Home and straight into a sarong.
Refresh the wet cloth around my neck.
Book-launch venue double-checked.
Legal deposit copies posted. Bit by bit.
Earlier today I phoned my pal Frankie.
She listened to me wail awhile,
then said: ‘What’s working?’
Ah! Quite right. So much is.
The world, or this part of it, hots up.
At the same time, my book launch date
hurtles closer, with so much preparation
still to do. Is it any wonder I’m in a lather?
In dealing with – I assure you,
very justifiable – frustration,
do NOT go out and buy a big
bottle of whiskey, or whatever else
you regard as excellent tipple. If
you do – and even if you don’t –
do NOT hurl blunt objects against walls
with crashing force. Do NOT scream
your rage so piercingly loud that
the neighbours call the cops. Take
Rescue Remedy. Watch something
mind-numbing on telly. Write a poem.
Write a poem so fierce and sly, it will
bite the heads off your enemies! Er …
let’s start again …
Re-reading poems by people I once knew
and loved – how sad / how sweet.
Where are they now, those friends –
those from whom life parted me so long ago?
Not everyone got lost along the way –
but we are all ageing.
If I am in my end times, still let me savour
those memories, those good words!
My treasured 41-year-old copy of the first edition. Intense editing and proof-reading for a new edition makes me appreciate all over again what bloody marvellous poems are in this book!
We never once kissed on the lips, I remember.
I mentally shrug, thinking it matters little now.
It was forty-odd years ago, I’m eighty-three.
‘That no longer hurts,’ I assure myself, ‘not when
I weigh it against all the lasting things we did achieve’ —
then suddenly I’m engulfed in anguished sobs.
Typing, typing, typing, typing, typing.
I come to some lines of my own
in the book I’m transcribing
and pause to remember the feelings
which prompted them, and
the particular occasion — long ago
and well remembered. Where are you now,
friends who were with me then?
Preparing an old book for republication,
a collection of poems written from a place of pain,
I confront again the sufferings of those writers, my friends.
I run away often into light-hearted movies on Netflix,
or romance novels that always have happy endings,
or wine, or chocolates, or cuddles with my cat.
But then I return to the task. If they were strong enough
to live those things and write of them truthfully,
I can continue to honour and share their words.
Image: cover of an anthology of poems written from workshops conducted in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne, 1981-2.
As the official publisher (also one of the contributors, as visiting/tutor poets were invited by the prisoner poets to submit our work too) I am issuing a new edition, to be launched simultaneously with my memoir about coordinating those workshops, Breaking Into Pentridge Prison. Because the original volume of Blood from Stone is over 40 years old and pre-digital, with uneven print quality, the preparation has involved retyping every word.
I'm sharing this with Poets and Storytellers United for my own prompt at Friday Writings #72: Writing About Writing. Writing about other people's writing is maybe not quite on topic, but still....
