Bad week badder week. Wednesday 10 December 2008

How to write about this without sounding surly and malevolent? When I told my proper writer friend that what I am aiming for is candid she suggested choosing the most truthful or relevant details and leaving the rest of it out.

Last week of first semester, poetry week; we started with a workshop led by Jeremy Over on compiling poems with words and phases cut out from other pieces of text as in William Burroughs of the Beat Generation. This was fine.

Then on to discussing our poems from last week; I thought I’d heard an Oscar Wilde quotation to the effect that, ‘no friend is as good as a new friend’. The premise being that when you take up with someone at work or a class or wherever - initially you imagine you’ve lots in common. As you get to know each other better, and maybe in different contexts disparities become evident. I wrote a poem called New friends are the best friends, using four examples of this breakdown; it included the person you only meet at the pub so you think you’re both really witty and entertaining until you meet in the sober light of day and realise how dull you both are, and the friend you imagine you’ve everything in common with until you meet her partner (who she is devoted to) and find he’s a vile tyrant and a bit of a racist. In essence friends don’t always travel well; and I’m not even talking about going on holiday with people - that’d be a epic not a poem.

I joked to Jenn last week that I couldn’t comment on Skating to Antarctica having a novel's structure and tricks because I’ve only done life writing and poetry this far.

The way feedback works in the Poet’s class is you listen, everyone says what they like about your poem, and then they say what they might change and then you can respond. Frankie uses a similar system (nice things then a criticism) in her primary school and terms it 3 stars and a wish. I’ve genuinely never known what to expect in terms of feedback but I really didn’t see this one coming. We stood around the poem and stared at it like it’s a huge washed-up jellyfish, mostly dead but still capable of nipping. People poked it with their sticks, listlessly turning over the edges but not saying much. Two people mention they had first though it was about our group; it wasn’t but I understand why they might infer that. Then the itdoesn’tdoitforme person enumerated what didn’t do it for them – Oh, we skipping the 3 stars and capering straight to the wish then? This clears the way; the poem needs structure, imagery and inventive language and it raised issues around Is a poem a poem because the person says it is. I reel, eyes stinging, pride stinging. Really? All of that? Something I’ve thought about and messed with for days has less merit than an arrangement of cuttings compiled in an hour? Except I didn’t say anything because I’m craven. I was obdurate and sullen and as we discussed other peoples work I thought indecorous things, which I’ll not list because I’m only aiming at candid not at confirming how shifty and unpleasant I am. I am leaving the rest out.

I’ve done life writing and and I've done poetry. I’ve been back and poked at me poem with the stick a hundred times and still don’t understand why it wasn’t even worthy of one star. To borrow from Jenny Diski, now wish I hadn’t dicked around during poetry and deprived myself of answers to most of the questions.

Wonder if the Poet noticed? Wednesday 26 November 2008

Wonder if the Poet noticed a change on the group? I think I’m bonding, cynicism sloping away. Some of my old friends came for tea and I was telling them about the classes. They said things like, ‘are you going to be writing the next best-seller thriller?’ (hardly) and ‘what’s the difference between creative writing and writing’ (oh, I don’t know - creative, I suppose). And then someone asked if there were any constraints on what we wrote; I think they meant are we allowed to write filth. I tried to explain that it’d never come up (oh, ha ha ha ha) and there was a lot of merriment about how they’d liven us all up if they joined our group. I was absurdly defensive and blustered about how we didn’t need ‘livening up’ with their stories of infidelities or rum, bum and concertina or whatever, what we are writing is plenty interesting without their pathetic sleaze. And anyway, we’ve got sleaze if we want. I was preposterous. But I realised that I really do like what we’re writing.

I’ve finished Skating to Antarctica by Jenny Diski. She describes something she terms her daughter Chloe’s cheesecake moment. It was a mildly upsetting occurrence when Chloe was tiny and now she doesn't remember the moment or the constant retelling of the moment but she remembers the remembering. Well. Like Australian greenstone leilira blades; a lot of effort and ritual goes into the creation and distribution of the tools, but when they are delivered to their destinations they aren’t used or cherished or curated. Robert Paton (1994) in World Archaeology 26:2 reckons that the blades aren’t utilitarian items but are the vehicle of information transmission. At each ritualised stage of their production and circulation the Aboriginals involved get stories straight. Like granddads and uncles do at weddings and funerals, “remember Yambo Dwyer? And that bloody budgie? It was 1962, weren’t his mam mad!” “ It weren’t 1962, our Eckie was still alive and we buried her in June ’61, just after Arnie finished at Jacobs - and it were a parakeet”. “1961 then, but it was certainly a budgie, Type 1 yellowface, I know that much” and so on until there’s a consensus of sorts. The accord is salted away as the remembering until the next get-together; even making a remembering for accomplices who weren’t around in 1961.

I so admire Jenny Diski, she had the line, “I wished I hadn’t dicked around during physics and deprived myself of answers to most of the questions”, and didn’t use it until page 221. Would that I could exercise such restraint.; I’d have used dicked around every other page; I will now.