As the title says.
*****
perfect relationship
when my parents retire
dad wants to live in darwin
mum in cradle mountain
mum says they’ll meet
for a month in the middle
(in our country’s
so-called dead heart)
every five or so years
& it’ll be the perfect
relationship, lol
Whichever way you spin it, today was a good day. As an earlier post stated, it was the first day of my Poets Residency at Adelaide City Library. For three hours I was paid to be a poet, paid to interact with the public and talk poeting, and paid to write poems.
Today I am spoiled for choice (I wrote several title poems today). Today is also the day of my first truly solid poem.
I chose, as the clever among you may have worked out, to use the 2016 Miles Franklin Longlist titles as the basis for my Title Poem today. The longlist was announced yesterday and the titles are all glorious. I defy anyone not to write a good poem using them. However, to be fair, I was the most lax/playful/non-rule-bound today of any Word Game so far this NaPoWriMo. & so …
Australian pastoral
the hands that work the earth
know the natural way of things
of the never coming rain
of the hope we farm
this burnt black rock
so far from the white city
the river’s a ghost, the creek salt
where fish no longer leap
these dirty hands know
the world will go on, without us
…
..
So yeah! Pleased with that. That is pretty much an archetypal roi jones kinda poem.
Tomorrow will be a new game for a new week.
Here for those interested, is the full list. Look forward to reading them…
Tony Birch for Ghost River (UQP)
Stephen Daisley for Coming Rain (Text)
Peggy Frew for Hope Farm (Scribe)
Myfanwy Jones for Leap (Allen & Unwin)
Mireille Juchau for The World Without Us (Bloomsbury)
Stephen Orr for The Hands: an Australian pastoral (Wakefield Press)
A.S. Patric for Black Rock White City (Transit Lounge)
Lucy Treloar for Salt Creek (Pan Macmillan)
Charlotte Wood for The Natural Way of Things (Allen & Unwin)
& a link to a Sydney Morning Herald article about the announcement.
This is either the 3rd or 4th poem I’ve completed today (all about Anzac / WWI). & while I like the others, I’ve chosen to go with this last hour composition because it kinda has an edge the others don’t — even if my sounding board is unsure about its poesy.
*****
recipe for the world’s best Anzac biscuit
Ingredients
1 cup rolled duty
1 cup raw recruits
1 cup plain patriotism, sifted
¾ cup desiccated Colonialism
125 g adventure, melted
2 tablespoons Golden Age of Innocence
½ tsp bicarb of courage
3 tablespoons boiling anger
Method
Preheat the society to 40+ degrees. (Denying climate change will help here. Note: If your society is fan forced, it’ll escalate quicker.)
Line your history books with a bunch of lies & mythos.
Place the duty, colonialism, patriotism & recruits in a bowl, stir with wooden rhetoric to combine. Melt the adventure & golden age of innocence in a melting pot over low heat.
In a separate bowl, combine the courage & boiling anger, then add this to the adventure/golden innocence mixture. It will probably foam up & increase in size. That’s good. Pour this foaming mess into your dry mix & stir.
Once it’s all combined, use a tablespoon to drop mixture onto trays, spacing them about 20 years apart.
Bake for 100 years or until golden brown — just kidding, it’s gotta be mostly white. Sometimes if your society looks like it’s running out of recipe, you need to rotate the trays in the 70’s, then add some carefully sprinkled jingoism in the 90’s so you get an even bake.
Leave biscuits to cool on beach about 8 months before transferring to other racks to cook & cool in different places — France is good, as is the desert, the jungle.
Store in an old biscuit tin that your grandma gave you. They’ll last months. Try not to scoff them all within the day.
Finally, please do not share them with anyone offshore. We don’t do that anymore.
Codicil: They really are delicious. And there’s nothing wrong with eating them, enjoying eating them, telling others you’re eating them — just try & understand the reasons why you are.
*****
gareth roi poet boi 