Weather Walks In
Brian’s speech. Saturday December 14 2013
As many of you know Gary has written a Peninsula murder mystery “Blood
Moon” where there is a place called “Penzance Beach” with a “ Bluff Road”
where there lives a character Carl Vernon,
“ in his sixties, appealingly untidy in his shorts and sandals..bony and gray
haired but fit – looking. An ex teacher ‘
But not apparently, a poet. A vital detail!
Onella and I are new residents in Merricks Beach meaning we’ve only been
her twelve years. When we came to Bluff Road we were very pleased we
had a poet living next door, author of a fine volume the “Shed Manifesto”.
And not only that, here was a Collingwood tragic, with deep knowledge of
local history and ecology and was also entertainingly given to rants and
declamations, and shyly walking in with blackberries, olives…and poems.
He was always diffident about the poems and I was always pleased to
receive these gifts which I hoped would one day turn into a book.
Finally that day has arrived; “Weather Walks In”.
When asked to speak I started canvassing opinions of which poet Tony
resembled. One proposal was the quirky English poet, Stevie Smith. Her
great poem “Drowning, not Waving” is a favourite of our beach mob. But
Tony is more of the school “Waving not Drowning” as he ploughs through
the waves.
The next suggestion was the prince of the swimmer poets, Lord Byron,
romantic, radical and ranting. Close, but swimming across the Bosporous
does exceed swimming to the buoy!
So my nomination is that Tony is our local Robert Frost.
Frost is the rural New England poet of life on farms in small communities,
written in the rhythms of plain, everyday speech. He is the great poet of
outdoor tasks and natural life, which he expands to themes of life and death
and darkness. Tony does this too, but with differences. Frost writes of snow
and the woods and apple picking, whereas Tony write of the beach and the
bush and picking blackberries.
Frost’s famous poem “Mending Walls” ends with the line “.Good fences
make good neighbours”.
In Tony’s case it is the reverse. “Good neighbours make food fences”. Tony
is very attuned to our joint fence, always trimming and cutting and
chopping.
In the first poem of the book Tony describes how his mother ironed
everything “the war on chaos furious and total”. Well this is Tony too. He
loves tidying the chaos, especially with chainsaws. There are four pieces on
chain sawing in the book. I’m not sure what Robert Frost would have
thought of chainsaws!
So, “Good neighbours make good fences” and they also make good poems.
What do I mean by a good poem?
For me it s putting into precise words something we roughly sort of know, or
vajuely feel, or even don’t much recognise at all. A good poem finds beauty
when we didn’t know beauty was possible. It turns on the lamps, opens us to
the newness of the day, leads us to a fuller sense of our life and frees us up
to laugh or cry or exalt or rage more deeply. It is when the “weather walks
in”.
So you can feel the intimate sadness in Tony’s poem about his father when
Tony’s mother dies. “this walled wailing of grief’s long plain” (His wife’s
death p.11)
Or the sorrow in the poem about his mothers last swim at Merrichs Beach.
“Dementia as Postcard”
“Stick thin in a plastic shower cap,
energy like a ring-barked tree….”
This is poetry as a way of talking to your loves ones, even or especially after
they have gone. I feel tears.
But there are other weathers here too. Poems about children and Dylan, of
travel of friendships and cuppas on slow Sunday morning, and just like
Frost, of practical matters – blackberry picking, tree lopping, cockroach
removal, trying unavailingly to get a plumber.
They are funny and irreverent, but watch for the darker edge.
But they are not as dark as what I call the ‘ranting poems’, poems that catch
our vexations and also disappointments and faded hopes.
After losing the Grand Final at the MCG.
“Old the bars caging my black and white heart
Older still the hope, pushing them apart “
Or “The Labor Party “as a zoo animal no one visits any more.
“ Bored , frantic, shaggy and bereft
This beast was once a star
Powerful, nearly moral, popular “
Then we have the prize winner, which I hope Tony will read. “Self portrait
at Sixty”, captures all of the different weathers.
“when doors are open and weather walks in
Cumulus drama of women, cirrus blokes
Streaking the high days of laughter”
In the background of every poem is the music of the surf, the rustle of the
gum trees, the swish of the wind, and always the beach.
These are poems to read on the beach, watching the surf.
“the swells arrive as solid facts
Like looming bankers closing loans” p83
Poems to read on Sunday morning drinking black coffee.
Poems to read to your beloved late at night.
Poems for walking along the sand at sunset thinking about where your life is
going.
We are lucky to be here at Merricks and especially lucky to have our own
poet, our local Robert Frost.
Please buy copies…. for yourself and friends and strangers.
Thanks to Annie and Peter for this beautiful setting.
Congratulations Tony.A