I was talking about chapbooks with a friend today, a new poet who is just putting one together. And when I walked back inside my study, where books are in constant flux, a little chapbook had risen to the surface: 'Minipoems' by William Hart-Smith. Bill has been dead for some time now, but I held this little book in my hands (with its pencilled price inside $1) and felt him close. Being an honest-to-Bill chapbook, it has scant information inside - but it has little poems with his touch on every page. I'm sure he wouldn't mind me quoting one:
Full Moon
The full moon
poking about in the dark under the house
came up over the edge of the verandah
with a whisp of sooty cobweb on his face.
There was a collected William Hart-Smith published years ago by Angus & Robertson (ed. Brian Dibble), but I don't know what is still available of his in print. If ever you see a Hart-Smith book in a second hand bookshop, just buy it. Delightful poems from a man who always seemed to have pollen on the toecaps of his boots.
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