Unley Council Area

I had this idea a while ago of writing a haiku for every suburb of Adelaide. Then I realised that there are 400+ Adelaide suburbs. Big project. Maybe some of you would like to join me – split Adelaide into 4 or 5 or 6 and make it a bit more manageable.

I did however get as far as writing a haiku for every suburb in the Unley Council area, where I live.  Here they are:


        -

Deepest Black Forest

Where a nice slice of gateau

Waits in each kitchen


-

Charming Clarence Park

Its Community Centre

Teaches Taekwondo

-

From a tram window

Elegant Everard Park

Shows art deco homes

-
Looking for skate park?

Fascinating Forestville

Blocks, pads and a rail


-

Finest Fullarton

Where the Plant and Craft Market

Is on every month


-

Organic Goodwood

The Wurlitzer serenades

The aisles of Capri


-

In happy Highgate

Karl Marx has not been buried

That’s the London one


-

Hidden in Hyde Park

Dr. Jekyll might retire

To a quiet life


-

Keswick In Khaki

Part of the army barracks

Salute Unley’s flag


-

In comfy Kings Park

Majestic residences

On every corner


-

Magnetic  Malvern

Draws people from all quarters

Like iron filings


-

Magical Millswood

Rides on miniature steam trains

For the child within


-

Mighty Myrtle Bank

In memory of Joseph

Brought Myrtle to Oz?


-

Pretty is Parkside

So close to the green parklands

Walk to the city


-

In unspoilt Unley

You can wine, dine and rejoice

Or shop ‘til you drop


-

Houses to die for

In upper crust Unley Park

Name me in your will


        -
In wond’rous Wayville

The Showgrounds dominate all

Annual mayhem


-

Attention Deficit

I have the attention span of a gnat

Every time I sit down

To write a serious poem

My

Shadow

My shadow has been behaving strangely in recent weeks

I’ve noticed that it’s far less docile than it used to be

For instance, on those occasions when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a shop window

And see an older, more stooped person than I expect

My shadow is strutting upright, youthful, vigorous

And then when I’m running for the bus, heart pounding

My shadow is impatiently hurrying ahead, no longer willing to wait for me

I swear last week when out cycling, it tried to overtake me

When I’m walking through crowds, careful not to gaze too long or longingly at the young women

My shadow is damn well staring and ogling and half turning to follow them

This worries me.  I’m concerned about my shadow’s state of mind

I fear it is about to abandon me for a younger model

http://www.celapenepress.com.au/

The poem is definitely the weirdest piece I’ve ever written, and is short, so will go well with a lot of other ‘short and twisted’ pieces. It arose out of a chance meeting with a woman I used to work with. When I enquired what she was doing these days, she told me she was collecting tissue samples from men!  Turns out she was working in a laboratory which does tests on men’s prostate biopsies.

My mind ran a bit wild with this thought, and “The Collector” resulted. I’ve performed it at a couple of gigs, and it has got good responses from the audience, ranging from raucous laughter to shocked bemusement.

Anyway, I can’t reprint it until after “Short and Twisted 2012″ has been published (around May 2012 I think), so you’ll have to wait.

Anyway, I quite like the very first one I wrote, on new year’s day. Here it is:

1st January 2012

The new year delivers itself

cuts loose from its expiring parent

stretches out, flaunting a flawless body

unblemished by broken promises

undamaged by dashed hopes

every bit the potential champion

it takes

    its first

          tentative

                 step

Wilson Tuckey

A while ago, the Poetica poetry group, of which I am a member, set a task of writing a love poem from an unusual angle.  I was thinking about this for a while, and struggling with the concept.  One Saturday morning, whilst passing the time before a poetry slam, I thought to myself “who is the most unlikely person for me to write a love poem about?”.  Answer: Wilson Tuckey.  I sat down and knocked this one up in an hour or so, and performed it at the poetry slam that afternoon.  It didn’t win, but a lot of people liked it.  Veronica Matthews, who is the SA Libraries co-ordinator of the poetry slams, came up to me two years later, and said she still remembers the poem.

It’s always been a favourite of mine, because it still makes me laugh. I sent it off to Voice magazine (a ‘left leaning’ journal) over a year ago. I think the editor missed the point, because he sent it straight back to me by return post, with a note suggesting it would be more suitable for Quadrant (a ‘hard right leaning‘ journal).

Poor old Wilson got kicked out of politics in 2010.  No doubt with a handsome tax-payer funded pension.

Wikipedia tells us some of the highlights (or lowlights) of his career :

 In short, the man was a buffoon. Here’s my love poem to him:

Wilson Tuckey, I Love You Man

Wilson Tuckey, I love you man

the way you look over your glasses

as you kick those journos’ arses

I love your hairy nostrils and your square double chin

but most of all I love the way you know everythin’

not a skerrick of doubt, any subject, any time

you can hold forth. you’re ready to chime

Wilson Tuckey, I love you man

you don’t need no research. no need to hold back

here is your wisdom, you’re on the attack

here is the gospel according to Tuckey

you front them with macho, you front them so plucky

you tell them the answers straight from the heart

they look like stunned mullets as you take them apart

Wilson Tuckey, I love you man

you run rings round those greenies, those tree hugging scum

with their talk about warming, their climate change glum

I trust you Wilson, you know better than them

you can leave them all gobstruck with a home spun gem

Wilson Tuckey, I love you man

you can spot a terrorist at a hundred paces

the ones with the beards and the slightly dark faces

we don’t want them here taking our jobs and houses

with their Qurans and burqas and baggy white trousers

Wilson Tuckey, I love you man

you show us what it means to be Australian

some call you redneck, some say you’re not cool

but you are our bedrock, you are no fool

you are the brown substance of this wide, sunburnt land

and that’s why, Wilson Tuckey, I really, really, really love you man.

In 2010, I wrote the poem “On Goolwa Beach”. I’m fond of this poem, because it captures, for me, my experience of swimming, walking, relaxing there. Goolwa Beach is a sensational, long sandy beach near the town of Goolwa, on the Fleurieu Peninsula, in South Australia.  The waves on the beach are relentless.  Great fun if you’re a reasonable swimmer, and if you like body boarding. I’m not a surfer, but there are plenty of people who surf there too.  The poem is all about waves, but the word “dogged” came to mind, when I was thinking of ways to describe those waves. Hence the dog metaphor used throughout in the poem.

On the page, the poem is set out to vaguely resemble a seated dog. (See below). At least it does to me.  Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, the publishers of “New Poets 16″ (in which the poem was published in 2011) were unable to replicate the formatting. Don’t ask me why. I wouldn’t have thought it was that hard. It ended up looking more like something a dog left behind, than a dog.  So I’ve always felt that the poem never got its just deserts.

I’ve been thinking of experimenting with audio / visuals to accompany my poems.  Rob Walker does some great musical stuff with his work, which has always impressed me (see robwalkerpoet.com).  So I’ve had a go at putting some sounds and images with the words of “On Goolwa Beach”.  I’ve got a bit to learn in this area, but its a start.  Let me know what you think.

Here’s the video:

And here’s what the poem SHOULD have looked like in New Poets 16:

Here are some examples from http://www.contrariwise.org.

1. The complete Sharon Olds poem, “I Go Back to May 1937″:

Sharon Olds

2. A simple alphabet adorns a librarian’s arm:

Alphabet

3. Someone was so keen on T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” that they had a few lines put on their back:

Prufrock 1

4. And that same poem inspires another tattooee:

Prufrock 2

5. Sylvia Plath’s “Tulips”

Tulips - Sylvia Plath

So what would I have tattooed on myself if I had to choose a few lines of poetry? It didn’t take me long to decide. It would have to be from Alan Ginsberg’s “America”:

My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.

I rushed into Hindley Street today, New Year’s Eve (after spending a few hours in the gym, “getting ripped”), and managed to have it done at “Tattoo You”:

My Mind is Made Up

What would your literary tattoo be?

Poems are Dreams – Or Not?

He says that poems are dreams

manifest on paper

that poems are from

your deep subconscious

they float up to the surface

of your brain then flit down

the neural pathways

into your fingertips and onto

the tip of your pen.

But what if he’s wrong?

what if they are an expression

of frustration with everyday life?

what if they are anger

at the foolishness of politicians?

what if they are observations

of simple events?

what if they are cracks in the edifice

through which we shine a torch?

what if they are a reaction

to life’s tragedies and triumphs?

what if they are rampant emotions?

what if they are jokes

played on or with the reader?

what if they are all of these

and only some are dreams ?

 © Mike Hopkins 2011

I was given a copy of The Best Australian Poems 2011 (editor John Tranter), as a departing gift from some very nice work colleagues on finishing my contract with Country Health SA last week.  Today, I cycled up to Brownhill Creek, sat under a river redgum with a thermos of rooibos, and started to read it.

I read about a quarter of it, and then dipped into other parts of the book at random.  I was almost immediately hit by the impenetrability of many of the poems (not all of them e.g Jude Aquilina and Melinda Smith are two exceptions  in what I’ve read so far). So then I did what I don’t usually do.  I read the editor’s introduction.  In it, John Tranter proposes that poems can be read as dreams.  He says of his selection of Australian poems:

“I suspect that these baroque and potent imaginings can only have come into existence as fragments of dreams or nightmares”

and

“enjoy this fragment of dream-work”

and

“of course if you don’t agree with my line of thinking, you can always ask for a second opinion”.

Well, my opinion, partly expressed above, is that if he has used this filter (i.e. looking for poems which resemble the result of dreams), then he has excluded all sorts of equally valid types of poems. I’ve always found dreams (mine and anyone else’s) difficult to interprete (other than the obvious Freudian interpretations).   Maybe this is why I don’t understand many of the poems in The Best Australian Poems 2011.

Am I the only one who has this difficulty? I’ve had it with previous editions of the book, but I don’t have it, for instance, with Best of American Poetry anthologies. Nor do I have it with most of the poetry I hear around Adelaide.  Are these “dream poets” writing for the general populace, or just for each other?  Am I being harsh, or is it just that I don’t “get it”?  Have Australian poetry anthologies been ‘captured’ by a sub-set of Australian poets who all write in the same style, for the same small audience?

Perhaps Darryl Kerrigan should edit Best Australian Poems 2012?:

Adelaide Suburbs

I don’t often use taxis, but I happened to get two yesterday. One to get to the funeral of an old friend from the SA Masters’ Running Club, Frank Rogers, a lovely man who died from cancer last weekend. And then I got a taxi from the funeral into the National Wine Centre, for a very enjoyable champagne evening with some friends.

Taxi drivers have a tough job.  They have to compete for customers, work long, unsociable hours, put up with all sorts of wallies. Sometimes, the fare might only be a few blocks, hardly worthwhile picking up the customer. But of course they’re obliged to do so.

They must dream of ‘the big one’, the fare from Outer Harbour to Port Noarlunga, from Largs Bay to McLaren Vale.  Here’s a prayer I wrote, that maybe they recite each day, before they go to work.

(Inspired by Ian Dury’s “London Bus Driver’s Prayer” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_Driver’s_Prayer)

The Adelaide Taxi Driver’s Prayer

(after Ian Dury)

Our cabfare, which starts in Cavan

Hallett Cove be thy aim

Thy Kingswood come

Thy Willaston

In Hove as it is in Hendon

Give us Largs Bay and Birkenhead

And forgive us our Crafers West

As we forgive those that Crafers against us

And lead us not into Keswick station

But deliver us from Frewville

For thine is the Findon

The Paralowie and the Salisbury

Rostrevor, Rostrevor

Mile End.