Tuesday poem: The tea-lady’s dream, 1970
January 21, 2013
The tea-lady’s dream, 1970
No-one wanted tea. I felt my stockings
thickening, darkening. Varicose veins
still wrote Chinese messages,
but sudden trousers held the blue.
My twisted wrist ached, and a warm smell
better than shortbread, browner than treacle
wrapped me in blankets of singing air.
New words jingled in my pocketed ears.
Foreign coins: crema, doppio, arabica,
even mugaccino. They sipped and said
You’re the city’s best barista.
I strained confusion to comprehend.
No-one wanted any tea.
P.S. Cottier
Now somewhere in the records of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there will be an interesting moment discoverable; the exact year in which coffee outsold tea for the first time in this fair brown land. I suspect it was sometime in the early 1980s, but I am too lazy to investigate.
Certainly, tea was the thing in the nineteenth century. The iconic swagman was waiting ’til his billy boiled, not until his macchiato expressed itself. But somehow, now, we have moved from tea being the mainstay of most of the population, to coffee.
Ponder the changes to our land
with a latte in your hand…
I briefly worked at The University of Melbourne serving tea to students at the same time I was also employed as a tutor. (Not at exactly the same hours of the day, though. ‘Would you like sugar with your Kafka?’ was never asked. By me, anyway.) That was back in the 1890s, before Federation. Then, when I started at a very traditional Commonwealth Department in Canberra in the early years of last century, there was still a tea lady who pushed a trolley around. Incroyable.
Now the very idea of an electric kettle being shifted down the corridors of power to make tea (and yes, horrible coffee) by a woman seems awfully steampunk…or should that be steamplunk?
Of course, tea has made a comeback, but as a more specialist beverage, rather than as the drink that powered a nation.
I wonder how much tea they still drink in New Zealand? For the first time in 2013, click this feather and read the poems by other Tuesday Poets, most of whom reside in New Zealand, which, interestingly and surprisingly, is defined as a State of Australia in our Constitution, just in case they ever decide to join in the slightly bigger tea-party over the water.*
(Australia Day is on January 26th, a date of mindless celebration for some, and mourning for others, and of quieter celebration with a spoonful of thought for yet a third group. I think knowledge of that forthcoming anniversary has seeped into this profound analysis of Australian history, incidentally. A year ago, I was also writing about tea, just before the last Straya Day.)
* It occurs to me that some people may not believe me, so here’s the actual definition section from the Constitution:
COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA CONSTITUTION ACT – CLAUSE 6
Definitions
“The Commonwealth” shall mean the Commonwealth of Australia as established under this Act.
“The States” shall mean such of the colonies of New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia, including the northern territory of South Australia, as for the time being are parts of the Commonwealth, and such colonies or territories as may be admitted into or established by the Commonwealth as States; and each of such parts of the Commonwealth shall be called a State .
“Original States” shall mean such States as are parts of the Commonwealth at its establishment.
Now you’ve had coffee, poetry and law. Pretty good value, if you ask me…
Tuesday poem: Prayer
December 17, 2012
Prayer
Let me kill the cynicism
that dogs me, toothily.
Let cleverness die
just for today;
let me believe
with simplicity,
that hope was born
that hope is with us
that hope will come again.
Let me lie down in pillowy hay;
no more maybes and yets
and tired, half-hearted smirk.
Or better still, blow me, now, full-sailed
and squalling, billowing onto faith.
P.S. Cottier
May I wish all my readers a Merry Christmas, whatever their faith (or lack of faith).
And, to get away from simple faith and back to weird curiosity, note how two of the wise men in Jacques Daret’s painting seem to be talking into their sleeves, like security guards looking after a VIP.
For the last time this year, click this feather for further poetic gifts. It’ll all be happening again next year, from January 22nd.
Tuesday poem: My daughter’s words
December 10, 2012
For Zoe
Snow falling in flumps
down to make a slushy mud
as rolled in by
the dalmination of pigs
marketable, beef-eating and
weeweeweewee,
shown on Playschool,
and repeated forever,
one yawning stretching week,
between half past three and four.
(That giraffe-necked word
animation, she connects
with 101 Dalmatians,
a hang-dog Disney book
dredged together from the film
and read once when she was two.)
All hail the child genius, says Mum,
struck with awe, but not quite dumb.
Here, would you like to see a photo?
Every wallet a portrait gallery,
the child nestled beside the notable.
When she’s eighteen,
she’ll deny that
flumps ever passed her lips,
those cubes of whiteness,
borne from experiment,
flavouring my day.
An only child learns fast,
melts into cultured age
and books, the favoured flavour
of literacy.
Her ecstasy at reading now hints
that flumps’ days are numbered.
Expelliarmus, flumps!
She’ll wave her wand of bigger words,
casting new spells.
Not yet, please, not yet.
Bide a little longer,
stay home from school,
and we’ll be two flumps on the couch
between half past three and four.
PS Cottier
My daughter graduated from primary school last week, so I dug out this poem written when she was just starting school, which was published in my first book, The Glass Violin. Now for a list of cliches:
They grow up so fast
Blink and they’ll be gone
No, that’s not your little baby is it?
All so true, and all so tedious. (Note that I am being tough here; back to the safer realm of the satiric after a very rare leap into family matters.)
The Tuesday Poets are of all sorts. Click this feather and track them like endangered birds:
Tuesday poem: Silver-eyes and figs
November 26, 2012
Silver-eyes and figs
Each bird a single note, played
between the heavy figs, swollen
breves in this flighted music,
swing accents in an airy score.
The eye does not dissect
any swift segue of feather,
rather the bird breeze shakes
the hand-leaves, palms turned away.
It is the movement we see, not
a display case specimen mounted,
spread eagled for our slower eyes.
To watch this quick-silver is to
turn away from focus, to become
silver-eyed ourselves, as the ruffled
feathers of the fig
breathe scent of bird.
This uncharacteristic poem appears in my first book, The Glass Violin, copies of which are still available from Ginninderra Press. (Scroll down this linked page to Cottier.) Annoyingly, the last two lines above should appear as a broken line, with the word ‘breathe’ under the word ‘fig’, but this broken line keeps being removed before I can post this entry, creating a lovely chunky effect. Sigh.
I still remember how nervous I was before the launch of that first book. Geoff Page did the launch speech.
And now I am doing the launch of a book for the first time on Friday. The book is called In response to magpies, and is a small pamphlet of nine poems dealing with this charismatic Australian bird. The idea is that it would make a wonderful alternative to a mere Christmas card. The authors are Denise Burton, Amelia Fielden, Hazel Hall, Norma Hayman, Kathy Kituai, Sandra McGahy, Fiona McIlroy, Sandra Renew and Jill Sutton.
golden eye, not silver
Details: Biginelli Expresso, 5th floor, School of Music, Australian National University, 2pm. Please come along if you feel like poetry or coffee (or both) in the middle of the day.
I understand that magpies cause some havoc in New Zealand, where they are an introduced species. So even though one might say Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle, I doubt somehow that this feather represents the magpie. Click it, and you will fly to New Zealand, where further poetry awaits you.
Tuesday poem: Sausage haiku
November 19, 2012
This poem was written on the spot at a recent event at my daughter’s school, where the students presented their explorations on themes of social inequality and discrimination to the assembled masses. As at most things I go to these days, there was a sausage sizzle. As a vegetarian, I feel somewhat redundant at these things, even where vego items are provided. All weak and salady and wilting. But give me something to write on, and I’ll write.
I recently saw a wonderful poet who composed a much more impressive and less sausagey poem on the spot, based on words called out from the audience. Khairani Barokka, known as “Okka”, is an Indonesian writer, performer, artist, producer and researcher. She is definitely one of the most exciting performance poets I have ever seen, and her appearance at the ANU School of Music, organised by the group of poets who meet there and by Australian Poetry Limited, was something I will remember for a long time. Particularly her poem about being asked to rate pain on a scale of 1 to 10. She combines the highly personal and historical and political aspects in her work, without any of the seams showing.
Here she is at the recent Canberra performance. Not the best photo, but I’ll blame Okka for not standing still!
Local poets also read their work, and Indonesian Butet Manurung spoke about her experiences with marginalised jungle-dwelling people in Indonesia. She read from her non-fiction book The Jungle School. The book is already available, but will be launched in Australia and New Zealand next year.
All round, it was an exciting event. And not a sausage to be seen. Or smelt!
Click this feather for further poems. Go on. Click like a clicky thing.
PS Cottier 