It’s Still a Secret Venue
Last Saturday August 2nd, Brisbane, was an interesting but long day of concentration which, for me, started at 1 pm, with a lunch time meeting with a dear friend poet, Alex, who was also going to be attending a poetry workshop with Victoria Kennefick, David Malouf Poet in Residence. We were having a long overdue catch up. We spoke about how our lives were and of course creative matters.
One of the major topics Alex and I spoke about was dealing with life long household clutter of relatives and sorting it out for the people we love, and another was about experiences in education, my placement and her work as an educator for students bridging into higher education. I often find myself wanting to make notes after we have chatted as she is such an enriching human being. We then both headed off to the workshop, which began at 2.30.
Portrait of Alex
The workshop, of around ten poets, with Victoria was about confronting and writing what we most fear. We then did some explorations of Irish poets as Victoria felt a bit like an ambassador for Irish poets, visiting Brisbane Australia. (She thanked me for letting her know about a multicultural lantern parade which she had gone to). She gave us the opportunity to write and optionally share what we had written as well as to read the poets she had selected aloud. There were some Irish background, now living in Australia writers, in the workshop.
One of the exercises was about not editing what was free flowing out of us, and not censoring it, for fear of consequences, but just writing it. This piece was not necessarily something to share, but to explore our fears and intentions in writing. At the end of the session at 4.30 (after 4 -5 activities and a forage in the Writer’s Centre kitchen/tea room, where there were some welcome refreshments of cake and sandwhiches) we all had some writing we had done to take home and work with, along with a set of poems to read, from Yeats, Kavanagh, Heaney and Boland. We were encouraged to branch out and read more than was in the pack we had been given, perhaps of the poet who might have appealed or challenged us in some way.
W.B Yeats
We were encouraged to use phrases or words from their works to explore ideas, which were explorations of conflicts and tensions within the poets work. Next session we will begin with some of the works we may have written, and edited, or new ones created.
I always love the anecdotes that relaxed and confident workshop leaders throw into such situations, and Victoria let us know about an early encounter with a picture of WB Yeats which led to her wanting to know all about him, and how he was a hero, but then a more enigmatic figure later, who she both loved and hated, who was a man who feared abandonment. Yeats also has several poems with swans in them including one utilising the myth of Leda and the Swan (which needs trigger warnings on it, for those who may have suffered assault).
At 5 pm mostly the workshop poets, and Victoria, plus LJ and Sandra and a friend of one of the other poets met at It’s Still a Secret, which I have chosen to represent through a free form poem here.
The following is a free flow piece, written in response to attending an open reading at a pub called, It’s Still a Secret. I should note that last week, on Thursday I had a 30 minute scheduled chat with Victoria about one of my poetry projects. After that really inspiring conversation I went home and created a number of collages (scroll to the end of the article to see one) and looked up a poet she reccomended.
It’s Still a Secret Venue
Open Reading
At It’s still a secret
while it rains on the verandah with the swan
& after it stops
under the threaded tree lights
the lamp post heater takes us through a portal
between Australia and Ireland
we feel the power of story & words
& why rhyme & metre for some
are the best way to write & read
poems.
& others need freedom
in lines that free fall & slide
extending metaphors
like pin points of light
sign posts to spasms of pain.
Some reach into specificity
to unfold the universal
lost children, magic of childhood, lyrical trees
blood, bones, bestowals.
But it has to be more than the beauty of sound
more than the cleverness of metaphor
& the turning of meaning
& the killer Sylvia Plath line or
perhaps Yeats, Kavanagh,Heaney & Boland now.
As a poet
I am sifting through my life
so many moments
What will my net catch?
Is it the moments that itch, scratch
burn & scar
into purposeful tatoos...
It’s then I realise from this night I will
remember the story that LJ told
of the writers who still like to use typewriters
and send them for repairs
like David & Yvette
& the phones that become torches for the poets to read by
& how Sandra holds up a phone so I can
read a poem about my mother
crying for one of her lost sons.
Do I have to make small holes in myself
or large ones to find the things
that resonate with readers?
Does a Bird of Paradise headstone mean more
than it seems?
Is vulnerabililty where connection thrives?
I think about the black swans of my childhood
always by ponds
looking into them more deeply now
they are murky & green
& swans might just bite you!
Is it just about resonating with others?
Is freedom the same for everyone who writes?
Do we write for ourselves or for our communities or both?
Am I an Australian, woman, Pasifika - diasporic poet?
Am I all these things? Shape shifting in the moment.
When I write for my children
What is my goal?
Do I give them a small piece of legacy
a trail back to their grandparents
that I never fully had?
My children have grandparent stand ins as
we feel we have to live so far away from the complications
of extended family
I think of Pam at grandparents day for my daughter
& her crocodile farmer husband
who takes us out to see crocodile eggs
how I was able to hear their love story & videograph it
How I can pass my love story & that
of my parents to my children?
Pathways to love
family
patterns broken, patterns remade
still to break
Can I be more specific
speak of the monster on my back?
I write a poem about my mother telling me not
to take the Lord's name in vain & nuns that constrain
about losing the brother I once knew to brain injury
& finding a new one who decorates gumboots
& knows how to smile.
The more you learn of craft
the more you can lean into.
Before I made my own patterns,
I studied patterns,
walking a maze of creativity
until I felt centred.
Sometimes you realise
it's time to throw away the brushes
& finger paint poems
remembering why
in the portrait of the inner child
touch of blue gritty sand
in your hands.
(c) June Perkins
(c) June Perkins.
This collage, is in response partly to The Stolen Child, by Yeats. I have a few other pieces in response to that.
I continue to write this blog to my future self as it is one of the many resources I now know I can turn to as I prepare my first contracted book. Keeping it reminds me to record things as they happen, not just as I remember them and filter them through time.
I don’t always put everything on my blog as some things need to remain private, but I do try and journal that more often, in case I need to find a poetic or fictional way to tackle it.
My blog also is my mandala …
June Paisa Perkins 