we are. Meditation can bring us back into the present moment, which is really all there is.
It’s Like This
In many ways, the world is too big for any of us to comprehend, so we fixate on our trajectories, our beginnings, futures and possible endings. Along the way, we order time to bring chaos under control, and that is called routine. The moral of this story is to enjoy the ride – it is, as they say, the only one we get.
As for me, I like to dream, and this little poem is me. I love to write. I abhor the use of sepia to make things look authentic (as against real sepia photos). I grizzle about everything, but in the end, I come back to a lullaby my father crooned to me called Lula, Lula, Bye, Bye. It always brought tears of love.
If You Love Writing
Do it whenever you want to. Routines are good but not essential as long as you write from the heart. Just dump stuff on the page without that critical editor peering over your shoulder. Cast the editor out, your teachers, mothers, fathers, tell them all to bugger off while you write.
Then sift through your words for the gems. Collect them all, polish them and make them into a thing of beauty for others to enjoy. If you trust the process, they will tell you what you are trying to say. Writing is a bit like painting. You keep changing things until they make sense.
In times of distress, I yearn to be anywhere but here. When I am unwell, confused, depressed or feeling old, my mind takes leave of my body to travel in memory. This is a powerful yearning for people, places and times when I felt love or contentment, more so than daydreaming. Daydreams tend to venture to places full of joy and promise; they speak of a future where trees whisper, gardens are hidden, and a world of humid forests, open plains, wild oceans, and mystical lights awaits. Memory travel is painful in its beauty.
My dreams and yearning often turn into poems. As a child, I dreamed magical waking dreams, but now, my yearning reaches into the past as in this poem about Darwin, one of my three favourite places, including Sri Lanka and the Australian bush. I’ll come back to them all. While yearning can romanticise, as this poem shows, I always seem to find an underside, a twist.
Childhood Exile
As a child, I oscillated between daydreaming and showing off. School to me was a prison that denied the sky, fresh air, sunshine and rain. I spent many hours in a corridor outside my class or at the Principal’s door waiting for a ruler over my knuckles.
At the same time, I was locked out of suburban social life because my parents were hotelkeepers. Few friends were allowed to play at my place. Urban mothers saw hotels as dens of iniquity that enticed husbands from the nest in the days before women were allowed into front bars. (If you remember that!)
I once managed to convince a couple of ‘cool kids’ to join me after school with a promise to sneak them onto the roof of the New Albury Hotel where I lived. I was 10. We climbed the fire escape at the back of the building, and then I climbed over the roof’s parapet and let myself down onto the sixth storey ledge in a dizzying moment of what I hoped would be popularity. Heads peeped over at me, then disappeared, leaving me to climb ingloriously back onto the roof alone.
Ledge unprotected. New Albury Hotel in 1963. We lived there in the early 1950s.
That experience taught me I was pretty much on my own in this world. Most of us eventually come to understand this, one way or another. For me, at 10, I chose to daydream or, as I saw it, to appreciate the life of the mind. I decided to become a writer, a choice already half made by my being a bookworm but one which took me most of my life to fulfil.
The Benefits and Limitations of Old Age
Apart from losing the need to impress others, one good thing about being old is that you have a whole life to run away to. Lots of past to yearn for. It makes sense, really, that the elderly tend to dwell on times when they were fit, in love, happy or meaningfully involved in the lives of others.
As I age, I sometimes cry for my mother, lost son, father and brother, all of whom I loved deeply. I then ask myself what age I was at the remembered moment I’m visiting, only to realise that what I really yearn for is the person I was — the way I felt — when those people were around. With them, I was a viable member of a complete, multi-generational family. I learned that my retrospective tearful yearning is not for them; it is for me. When I’m out of sorts, I miss the vibrant younger person I once was.
Yearning for places is the same. It, too, is a judgement of the present in many ways because the message to self is — I don’t want to be here or thus, in this present moment. I don’t want to be who I now am, but who I used to be. I’d say there’s a lot of that around.
Bear in mind that this yearning overtakes me only when I’m feeling low, which doesn’t happen when I count my many blessings, wonderful children, friends, poetry, writing, and a lovely place to live. And, my wandering into the past brings a renewed sense of what a fortunate life I’ve had.
The Bush
As for places, let me start with the Australian bush. My love for Australia began with the koala my nana gave me, which survived a loss of hair, Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie and childhood reading about the outback. I daydreamed about the outback at school. Then it all became real. I travelled to Oodnadatta in the far north of South Australia after my parents bought the lease of the Transcontinental Hotel there. My novel, On Gidgee Plains, draws on that experience.
Later I was privileged to work as an anthropologist in several states across outback Australia for many years with First Nations People, documenting sites and recording stories. What those people so generously showed me, taught me, and shared brought the landscape alive. I learned of things that, in my day at school, were completely ignored — about the cruel history of this nation. Here is a poem that offers my experience of the bush; a bit of romance and a touch of history tempered with politics.
The bush, the desert, the tropical north all attract my yearning to this day. When I hear crows caw, I see gibber plains under blue skies. I see as if it is still part of me, not in the Aboriginal way — I wouldn’t presume — but in my own way. In memory of who I have been lucky enough to be.
The Tropics
My adolescent daydreams often took me to the tropics. This could have started with The Nun’s Story (1959), starring Peter Finch and Audrey Hepburn and set in what was once the Belgian Congo, a love story where heat, drenching rain and romantic yearning still tug at these old heart-strings today. Or, my love of the tropics may have been inculcated earlier by how my mother spoke of Zamboanga — listen to the romance in that name — in the Philippines on our travels to and from Japan during WWII Occupation.
Darwin
There are so many ways to view ‘the tropics’ and, here, I’ll stick to the Top End. To Darwin, mostly. I went there when my mother gently hinted that it was time I fled the family nest. She took me to Woolworths in Rundle Mall in Adelaide to fit me out in a ghastly green print nylon dress with pleats for job interviews. I arrived in Darwin with ten shillings in my pocket and asked a cabbie to show me a place to live.
I took a room in a boarding house on Cavenagh Street, walked to the government offices the next morning, and landed a job in a typing pool. To my credit, I soon moved from that role to senior secretarial work for the Deputy and sometimes the Director of what was once called The Welfare Department (Aboriginal Branch). There, I learned in the official documents I was asked to type that Aboriginal people were ‘ineducable’ past the age of twelve. Ponder that if you please, it is part of this nation’s history.
I nearly got sacked once for not returning to work after lunch because I had too much fun at The Vic on Mitchell Street (where the mall now is). My Darwin was water skiing. We often skied across the Harbour to Mandorah and back after a few drinks. I learned to ski in Doctor’s Gully when the marvellous Karl Atkinson lived there, an older man who loved to entertain young ladies with champagne on the verandah when the fish came in at sunset. I later helped teach water-skiing on McMinn’s Lagoon with his side-kick.
The Top End
We also skied on Yellow Waters in Kakadu National Park in the days before the idea of a national park gained prominence with the National Parks and Wildlife Legislation Act1975. Few knew about Aboriginal rights in the area back then, despite the long-running Wave Hill Station walk-off in 1966. Not to speak of the longest-running land claim in Australia by Darwin’s Larrakia people, which became official in 1979 but had been running since 1789.
Many years later, I worked in the tropical far north of Queensland, and this poem is a record of donga life in the far north field. (You all know what a donga is, right?) Not so romantic, but true.
The Jewel in My Wanderlust Crown
Sri Lanka. A childhood daydream of hidden gardens and delights fills my heart even now, nearly 40 years on. It brought together my romance with the tropics, late love, my career as an anthropologist and the trials of being a mother of three pre-adolescent children in the field for 18 months. This was not the sub-tropics. This tiny island lashed by two cyclone seasons a year, one from the southwest and the other from the northeast, was the real tropics.
I played tourist the first time I went to Sri Lanka, but it was home to me for the duration of my fieldwork. I loved every moment of that experience. What tore me in two was having to leave when my research came to an end.
Falling in love beneath torrential tropical rain (like Peter Finch and Audrey Hepburn) remains an unsurpassed joy in my life. I was seduced by the Island, its people and Elaris, my Sri Lankan husband, now also deceased. I frequently visit Sri Lanka in my memory when times get tough. A Sri Lankan friend I have kept in touch with recently told me that a poem I wrote last year about the famous elephant processions known as Perahara was anachronistic. That Lanka, he said, in longer exists.
Back Home
My children were equally discombobulated when we got home. Kids teased them at school for speaking in a ‘posh’ (Sri Lankan English) accent as much as Sri Lanka teased us for being Australian-unintelligible. I took a while to settle back in myself. But, we have the beach. A different beach but just as beautiful.
And Glenelg, where I live, has its attractions. It is from here that I escape back to Sri Lanka, the Top End and the bush. And to many other elsewheres, and elsewhens —too many for one little story,
For Those Who Write About Life
Pay attention to your feelings, your moods and sadness. In Tragedy and Despair in Fiction and Poetry, I argued that they are keys to the truth of life. Instead of clutching onto the past as a thing to recover from, try to see what your yearning is telling you.
Question why you remember particular things at particular times. Are there patterns? My bet is you will find them and, when you do, open a page in a notebook or on the computer and start writing. Tell the page what is going on. Or record it on your phone at first.
Once you have written the story, you have something concrete to work with. Like it or not, misery takes us to interesting places. It takes us to original truths, ripe and rich with fine detail that is almost impossible to conjure from imagination alone.
Happy Writing
Wattletales
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED: ‘A Bush Suite’ in Soft Toys for Grown-Ups, Ginninderra Press, Adelaide. 2018
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.: Photo of the New Albury Hotel by Foto Supplies (1963). New Albury Hotel August 1963 (Trove).
I was a country kid brought up in Ceduna on the Far West Coast. I have always said I was born with my feet facing the highway, yet my poem, ‘Going Home for Christmas,’ shows that my idyllic childhood has remained with me and has had a lasting impact on my identity.
On the Road
On a Farm Gate
Ceduna City Centre
I am writing this post in Ceduna. On Monday, I will be doing a poetry reading here at the local library. It means a lot to me to share my poems with the people who watched me grow up and who have taken an interest in my life, even though I went to boarding school in Port Lincoln at the age of 14 and haven’t lived in Ceduna since.
My Early Career
When I finished school, I became a keyboard operator in the Army. Those who know me are picking themselves up off the floor right now! Even to me, it seems somewhat surreal, but it was one of the many experiences that shaped me. It was intended as my way to escape country life, but life in the green beret was not for me. ‘Growing Pains’ really encapsulates my life up to that point.
And, Family
At the age of 19, I married a former national serviceman from Western Australia who hadn’t settled back in Perth. We met at Watsonia Barracks in Melbourne, and, by marrying, I received an ‘honourable discharge from the army only 18 months into my three-year contract.
My first son, Nathanuel, was born nine months after our wedding. His brother, Dylan, was born three years later in Adelaide. I started my BA at Flinders as soon as Dylan started school and ended up doing honours with a thesis on John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, followed by a Dip. Ed.
Nathanual and Dylan
My marriage ended after 19 years. A couple of years later, I decided to make the most of my freedom by living and working in Italy for a year. (Italian was my sub-major at uni.) A short time after I returned to Adelaide, in 1997, I signed a contract with a Thai school and ended up in Thailand for three years.
In my poetry collection, ‘Infinite Connections’, there are quite a few poems from those two periods of my life. Some poems — and allusions in others — reflect my faith and my interest in philosophy, which led me to complete a Master of Arts in Christian Studies part-time (whilst working almost full time)
My adult sons with me at my graduation.
Today, I am back at my old school, Temple Christian College, investing in students. I now teach many children of former 1990s students. In two stints, I have clocked up 20 years with this school.
OId Fascinations, New Life
On December 10, 2020, I decided to start my own publishing house, Benedictus Publishing.
Book launch with old scholars, Simone and Annie.
Months earlier, I put together my first poetry collection, Infinite Connections. As I did that, I realised how many times I had written about the creative process.
Although I have composed poems and songs for most of my life, I remain fascinated to this day by words, ideas and the mysterious creative impulse that drives us to capture and wrestle with them until they resemble something close to our truest thoughts.
In the following poem, I have used an extended metaphor of a journey that reveals, in turns, both the daring and desperation that drives us, capturing that sense of being out of control, as the words go in unexpected directions to unexpected places.
After living with an active imagination all my life, one would think that such fears would have dissipated long ago. But how do we have confidence in something we don’t understand? Something inexplicable. Paradoxically, the art of arranging ‘the best words in the best order’ (as Coleridge described it) seems to be beyond words. Beyond our capacity to explain. In my collection, I have a series of poems that are memos to myself. One addresses the ease with which we slip into self-doubt as writers.
This poem arose despite the epiphany alluded to in the last line; God revealed that I was a poet. I had the experience at a hillside cemetery in Le Cinque Terre during a year I spent teaching in Italy. In that breathtakingly beautiful landscape, I wrote as many as three poems a day. In fact, during my year in Italy, I used my poetry as ‘snapshots.’ I wanted a record of my inner journey, rather than a mere photographic record of the things I saw.
Writers seem to live in a tension between a strong self-belief that they have something worthwhile to say, on the one hand, and the other, the niggling fear that the magic of creativity will, like a pocketful of silk handkerchiefs, suddenly disappear forever. They live in fear that their inspiration will dry up. Words will no longer jostle for attention and urge them to the finish line. They fight with the fear that no one is interested in what they have to say: their unique story, their unique style of delivering it. That surfaced when I was attending a webinar by the poet Leeza von Alpen. As a brain-strain activity, she gave us five minutes to write a poem about being lost in a vast forest. To my surprise, it turned out to be another extended metaphor poem about creativity.
In response to the debilitating doubt expressed in Memo to Self — Fear came Memo to Self — Thoughts, a reminder that imagination will continue to bloom and may even bloom best in the ashes of dead ideas.
One of my favourites is a poetic distillation that never fails to put a big smile on my face. It spurs me on when I think no one cares about the poetic endeavours that are the fulcrum of my days. I offer it as encouragement on those days when being a poet seems like a lonely walk on the highway with everyone sailing past in their big rigs, not even glancing at your upturned thumb.
Sometimes, we poets need to be our own cheer squad! But, even without encouragement, we keep going. We have no choice because it is worth all the hard labour, effort, and pain when we birth a poem. That is the message captured in ‘Gestation Zone.’
I am also fascinated by the sounds of words – perhaps because I am a musician and songwriter. The following poem combines my love of languages’ musicality and imagination’s mystique. Together, they permeate everything I do, including walks, conversations, visits to art galleries, reading, exam supervisions, dreams; it is crouched in the corner of my mind at all times, ready to spring forth at the slightest stimulation.
In this post, I have barely scratched the surface of my ruminations on the imagination contained in my poetry. If you are a writer, I hope you have recognised something of your journey in the poems here that will encourage or sustain you in your work. May they settle the watery world of your mind, to splash in the background, until the next wave of inspiration wells up and crashes into your consciousness, and you begin the wild ride to shore. Ride it again and again and again.
Last but not Least
I thank Lindy for asking me to contribute to her website. I have known Lindy ever since I joined TramsEnd Poets a few years ago. It has been a great privilege to be part of the group and to benefit from their critical appraisals of my poems each month. It was and remains a welcome change to be on the receiving end of the critiques to help me hone my writing skills after giving feedback on my students’ writing for over thirty years.
AUTHOR BIO
I love to visit Ceduna but was not destined to remain there. After school in Port Lincoln, I became a WRAAC recruit in Sydney. I’ve lived in Italy, Darwin, Thailand and now, Adelaide. Three years ago, my adorable granddaughter joined us at 14 months and stole our hearts away. I still teach, but being thoroughly committed to poetry and publishing, I am now on one of the steepest learning curves of my life when others might be retiring. I may be a little eccentric, but I am blessed with a family that endorses my unconventional life choices.
Julie’s Books can be purchased here with poems from this page and more.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: All photographs, poems and text remain the property of the author..
TramsEnd Poets’ reading, The Power of Poetry, in Brighton Council’s lovely Kingston Room on 18 March 2021 was full of unforgettable warmth and energy. We thank Holdfast Bay Library Services for giving our wonderful poets the chance to share their work with friends and library members. Glenelg’s brilliant red heart foreshore sculpture has cast its spell on TramsEnders, and it shone on the day.
Love on the Glenelg Foreshore
Librarian Christine Kennedy, who inspired the event, was so taken with it that she hinted at a possible repeat, perhaps bigger and better, next year. Thank you, Christine, for looking after TramsEnd Poets as you do at Glenelg Library and as you did on this memorable day.
The library’s flier appeared on promotional TV screens, and we thank Holdfast Bay Council for also promoting the gig on its web page. (Yes, that’s Avalanche in the promo)
As TramsEnd Poets founder and convenor, I thank everyone for making this public event so successful. And, to our poets, one and all, thank you for taking the time to contribute not only to the event but also to this page.
About TramsEnd Poets
In its fifth year, TramsEnd Poets meets monthly in the Glenelg Library’s Common Room to share our work and offer rigorous but supportive critique. Many of our poets are published, so the standard is high. For The Power of Poetry, two former members joined us as guests, Ivan Rehorhek (best known as Avalanche), a founding member with me, and Maria Vouis, now a periodical pop-up visitor who agreed to take on the heavy lifting as MC.
Our third guest, commissioned photographer and fellow poet Martin Christmas, kindly agreed to read as well. Like his poetry, Martin’s photography is well known among Friendly Street Poets and others in Adelaide’s poetry scene, and we thank him for all the photos here, except the one of him taken by Nigel Ford (with Martin’s camera).
On the day, each poet read for three minutes, a mix of sad, funny, inspiring and evocative poems received enthusiastically in their diversity. Because an hour of poetry would have been far too much to include here, I asked each poet to submit one short poem and a sentence about themselves to include on Wattletales for posterity.
Poet Pics and Poems Two by Two
Inez MartinezPam Rachootin
Inez Marrasso tells us she finds joy in rhythm and rhyme, dance and song.
Pam Rachootin is a General Practitioner who, as her poetry attests, looks for the humorous and poetic side of medicine.
Nigel FordLindy Warrell
Nigel Ford is a crew-cut-haired, goatee-bearded, tattooed, Harley-riding crime writer who discovered his passion for poetry at 50 and who would turn up to the opening of a bottle of beer even if he wasn’t invited. For more about Nigel and his poetry on Wattletales, click here.
Lindy Warrell (that’s me) writes of random moments and disturbing things, some of which may elicit a chuckle.
If I may interpolate with an observation, the first four poems, eclectically sorted by me, seem to have a commonality that speaks to the human condition, albeit in very different ways.
The next four poems all show reverence for our natural world.
Shaine MelroseVladimir Lorenzon
Shaine Melrose loves to share her daydreams of life and nature through poetry. Read more about Shaine and her poetry here.
Vladimir Lorenzon describes himself as a poet in retirement who enjoys expressing and exploring life in words.
Valerie VolkDavid Harris
Valerie Volk loves to write about people and places she knows, and, with Friedrich Nietzsche, says: Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them. You can visit Valerie’s website here.
A retired engineer and aviator, David Harris likes to write about nature and humanity and explore some things with wry humour. He has published two anthologies.
The last four poems in this wonderful collection are more representative of urban life. Two speak directly of love and loss.
Ivan Rehorek (Avalanche)Maria Vouis
Avalanche tells us that the stories still follow him around or, he asks, is that the other way round? You can read more about Ivan on this site here and also on his website.
Maria Vouis is besotted with dogs, and you can see more about Maria’s doggies here. Her work has been widely published, including in the Newcastle Poetry Prize, SCUM and Canberra Times.
Maria CominoMartin Christmas
Maria Comino has been writing poetry naturally since about the age of 10 but was not aware of the gift it was at the time.
Martin Christmas, the ESP Travelling Showman, ‘channels’ the spirits of his photographic subjects (people and landscapes) to reflect an in-the-moment reality, dramatically or casually, without seeming to have ‘posed’ subjects for the camera. His personal journey is on Wattletales, here.
Final Words
I am so grateful that TramsEnd Poets is made up of such a wonderful bunch of poet-people willing to share their work.
Let me end with this photo of the great audience with whom we shared our poetry at Brighton. That’s me in the distance, introducing the gig as the lovely Valerie flashed on the rolling screen of readers’ photos behind the lectern.
The Power of Poetry in session in the the Kingston Room at Brighton Civic Centre, 18 March 2021.
Have a Go
I normally end Wattletales posts with a writing tip. Today, I’ll keep it brief.
If you have ever yearned to write poetry, the time to start is now —
Write unfettered about a key moment in your life — a turning point or ‘sliding door’ moment. How did that change your life? Write until you naturally come to a stop.
Select seven words that jump up at you from the page, then craft a single line against each of those words and see what happens. (You may need to let go of the meaning of the event you started with but trust the process.)
Don’t worry that it makes no sense; magic will take place if you let it. Take the blinkers off, deafen yourself to the editor in your mind and play with those words and lines. You may surprise yourself.
Over and Out for April
Wattletales
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ESP Travelling Showman, Martin Christmas for all photos used in this piece.
Nigel Ford for taking the photo of our photographer.
Previously Published
‘Jailbreak’ by Inez Marrasso, Inez, in The Champagne Smile (2020)
‘DogKu’ by Maria Vouis appears in Friendly Street’s New Poets 19 (2018)
‘Natural Selection’ by Martin Christmas in Random Adventures, Ginninderra press (2019)
‘Intensive Care’ by Maria Comino in The Desert Speaks: Collected Poems, Thoughts and Dreams (1970-2000)
It wasn’t until I watched Jane Campion’s magnificent 1993 movie, The Piano, which is female-oriented, that I understood that most Hollywood movies are directed to appeal to the male gaze. You can see this in the way cameras invite us to watch women’s faces during sex scenes, often with an odd perky boob poking tantalisingly from beneath a man’s shoulder. Of him, we mostly see muscular backs or buttocks.
A Predatory Gaze
I may simplify, but it is no exaggeration to say there is cultural power in directing a reader’s or an audience’s gaze. Or, indeed, as I show here, to have the gendered or cultural right to gaze with the power to define.
Hollywood mostly gives us life as it is, where women grow up being watched, from happy workmen’s whistles to lusty looks on the beach or in the street. Nowhere is a woman safe from predatory intrusions like objectifying comments on appearance. Yet, we oblige, with our short shorts and bikinis, although such dress modes are also about owning our bodies. They say look but don’t touch. We are not the wild game you seek.
The Gendered Gaze
I was a secretary years ago, and I remember how I’d suddenly become aware of a boss standing behind me as I typed. I’d become short of breath, break out in a confused sweat, and my fingers would go awry, making errors when there were six carbon copies on a typewriter to correct!
Even now!
The presumption that it was OK to stand close behind me at work, a lower male body brushing close to my head, to look — gaze — over my shoulder, was never questioned. Yet it was and is a possessive posture. It is about ownership. It is predicated on a power imbalance that reminds me of my first husband.
Many years later, when I was the executive officer of a prominent health research institute in Darwin, a similar thing happened. A new, male business manager, a colleague, came into my office one day without knocking or saying, excuse me. He walked straight past to stand behind me at my desk and take over a conversation, talking over my head with the people who were there to consult me. Too stupefied to speak, I dithered with shock as I had when younger.
It seems, then, that space, too, belongs to men. We only have to consider the legs wide apart approach to sitting in a plane.
The Effects of a Gendered Gaze
These small events may seem trivial, and yet I remember them clearly after all these years. Such mini acts of ownership are repeated for many women throughout their working lives. Generations of us managed the resulting confusion or outrage by internalising anger, which accumulates as depression.
When 100,0000 Australian women took to the streets on March 15, previously suppressed intergenerational rage erupted in protest against the predatory structures I’ve described that I know are conducive to violence and rape. I am a survivor. The public display of womanly energy uplifted me, and I marched with them in spirit.
Going back to that day in Darwin, I soon realised that the new business manager had been watching me since day one and his early solicitous behaviour masked predatory intentions. He had, in fact, used a form of grooming designed to get me to teach him the ropes. In short, he used me. His deliberate breach of etiquette in my office was intended to signal that I was of no further use to him or consequence in the organisation, which he subsequently nearly brought to its knees.
Being Watchful in Defence
I’ll start in pubs, where I grew up and worked for most of my early life, permanently subjected to the gaze of men, especially in bars where multiple drunken eyes scrutinised me in great detail daily, relentlessly and ruthlessly.
In defence, I developed what I call a ‘quick wit and smart answers’ response, which was supposed to prevent insult or hurt, but the unpleasantness seeped in regardless and undermined confidence over time.
Living in pubs, I learned to read people myself, but I watched in anticipatory rather than planning mode. I later realised that this is how the powerless respond to power in any relationship, to protect themselves.
In a marriage, for example, a wife may anticipate her husband’s needs. Rather than wait for him to shout, ‘where are my keys’ without looking for them himself, she will have them in her hand, ready to hand to him before he leaves for work, to prevent a fight as an aunt of mine used to say.
People who are watchful like this have almost always been subjected to a dominant gaze and its power. It becomes instinctual to anticipate to defend.
The Gaslighting Gaze
But, how do you defend yourself against the gaslighting, that in simple terms, comes with a verbal onslaught that sounds something like this: You are too sensitive / I didn’t mean that / only joking / you’ve got no sense of humour / you always take things the wrong way / what’s the matter with you? / there’s something wrong with you, or you need help. It escalates, of course, to screams of abuse defining you as a nag, fat or stupid, ugly and worse.
Such put-downs are gaslighting’s foreplay as it progressively cuts you off from family and friends and undermines your sense of self. Help, although suggested, is not allowed.
Nobody to play with.
Gaslighting works because it is based on a perpetrator figuring you out, intending to attack where you are most vulnerable. It is deliberate and systematic, hence predatory, eventually undermining a victim’s perception of who they are. I once witnessed my son’s friend’s mother broken and moaning — I am a person. I am a person.
In some ways, the classical ideal of marriage with ‘the good woman’ at home alone with the kids feeds gaslighting tendencies. A house can be a prison.
We must remember, too, that gaslighters are tenacious if you try to escape.
The Anthropological Gaze
Earlier, I mentioned the cultural gaze. Like the gendered gaze, a cultural gaze is predicated on power. The powerful have always defined the powerless. Edward Said exposed this in his groundbreaking 1978 work, Orientalism. Said taught us to see in films, novels, media and academic treatises how the West wrongly constructed an idea of the East, using terms like ‘uncivilised’, ‘the savage’ and so on. The rhetoric is structurally equivalent to the fat and ugly rhetoric in the home. Both dehumanise.
The colonising West dominated and defined half the planet that way. For a long time, the assumed superiority of wealth and whiteness was unquestioned and, often, still is. Among other things, the absence of Christianity elsewhere was enough to deem the ‘other’ uncivilised and in need of conversion or assimilation.
Although we learnt none of this in my day at school, most of us now know that Australia was founded on the Latin notion, Terra Nullius, meaning ‘nobody’s land’. Just imagine being subjected to that gaze, the one which effaced First Nations people from existence — rendered them as nothing but a problem — to legitimise a brutal act of dispossession.
In the Field
While retaining its observer mode, subjecting other cultures and peoples to an academic gaze, anthropology now asks its practitioners to immerse in those cultures to the extent possible in an attempt to understand others on their own terms. To listen and learn, rather than impose interpretations predicated on a dominant Western cosmology.
Sometimes, who watches who in the field can be a moot point, as my little poem below suggests. The day the poem describes was and remains special to me, the more so because of the praise bestowed on me by the white-haired woman who sat beside me.
Still, I think that when an anthropologist is being paid to extract information from someone who’d rather not share it, the anthropologist still holds the gaze. The reciprocal watching, if you like, is more defensive because professional power is institutionalised. Even though we are individuals, as anthropologists, our power resides in our institutional connections, access to funding and affiliations in the wider society.
Becoming Aware
After spending nearly two years in Sri Lanka, I became a Buddhist. I may have mentioned in an earlier post that a monk there once asked me why I was in Sri Lanka. I said that I was doing my PhD fieldwork. His comeback was, no, this is your life path, showing you something about yourself. He was right, although it took me quite a while to realise it.
From Nan Hai Pu Tuo Temple at Sellicks Hill
A precious gift from a Sri Lankan friend
When I retired, I taught Theravada Buddhist meditation for several years in the 2000s and was the Buddhist Chaplain in Oasis at Flinders University for a year in 2012; I think it was. I still meditate regularly.
Meditation and Buddhist readings like Ajahn’s Sumedho’s insightful text, Don’t Take Your Life Personally, have allowed me to clearly identify hierarchy and dominance patterns and let go of many unpleasant things.
In the Theravadin Tradition
This is why I decided to talk about the gaze instead of delving into now-irrelevant detail about the abuse I endured years ago, albeit it does underpin and inform what I’m saying.
On Being Invisible
As women, we become habituated to the male gaze during the span of youth and fertility that, dare I say it, we may miss just a little — after middle age.
In old age, of course, men and women alike become invisible. The cultural gaze turns elsewhere, to the new, the upcoming, and a future without us.
Think About This
Writing uses all of the above in characterisation and in delineating perspective. We do this because it evokes reality for a reader. Mini violations are a part of life and they symbolise bigger things.
In a novel, the primary narrative gaze is given to the protagonist and is called Point of View (POV), and that is where we can make change happen in the world by commenting on wrong things if we choose to.
As I wrote this piece, I tried to avoid too much gender bias, but, in the end, my gaze, my womanly, anthropological and somewhat age-tempered gaze, does dominate. But it leads me to an exercise for you.
Try This
Bring to mind an incident where you felt like the victim. Create a scene with you and the other party having an argument or engaging in some way as characters. Give yourself and that person a fictional name but get writing from your own POV. Be truthful. Nobody needs ever to see your writing. You can have many characters and more than one POV in a novel but for now, stick to yourself and one other person.
When you have finished, reverse roles. Then write the same scene again but with you as the aggressor; assume their name in your mind as you write. In other word, swap roles. When you’ve finished, read both pieces. Compare them.
What happened as you wrote the second version? Was there a flash of insight or a bit of softening towards your aggressor? Sometimes, seeing things from another’s POV helps to come to terms with things. We may never forgive the other party, but we may relieve ourselves of remembered pain.
I remember reading an article about the Zagato racing team when I was about 12 years old. Their vehicle was based on an Aston Martin DB4. Based in Italy, the Zagato company modified many aspects of the vehicle, readying it for a racing career.
Sunset view from my porch in Yankalilla.
It was entered for its first race at the Goodwood racetrack in 1961, driven by the renowned driver, Stirling Moss, who came in a credible third. Moss was knighted in 2000 for his lifelong involvement in motorsport.
Aston Marton Zagato DB4 at Geneva Car Show
Same Car in Goodwood August 1961
I attended many racing events with my father at the Mallala racetrack, about 15 miles from home. Dad was the District Clerk of Owen and a knowledgeable and experienced road builder. Along with the District Clerk of Mallala, my father designed and built a motor racetrack on the recently vacated RAAF base. Hangars and base infrastructure were still intact, so the track wove its way past and around them. They hoped the munitions buildings were carefully emptied.
With this as background, I embarked on the journey of writing a book! Full of passion, I designed my cars with exotic paintworks, loud exhausts, and famous drivers. After about thirty pages, I came to a standstill. I cannot remember if I lost enthusiasm, the storyline, or my father’s reminder that it costs a lot to publish a book that stopped the project. I often think about that manuscript and whether it was readable and wish I could again see it.
Finding My Way
While I had a happy childhood, with holidays in Coffin Bay, during my school years, my reports would say ‘…has the ability but needs to apply himself’ or has the knowledge but does not take tests or exams seriously’.
Coffin Bay South Australia
But, before I left school (in July 1967), I joined the EFS (Emergency Fire Service), later known as the Country Fire Service CFS), and I have been volunteering with them for over 35 years. I have held many positions: Brigade Captain, Group Training Officer, Regional representative on the State Training Committee. And, I was presented with several medals, awards, and accolades.
My Career
My early career was centred around the dairy industry, where I made butter and powdered milk, later overseeing the boiler house. A career change into industrial emergency services lasted 33 years until I retired in July 2016.
I spent a total of forty-nine years in the fire industry! I was a recognised trainer during the early years, developing training material and student manuals specific to various locations. Later I took responsibility for developing emergency plans for fire, security, environment, marine, aviation, preplanning tools, risk and recovery. These plans were for the first responder through to the corporate sector.
Hot pad fire training. All these fires are extremely hot. Night time firefighting has different conditions and risks.
Another significant part of my role was to conduct scenario-based training and exercises (drills). These exercises could be for a group as small as 5-10 persons through to several hundred, including police, ambulance, and both state and federal government agencies.
I was also invited to join teams and committees to develop large scale exercises. In one, the scale was large enough to involve several state premiers who escalated this onto the Prime Minister. Another was the sizeable annual military exercise conducted across several states with hundreds of personnel deployed.
In 2005, I received a bravery award for rescuing a work colleague who had succumbed to horrific burns, a sad and challenging task for a firefighter.
My working life shows that I was often required to author and develop critical documents, all of which received intense, high-level scrutiny (Especially by insurance companies). I enjoyed this technical writing style and the research necessary to deliver a paper of best practice. Continual improvement during document revisions was challenging.
My First Book
My partner’s Father is Marsden Hordern, an author of many books, including A Merciful Journey, Mariners Are Warned and King of the Australian Coast. His maritime history passion earned him an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of Sydney and many other awards.
He spent WW2 in the navy and sailed as a navigator in four of the early Sydney to Hobart Yacht races. He kept all his logbooks and many souvenirs, mementos, and photo collection.
Marsden is a remarkable man, a few weeks shy of his 99th birthday. He is in good health, has a sharp memory and still drives — in Sydney!
Several years ago, Marsden’s children and I urged him to expand his notes into a book. He answered, I am an old man; I haven’t got time for this; I am writing my life story and other submissions for naval journals.
At the same time, he recognised that his notes and collected materials were precious and should be published. The children declined, and I inherited the task! Immediately I thought I would organise his material to make it easier for another person to interpret and turn it into a manuscript.
Then I realised the book needed a lot of other information, so I began researching. Before long, I started writing up notes and began to enjoy the challenge of developing the material into a book; Blue Water Warriors was born and slowly evolved into a manuscript.
On Self-publishing
I realised Blue Water Warriors would not be a best-seller, so I decided to self-publish. That was a big learning curve, along with a financial commitment. After the employee expense account bought an expensive bottle of red wine, the book made a small profit.
I did not completely understand the enormity of the project when I started. I soon adopted the approach ‘…that is possible to eat an elephant, providing you do it one bite at a time’. Determination and commitment are two of the critical tools needed for writing a book. The adventure has made me better educated and wiser.
Once the project was complete, I woke up in the morning feeling lost without any writing or research to do.
What Next?
Another project – But what? I loved reading fiction based on fact (faction), novels by Clive Cussler, Lee Childs and others. I have always been fascinated by the space race. Could I write a story with espionage involved in the narrative? Such a book, I thought, would centre on the USA, so a lot of research would be required.
I soon started a series of novels following a timeline beginning in October 1952. The Genius of Illusions is now waiting for a publisher or an agent to accept it; a problematic process indeed. Both The Master of Illusions and The Maven of Illusions are complete pending a final edit. And, The Maestro of Illusions is about 40% complete.
I am a member of the Australian Society of Authors, Writers SA and several writing groups. Belonging to these groups has expanded my knowledge and enjoyment of different writers and styles.
I now write many short stories, and about three years ago, I wrote my first poem. Here are two recent poems that focus on climate and the weather, making sense in terms of my fiery history.
My Hobbies
My hobbies include my V8 powered MGB roadster, and I have competed several times at the Mount Alma Mile hill climb.
Another pastime is the intricate art of home brewing. With the SA Amateurs Brewing, I have won several state awards, and an Australian title.
And, poetry!
The Journey Continues…
AUTHOR BIO
Craig Harris grew up in regional South Australia and spent happy childhood holidays at Coffin Bay.
After a long career in dairy and mining industries, principally in the outback, his retirement has provided time to research important historical aspects of Australia’s greatest ocean race for his book Blue Water Warriors.
Craig is an active member of several writers’ groups and has been published in several anthologies. Currently, he is authoring a series of novels on Soviet espionage during the cold war era of the space race. He enjoys writing poetry and short stories.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Text, poems and images remain the property of the author.
At 70 years of age, my story is long. Still, it really began after my incomplete high school education, a fitting and turning apprenticeship, a Cert IV as a mechanical technician and senior detail draftsman, a mature aged undergraduate in senior secondary teaching, drop-out, traveller and mentals with hospitalisation before graduating as an English teacher 1987 and taking a pool teacher position in the NT at Tennant Creek, 1989. Whew.
Geoff in Scarf
Last century, Tennant Creek was still a frontier town and its high school both a symbol and home for white children of enterprising parents who’d fled the Australian coastal mainstream with a lukewarm education when they saw an opportunity in gold mining, public service, retail, or education. There I began to cathartically write away the remainders of my encounter with schizophrenia while imbibing and socialising, only to fall under the outback spell — relaxed, distant horizons, blue skies, heat, smashing rain and quietly spoken Indigenous Australians with their damaged lives; Australians, or as Ruth Park noted in The Harp in the South – real Australians.
I wrote this poem later, but it was an experience of those days —
The Alice
Three years in Tennant Creek was enough to have me aspire to the big smoke, and so a transfer to Alice Springs lasted until four years ago when I returned to SA with my wife Jenny while daughter Jess joined us a few years later leaving the only home she’d ever known — for the city.
The Ghan Line
Alice rounded my understandings about the one size fits all blanket of mainstream education. Unlike Geoff Goodfellow (whose poetry I used to good effect) I began to question the whole kit and kaboodle. I read about his struggles to make his way, denied by a system that should have reassured him much earlier. I watched gifted students who’d been dismissive of their teachers, sail onto University and professional lives.
At the same time, most of our cohort found the academic curriculum unsuited to our immediate lives, environment and needs. Yet, a VET-Academic mix was not what employers required, nor did it challenge those mid-range students. The next poem was also written later, but what I describe was evident in the classes I taught and my school life years and years earlier —
First published in ‘Ochre 10’ an Anthology by Ochre Coast Writers, edited by Dr Steve Evans October 2020
A Constant Companion
During those years, with stress, my constant companion stayed only at weekends with drinking binges and conversations that reinforced I was not alone. Jenny’s wonderful meals and social acumen made time with friends who dined and shared their lives with us memorable. So many friendships were created during those years that my mind boggles at the arithmetic. Jessica was growing, schooling, sporting. She was activity minded, and so, the harnessing point for my sanity that didn’t falter. Then in 2006, I sought my second, long-service leave entitlement at half pay to secure a writing space.
Financial security was critical to my move but taking leave on half pay proved impossible with a mortgage and family expenses. So, I approached a colleague at Charles Darwin University for occasional work thinking to use my English language teaching qualification to leverage a casual (VET) lecturing opportunity. That began the story and continues to light my way — daily.
A Different Horizon
I’ve never had a day without thinking about Indigenous injustice and disadvantage. I bought a painting called ‘Calvina’s Class’ by Dr Al Strangeways (Head of Education, Alice Springs campus Charles Darwin University) that sits above my writing station depicting an Indigenous student in a mainstream classroom. It prompted the poem beneath, which appeared in New Poets 19. That part of the story follows.
Calvina’s Class
For six of the next ten years, I was involved with adult Indigenous literacy and numeracy students on community or in organised Alice classrooms. I worked to enable English language and number skills for paid employment. I am unable to include names due to cultural sensitivity. Still, I have a mature view of Indigenous self-determination thanks to those people. Similarly, I seek no homes for the poetry I have written about them, as it is like speaking for a friend or neighbour — I don’t and can’t speak about their need, their pain or their experience — it is not mine to own.
On Country
Community life was not — in my experience — as described by the document released to governments prompting the Intervention although dysfunction due to European colonial abuse was rife; alcohol, gambling, domestic disharmony, school absenteeism, outrageously expensive store food and underemployment pervade the Territory landscape. All this mapped over traditional life preferences.
Halfway northeast from The Alice along The Sandover Highway toward Arlpururulum (Lake Nash).
Yet, while Indigenous men are more than capable of trade-related housing repairs, both local and federal governments insist that tradespeople travel from larger centres at an exorbitant cost that chews up Indigenous funding but blames countrymen for their circumstances, leaving them unfulfilled — all contributing to this picture.
We might well push harder to include Indigenous history of colonial genocide as curriculum areas for exploration and understanding, leading to a more committed reconciliation path.
Namatjira country – even better ‘on the big screen’.
Did you know most Indigenous children speak more than two languages before they enter formal classrooms, but that carries little weight and doesn’t seem to count toward educational recognition or outcomes for esteem, confidence, belief, and achievement — not to mention capability?
From Outback to Urban Life
In 2016 we placed our Alice home on the market for a second time with almost immediate success inviting our return south to recouple with extended family. I had taken to monthly open mic poetry readings in the year before departure at The Totem Theatre on the Todd River banks. That lifted my confidence and belief in poetry, me, and a future writing commitment.
On a February evening in 2017, I wandered into McLaren Vale’s The Singing Gallery and met Julia Wakefield (FSP New Poet 20) and Maria Vouis (FSP New Poet 19), who run the SPIN open mic there. They introduced me to this part of the South Australian poetry scene, and from then, my life has fruited. I have shared my experiences with so many open-eared creatives that I thought I had woken in heaven.
The Totem Theatre – ‘haute couture’ – with ‘open mic’ poetry
I won a place with Maria Vouis and Bruce Greenhalgh as a 2019 New Friendly Street Poet. I am grateful for that acknowledgement and for the support and encouragement from SPIN, Nigel Ford, David and Veronica Cookson and others too numerous to mention. I have maintained Territory friendships relying upon my agricultural scientist mate Roger, who has applied a right-brain eye to my poetry for many years and I always thank my Redback Productions brother who built and maintains Jenny’s and my website.
My poetic epiphany came as an undergraduate while studying Wilfred Owen’s writing. His stark descriptions of a glorious war startled and shocked those back home who had no notion of the slaughter and inhuman environment on those battlefields. Remarkably he denied any acknowledgement for himself maintaining that ‘the poetry was in the pity’. Lesser players have come and gone, although one should seek wisdom in the best literature. Here, I sought humour and social commentary so, British comedy with its warnings about appropriate behaviour that better reward good times has been especially present.
My passion is expressed in the ironies of life, the wry humour I try to find that exemplifies the struggle that life can be. Kurt Vonnegut is still my favourite author though Ray Bradbury invited healthy respect for untrammelled authority when I was young, while Billy Collins is a standout contemporary poet.
And, Now
These days I write and submit to poetry calls (as do my contemporaries), attend open mic readings, read other successful local poets, engage them in conversation. Of course, I continue to share food and wine experiences with anyone keen to take the time.
I have been acknowledged internationally and locally. I take strength in those successes. I am still a newcomer whose minimalist industrial signature often surprises and may confuse editors, readers and listeners who need time to adjust to the brevity. Compact observations require attentiveness and imagination, not always satisfying to traditionalists.
And so, finally —
I have been genuinely fortunate to have Jules Leigh Koch as a supporter, mentor and confidante whose own writing, recognition and advice are inspiring. I also thank Dr Steve Evans, who has been a believer like no other, with words that resonate, target, and diminish my uncertainty. My wife Jenny knows the whole messy but happily resolved story, and I am incredibly fortunate that she is by my side. You, too, Jess – always.
This marvellous opportunity to share my story here was made possible by Lindy’s too kind invitation to contribute – my gratitude, Lindy.
AUTHOR BIO
Geoffrey Aitken is an awarded South Australian poet and retired educator. His debut industrial signature styled chapbook, I want that in writing (Ginninderra Press 2020) was generated from his open mic spoken word poetry. He won a place (of three) in the Friendly Street Poets Anthology New Poets 19 (Rainbow Press 2018). You can find him by visiting https://poetryfeasting.com/ where you can view his poetry credits that include AUS, UK, US, CAN, and Fr. He does not test his poetry on caged animals nor is he after dinner congeniality. His experience of schizophrenia increases his concern about mental health along our avenues.
Beware if you see this bloke around, he’s a poet.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Photos by Geoffrey or Jenny Aitken. Profile image by Martin Christmas. All poems and text remain the property of Geoffrey Aitken.
I grew up with my head in books. I loved them so much it hurt, and they echo in me still. To this day, I read not with my intellect, but my heart and the curiosity I had as a child. I evaluate novels in terms of my attraction to characters and the strength of my wish that the story would go on forever; a salutary lesson for writers right there.
I remember conversations at university where people overwhelmed by status imperatives declared before they dared open a book, ‘oh, there’s so much I have to read’. When I replied that I read what I like, it was as though I’d farted in public. Truly.
Books speak to me through their themes and settings which attract me in an almost mystical way. I tingle with recognition when I find something I know I’ll enjoy. Of course, I check out what’s around, but when it comes to conscious selection, if anything, I am an author fan. I pre-order books by writers who take me on a journey. That’s it. The minute I see a writer showing off on the page, I’m gone.
Reading remains for me, a visceral activity. I’ve never read a book twice unless, as with academic texts, for comprehension. Nor do I feel shame if I don’t finish a book, unlike one of my favourite Australian authors, Richard Flanagan. Nor do I judge the many unread books around me as good or bad. I am a simple soul who knows when something is not for me.
An Aside
Of the great number of books I’ve read in my long life, I have chosen only a few to mention here because, despite some perceptible patterns, this post is about how and why I read, not what. My question to you is this; do you read like me?
Books that Grew Me Up
Like most girls of my era who grew up without television, I imbibed Enid Blyton’s Secret Five and Secret Seven books (later banned for 30 years for being racist despite selling 600 million copies in 90 languages). Boys read Biggles.
Blyton instilled in me a love of mystery and adventures that included girls. Yes, Enid Blyton’s heroes were mostly boys, but that’s the way life was when she wrote, and it was the way my generation expected it to be. It was the 1980s before I realized that life was up to me alone!
In fact, in my 20’s in Darwin, I taught water-skiing for a guy with a boat and an outboard motor and yearned to join a yacht sailing to South Africa as one of an all-female crew for a male skipper. I had no inkling I could ever own a ski boat or sail my own catamaran around the world, with an all-male crew.
Nowadays, girls like Aussie teen Jessica Jackson in 2009-10, can navigate the world solo in their own yacht. (She now features in a 2020 Netflix biopic.)
Stories are Living Things
Stories belong in time and touch those of their time. Even today, an author’s success comes from speaking truth, present yet inchoate in the populations they address. This explains why books echo in us. Of course, we read to learn. But we also affirm or transform who we are in our emotional refraction with a narrative.
Most of us choose to read what we already like. If you have a penchant for ancient civilisations, you will read such books as did my brother. If like me as a child, you are bewitched by an idea of the Australian bush, well, go no further than Mary Grant Bruce. Back then, nobody knew that her work would later attract controversy for racial stereotyping. Nor did I then know anything about her belief in the now-debunked theory of Social Darwinism.
If Bruce answered my romance with the bush, earlier, May Gibbs bewitched me with Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie, her little gumnut babies and their struggle with Big Bad Banksia men. I feel a nominal kindred with Gibbs too. Like my mother, my middle name is May, after my maternal grandmother of Gibb’s generation; May Evans nee Woods.
Mae Gibbs 1918
May Gibbs has a top spot in my heart, and I was thrilled to read just now, as I searched for a link to include here, that she once said, ‘It’s hard to tell, hard to say, I don’t know if the bush babies found me or I found the little creatures.’ Wow!
In passing, I must add that my favourite fairy tales were those of the Brothers Grimm, especially Rumpelstiltskin, which terrified me probably because I was blonde.
Youthful Attractions
During my early 20s in Darwin, I lived in the library as I had at school. Its two levels of book-lined shelves in an old colonial stilt house drew me in. The bound promises and secrets it held bewitched me, taking me on an adventure from a single room in a government hostel and life as a stenographer to Aldous Huxley and his father, Sir Julian and beyond.
Nearly 60 plus years later, I can’t remember which Aldous Huxley books I read apart from Island and Brave New World or whether I fully understood them at the time. However, I still thrill at their memory. Aldous Huxley invited me to step beyond my own small life. He took me to tantalizing horizons I’d never imagined. Sir Julian was my first brush with the philosophical theory, Humanism. Being of a more spiritual bent, I read only one of his books.
While the Huxleys introduced me to notions that heightened and expanded my curiosity, I also discovered Fyodor Dostoevsky in those formative years. My favourite book of his was The Idiot.
I reckon this early exploratory reading fits with who I’ve become, with my somewhat depressed leftie and philosophical outlook on life, despite the wicked influence of Enid Blyton and Mary Grant Bruce. Don’t you?
Once an Anthropologist…
As I said in An Accidental Life, anthropology opened the door to magic for me. I experienced that discipline as coming home to myself, even as it took me to other worlds. An important byproduct of my tertiary study was the discovery that there are no definitive answers in life. New questions constantly arise, stretching and pulling one on and on.
I learned from so many remarkable scholars whose ideas are now part of who I am, how I see, interpret and understand. Here are just a few of my favourites.
Michael Taussig (1995)Mikhail Bakhtin (1982)Michel de Certeau (1988)Martin Heidegger 1927 (1996)Cifford Geertz (1988)Mircea Eliade 1949 (1974)A Gaggle of Gorgeous Books
All these writers, philosophers and anthropologists alike, gave me a love of learning. I fell in love with their loftiness of vision and innovative ideas. They brought me down from hard-fact kinship diagrams and other theoretical abstractions to real people and helped me understand other people’s ways; in their terms.
Eliade and Heidegger illuminated non-linear conceptions of time. Michael Taussig, my favourite Australian anthropologist, exposed the pulsating nature of social life, which he describes as a nervous system. In earlier works, he revealed that criticisms of the danger of native peoples by those trying to control them are false. Taussig argues that such colonial portrayals did not describe reality. Instead, they reflected the colonial fear of darkness itself — what a marvellous lesson.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin thrilled me with his notion that the world is ‘aswarm’ with words, and each time we speak, we select; each utterance creates something new. Language, in other words, is a living, creative thing, not a grammatical structure. He also showed how the novel changed from static classical tales of heroes who emerged unaffected by ghastly wars and woes to stories about characters who change because of their travails. The latter is his definition of the modern literary novel.
Just as a character changes in a novel, texts belong in the world, not above it, in some eternal and unchanging fashion. Like us, they change in meaning as they are engaged by readers who are similarly socially situated. The world of words is a two-way process.
Michel de Certeau explores how we walk the city, illustrating how we map our personal city as we traverse it. To me, this is iconic with Bakhtin’s notions about words; in life, we choose our own paths, from a trillion possibilities to create our own meaning. We create maps that we construct and reconstruct as we move around. Like social language, meaning is always in motion.
I met Clifford Geertz once, in Hindmarsh Square’s Jasmin Indian restaurant. We sat opposite each other at a long academic table, in a two-person bubble, sharing our distaste for loud voices and false laughter. A prodigious writer, Geertz confided in me that he wrote 300 words a day, not more, not less. In his image, I set my daily word goal at 500, which reminds me of him each time I reach my target.
Geertz’ work on Balinese cockfighting is a classic and a great read that will remain on syllabuses forever with his wonderful lyrical prose. But I loved Works and Lives because it strips all mystique from theory. One way or another, he argues, all writers, including renowned philosophers, write from their biography. Theories in philosophy, the arts and linguistics, are not as rational as we have been led to believe. No theory is culturally innocent.
Back to Novels
I have read so many books over the years but remember only a few, like The Herries Chronicles by Hugh Walpole’s six books of a family saga that I could not put down. The last book in the series is entitled Vanessa, and at 19, when I read it (borrowed from the Glenelg Library, which has barely changed), I vowed I’d name a daughter Vanessa, should I be lucky enough to have one. And I did!
Jumping to my university years, when I’d already fallen in love with South Asia through study, I snuggled into my flamingo pink armchair one winter with Vikram Seth’s story, A Suitable Boy, set in India. (It recently came out on Netflix). I did the same thing, albeit in a different chair and house, with The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. Who could resist books with names like The Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street?
Seth taught me so much about the Partition of India and Mahfouz, the history of the Middle-East. But, by the story-magic of their writing, I lived, cried and loved in those places for a while. As authors, they took me on journeys that inhabit me now.
Another somewhat different love came with Patrick Suskind’s disturbing, humorous and oh! so intelligent novella, The Pigeon. A book about an ordinary man who locks himself in his room to brood (sic). One day he opens the door to a pigeon which terrifies him with its red eyes and legs. When I dismantled my library, I kept a copy because it reminds me of the proximity of madness in us all. I love that.
The Pull of Poetry
I was inattentive at school (outside the door a lot), but I met poetry at childhood elocution classes which I liked. Despite having to walk back and forth with a stack of books on my head for good posture (leading to a good character they said), reciting excerpts from TS Elliott’s, ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and William Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’, my love for those poems is ineradicable.
One of my favourite poets is Michael Ondaatje and his sensual poem, ‘The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife’ in The Cinnamon Peeler. Another is Australia’s own Judith Wright and her Birds, beautifully illustrated with images from the National Library of Australia Archives. Both poets clearly wrote from the heart; their lives, loves and experiences are in every poem.
Michael Ondaatje 1989 (1997)Judith Wright (2000)
By giving me Australia in poetry, Judith Wright belongs in the same parade of my beloved figures, May Gibbs and Mary Grant Bruce. Ondaatje stands in succession to my love of Sri Lanka, where I researched traditional rituals of the Goddess Pattini and Buddha for my PhD. My heart is never far away from a place when I read.
How Books Make Me
A week or so ago, I watched Michael Portillo’s railway adventure through Sicily. I cried. It wasn’t a sad show. Indeed it explored Sicily’s fascinating history but, although I’ve never been there, I adore Sicily because, during my undergraduate years, I studied the decline of its classical land tenure system, the latifundia, and the early emergence of mafia to fill the void created by absent landlords.
Sicily’s bleached atmosphere, pale stone buildings, bright sun, and industrious people overwhelmed me on the page. Years later, I fell in love again with Sicily on television, watching Sicilian Inspector (Salvo) Montalbano, a marvellous character who sprang from author Andrea Camilleri’s pen. Thus compounded in my heart between word and screen, Siciliy lingers as the love of a place I can only imagine.
We are what we love. What we love, we become. This makes reading transformational, a view I seem to share with some pretty famous writers. Click here for their words.
Writing Tip
It won’t surprise many people that writers, playwrights, artists and film-makers use books as props to convey a character’s nature. But, have you ever thought of examining yourself in these terms. What does your reading say about you?
When I taught life writing, I’d often ask people what their favourite fairy tale was and then identify an aspect of themselves that resonated with it. It was a revealing exercise so give it a shot.
You don’t need to work with everything you’ve read, just those books, poems or stories that jump out at you when you sit down to write. As always do one thing at a time; one movie, book or poem.
When your collection grows, find commonalities, themes, points of divergence or similarity and ask, is that me? How did this or that reading change you, make you?
The mere thought of considering ‘my writing life’ conjures a whirlwind of possible angles and the word ‘my’ is a special concern since it could be an excuse for all sorts of vanities. It’s claimed that every writing act is to an extent autobiography, that the author is always present, even if faintly. I like to take an oblique approach, even a slightly absurd one, at times. Is that the real me? For better or worse, then, here we go.
A Reading in 2015
For me, meeting a good poem or narrative is like walking into a theatre that might seem small at first but then keeps on opening wider. Maybe that’s why stories captivated me early on as a kid. I indulged as a listener and then a reader and, eventually, as a writer, trying to work out the best way to effectively corral words in poetry and prose. It was rewarding but also frustrating.
Encounters with Stories at Home
My mother read to me at night until I was about five years old. She’d eventually leave me to read on my own in those precious last minutes before my light was turned out. Some nights, radio serials drifted through our small SA Trust Home in the mid-north country town of Kadina as I resisted sleep. At breakfast, there were more, such as The Hopalong Cassidy Show. Perhaps it helped that we had no TV until a few years later. (Yes, I’m that old!)
As a charity shop volunteer, Mum could bring home children’s books, plus British motorcycle magazines (maybe why I’ve ridden bikes for 50 years) and comics, which I devoured. My parents bought a small encyclopedia set, and I’d sit with its red and green volumes for hours when I was six or seven. My younger sister and I would also make up adventures involving our few toys (we probably only had two or three of those each): another chance to create plotlines and develop character interactions, even if rather simple.
In the country towns of that era, parents sometimes bought an old car for their backyard so their kids could play in it. I think it reflected what happened on local farms, where abandoned trucks and cars might sit for decades. My neighbours bought a big, black 1940s Dodge with a curved roof where my friend Glen and I would take stationary trips to cities, beaches, and wherever our imagination desired. Seeing this, my Dad acquired a little Singer two-door of similar vintage for our own yard. Again, it was a car that would go nowhere yet everywhere.
Our stories took us beyond our small world — until our curiosity brought us to wondering what would happen if we shattered the front windscreens of both vehicles. The cars were promptly removed, and so were the long imaginary drives, but the stories survived in our conversations as if they’d been real.
A Life Near the Sea
I was always a sea-side kid. Swimming and fishing were constant parts of living in coastal towns, and I often went out in our small boat or to the local jetty with my father. Fortunately, he was patient with me and my frequent fumbles.
More Books, and School
When I was eight, we moved to Port Lincoln, and I quickly came to love the public library. I was ravenous for books and quickly moved beyond my nominal reading age. Mum bought me Biggles books and similar works, but the library had more mature material that I craved, and she was happy to let me borrow it. None of my friends could be much bothered with books, though, which was pretty understandable given the other temptations — riding our bicycles, swimming, tree-climbing, and so on.
That year, I wrote a story for a school assignment, making its subject a noble soldier in a tale informed by limited understanding of the American Civil War I’d gleaned from a library book. My teacher showed it to the other teaching staff and marked it as 10+6 out of 10. That was it. I had already fallen in love with words, both their delights as vocabulary and in storytelling. Now I thought I could actually write too.
We change but stay the same
In addition, when I was nine, my teacher, Mrs. Huppatz, read some poetry to the class (by Banjo Patterson, I think) and asked us to write our own. I can still remember the thrill of composing my poem that night, sitting cross-legged on my bed with pencil and paper.
After that, I wrote stories and poems in growing numbers. I dived into editing and writing for school magazines and at the beginning of my final school year, in Port Pirie when I was 17, I wrote a novel without stopping to think that I might not know what I was doing. I have no idea where that went or even what it was about.
An Unexpected Change, with More Writing
In Adelaide afterwards, studying a BA was my excuse to widen my reading and to connect with the poetry scene, including public readings. The latter bloomed in late 1975 with the emergence of the Friendly Street Poets.
By that time, I was on a different course. Plans to be a teacher had been shelved through illness, and I had picked up clerical work in an accounting office, where they insisted I study accounting, funnily enough. So began 20 years in a field I’d never intended, completing three tertiary courses, including a Bachelor of Economics.
Although my career was in commerce, I was writing and publishing poetry and the occasional short story, and stayed connected with Friendly Street. One of my best memories was being part of a Festival reading and looking into the audience to see Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Alan Ginsberg. My first book, Edison Doesn’t Invent the Car, was published; then Algebra, and others.
The Launch of Easy Money
Backed by an Arts SA grant, I returned to places where I was raised in order to draft a collection, Bonetown, later shortlisted for the national John Bray Poetry Award. Its poems are partly about living by the sea and country town life. I rode my Suzuki 1100 for the research trip with a bag strapped to the back (which I lost for a while) and stayed in cheap hotels and motels.
A highlight was 2:00 am in my Whyalla hotel after the local apprentices’ awards night. They let off fire extinguishers, jumped from the balcony onto the roof of a police car, banged on my door, and broke into the bar despite it being locked behind a thick metal partition. There was also the steel-works’ pollution evident in the street. I got poems out of both.
A Soulmate, and No More Accounting
The next big change in direction in my life was twofold. Firstly, I attended a master class run by the wonderful Dorothy Porter and there met Kate Deller. I was single again at the time but kept my distance out of shyness. That didn’t last long as our paths crossed at the Friendly Street Poets readings. Secondly, a while after we had moved in together, Kate pointed out that the University of Adelaide was to begin an MA in Creative Writing. We devised a budget to carry us through a study year and, with her encouragement, I quit accounting.
At the end of that year, I lucked a contract job at Canberra University teaching creative writing. I finished my MA remotely and then won a full-time job university job back in Adelaide where I completed a PhD on narrative, and a teaching qualification. Now I was in my element — teaching, writing, and researching. I even got a gig as editor of the creative writing section of an international accounting journal, which I still have after 20 years!
Since then, I’ve published more books of poetry and one of short stories, hundreds of reviews and editorials, and many individual poems. I edited some of those books with Kate, who fell ill and passed away in 2016 (herself an author/editor of some 15 books by then).
I left full-time work at that time and currently focus on writing and running courses in the community, recently with Maria Vouis, about life writing. I have several new poetry collections and novels smiling hopefully at potential publishers, and more manuscripts in the works. I received a grant to research the most recent novel in Bordeaux but COVID-19 put paid to that. Still, that novel is finished.
What I Like
I especially value originality in writing, whether mine or others’. I’m disappointed if it flat-lines. Formulaic plots, diatribes, polemic rants, gushy sentiment, and chest-beating, or timid observations commonly lack enough artistic effect. A bit pompous, Steve? Well, it is a matter of personal taste, I know, so there is that ‘horse for courses’ aspect. Others may beg (demand?) to differ, but I want a poem, for instance, to take an unexpected turn and offer a new way of seeing, a twist.
What else? Clarity. You can’t establish a fruitful contract with the reader if you’re speaking Martian or droning or being obscure. I’m not talking about what some call ‘difficult’ poetry. That’s a debatable term. I believe a writer is entitled to expect the reader to do some work and not have everything handed to them in the plainest language or terminology and not to be lazy or opaque.
Readings: L at Wakefield Press R in Canberra
Then there’s the breath of a poem. Each poem creates its own rules or expectations for how it is best read, but you neglect the importance of pauses, rhythm and sound at your peril. Breath might arise from form, or word length, or punctuation, or where a line breaks, and it can make all the difference. Reading aloud tells you so much about whether a poem can be improved in this regard.
Trying to get these aspects right is part of the beauty of language, especially poetry, which has kept me hooked for decades. I’ve written, co-authored, or edited some 18 published titles now. I’ve also had the pleasure of editing a number of manuscripts where you don’t see my name on the cover. I selfishly look forward to a bit of magic in every new piece I read. I guess I’m in this writing lark for good, as a reader and a writer.
AUTHOR BIO
Steve Evans was Director of the Creative Writing Program and also Head of English at Flinders University for several years. He now runs community writing workshops.
His own writing includes general adult fiction, romance, detective fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Major prizes include the Queensland Premier’s Poetry Prize and a Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship, and he has written or edited 18 books. Easy Money and Other Stories was launched in 2019.
Steve is also a reviewer, literary editor for an international journal, and has been on the organising committee for a number of literary festivals and arts panels.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Text, poems and images remain the property of Steve Evans.
