Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Wednesday, September 15, 2021
SHORT STORY - Jan Napier
SHOW DAY - a memory by JAN NAPIER
It was time
to go. I tossed a towel over my shoulder, squeezed toothpaste onto the brush,
and locked the van. I could hear Mick next door, muttering in his sleep as I
stepped outside. Sliding sideways down the narrow passage way between two canvas
joints, I walked out on to the grass street which runs betwixt
This was a twenty foot, four berth van in which the rest of Jack’s workers lived. Although it was their home, in practice we all shared the use of the facilities such as the stove and fridge. It was the place where we all ate, partied, and socialized.
For now, I just wanted breakfast - a coffee. If I could manage to boil the kettle without waking anyone up, I would be able to escape without having to make cuppas for everyone. I was in luck. The boys were still snoring.
Hot drink in one hand and cigarette in the other, I went and sat carefully on the ball rack which fronted Jack’s basketball joint. I loved this time of the day. Everything was quiet and fresh. The sky was just turning blue, while the grounds were hushed and still. The big rides stood silent, freshly painted and gleaming in the weak morning sun. Music systems only needed to be plugged in. Ticket boxes furnished with a variety of tatty chairs awaited endless rolls of tickets, and change trays. The joints, contents hidden behind their smothers, were all filled to bursting with plush. The twenty cent machines familiarly known as choppers slept under their individual canvas hoods. Shortly, sleepy bodies would begin to emerge from caravans, wander off to the showers, or in search of a cooked breakfast from the CWA ladies. For the moment however, it was all mine.
It was the
first day of the Royal Show. We (the crew) had to be on deck sober, showered, and respectable, at
Others started to take down storm ropes and fold up the smothers. When they had finished doing that, one of them grabbed the sledge hammer and knocked out the storm pegs securing the joints. I worked a dart joint and preferred to remove my own smother. Subsequently, I checked the stock then went to get the darts from Bev, the bosses’ wife. When everything had been done, it was back around to Jack’s van where Bev handed out waist bags which contained a small float. She called your name, gave you a bag, and assigned you to a particular joint. Jack employed a lot of casuals for this show. He would take them to their work stations and explain the job. They were put into a joint with a member of his permanent crew. The experienced employee would keep an eye on the new recruit. I was permanent, so Bev gave me two bags then told one of the casuals to go with me.
There was a few minutes to get organized, (find somewhere to put your water, cigarettes, throat lollies, learn each other’s names, etc), before officials opened the showground gates and the initial trickle of humanity began to filter down to the alley. I smiled at a family of four as they passed in front of the stall.
“Have a game. Four darts for two dollars,” I called, offering a handful of darts. They looked, grinned, and shook their heads. Never mind. My apprentice was staring at me in undisguised horror. “It’s OK, you just watch me for a while, then you can have a go,” I reassured her.
“ I’m not doing that. It’s too embarrassing,” she refused.
It didn’t get really busy till about lunchtime. Jack came across to ask how my helper was getting on.
“Pretty useless actually,” I told him sotto voice. “She won’t spruik, just stands there doing nothing.”
“ Give me a minute, I’ll swap her into a quieter joint,” Jack promised.
The next girl was fine. Frantically we counted scores, gave out prizes, avoided flying missiles, ducked shattering light globes, assured tearful tots that the teddy which they had just impaled wasn’t really hurt, changed money, and gathered up spent darts. As we worked, one of the crew who was acting as stock boy, would periodically enter the stall to replenish and tidy our supply of toys. He also carried some change, which meant that we didn’t have to wait for Jack. At set intervals, either he or Bev would appear with a fresh set of waist bags. This was called doing a collect. We handed over our full bags, and took the new ones.
The meal breaks were half an hour. I went back to the crew van, made some lunch, then sat down. After being on my feet for hours, all I wanted was some time out and a chance to sit down somewhere quiet for a while. For the first few days, most of the casuals rushed around buying showbags or going on rides, then complained that they hadn’t had time to eat and their feet hurt. Tough bikkies. Eventually they learned. If they lasted that long.
Nights were busy times too. The mums with young kids had gone home, but the teenagers and retail workers were out with their mates. The alley looked spectacular after dark. The rides and joints were all adorned with coloured lights which sparkled, flashed, dazzled, and twinkled. It was like working in fairyland, albeit a noisy one. Generators thudded away behind rides and joints supplying power for motors or lights, spruikers called, and every ride had its own music blasting out.
At last, all the covers were back on the machines and the money had been removed to Jack’s van. I shot off to grab my shower gear. The public facilities were miles away in the Silver Jubilee pavilion, and I wanted hot water not cold. Nor did I feel like standing in line half the night. Luckily, there was only one woman before me, so I was in and out pretty fast.
The next thing on my agenda was a couple of beers with the boys, then something to eat. However, when I walked into our crew van, I discovered that a couple of Jennie’s boys were visiting. Naturally, they had brought a carton. It would have been the height of bad manners to let the beer get hot. By the time that we had all compared notes about our respective day, it was half past one. I opted out and retired to my van. I certainly wasn’t going to take any rocking tonight. Well, one day down, seven to go.
FINIS
Tuesday, September 07, 2021
Sunday, September 05, 2021
Saturday, August 28, 2021
Monday, August 02, 2021
launch of CONSTELLATIONS by Deanne Leber at Perth Poetry Club, Moon Café, Northbridge, WA
I will start with a pertinent quote
from Yeats: Out of the quarrel with
ourselves, we make rhetoric, but poetry is born of the quarrel with ourselves.
Welcome to this book launch of
CONSTELLATIONS by Deanne Leber – a very important book in the contemporary west
coast literary scene of Australia. This poetry community has a long history
that is described and illustrated by various anthologies still available today,
the latest being John Kinsella’s Fremantle
Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry. But there’s no Deanne Lieber included
… and no L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E Poetry. I guarantee there will be in the next
anthology: There will be quotes from this book and its influences. It is a
breath of fresh air in the local poetry scene – it progresses both in its
composition and its writing.
I mention composition because this is
very physical writerature – an intellectual architecture, still tactile but
with deep theory behind it. The basic element is the words but grouped together
they associate, contradict, waylay connotations, expose and whistle their own
tunes. They are all from Deanne’s lexicon of all her life until now. The form
is realized by human techniques but the highlight of the form is the reading of
the constellations by the writer. The ‘Author’ may be dead, as Roland Barthes
wrote, but the Reader is ever more important in the CONSTELLATIONS.
As reader and writer, Deanne Leber is
influenced fundamentally by Gertrude Stein and Lyn Hejinian – but you can trace
her creative impulses back to the earliest known drawing by human hand, five
strokes of clay in a South African cave. The nearest link to Deanne’s prose
poems would be Ania Walwicz in Australian poetry. And maybe Michelle Leggett in
NZ.
How to read CONSTELLATIONS is a very
personal thing. Each reader experiences a different universe. There are
constellations illustrated, one at a time – followed by a prose poem of one
page with a different kaleidoscopic theme each time, then an emergent poem on
an entirely different theme with its own page … and finally the verbal bones of
the theme positioned on the page as dictated to by the apexes of that
individual Constellation. The obvious way to read them is one constellation at
a time, but I read some prose poems one day and marveled over the emergent
poems on another. The spiky visual poems I read as sculptures. You can do what
you like, read it in large gulps or small breaks but it will last you a long time
to exhaust its multi-dimensional layers.
As Lyn Hejinian says, The process is more composition than
writing. But let’s zero in on the writing, the words Deanne chose at one
stage or another. Here’s a couple of quotes from her prose poems: notice how
age-old images come to life by juxtaposition -
Deanne Leber quote: A
plastic rose and a feather duster caressed. A dirty knee’d angel with the words
of a poet stuck in throat. Hum of song stuck in note. Stars sucking tongue.
Undone. Crawling to begin again.
DL quote: Skin closes moments made new
by colour. Longing to be your slow sad ballerina. Dancing my heel got caught in
the gutter. Threaded to your skin to your heart. When writing replaces words
you can’t say.
DL: Waiting for a tongue to begin.
Love hearts and wings against skin. He etched feathers on walls as the train
linked each track to a new word. Breaking their
umbilical shells. Born into shapes caressed with pen.
I love ‘words breaking their umbilical shells.’
I haven’t finished CONSTELLATIONS yet
– I’ve only had the text a week - and I will never exhaust this book. It’ll be
like Finnegan’s Wake for me, an
endless delight. Buy it now before they run out.
-
Andrew Burke (MA, PhD)
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
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