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Poetry Writing at Jibbon Beach
Spread out! Go get inspired!
I don’t want anyone sitting together
-The wet lip of the bay shimmering
& at my cool white feet a swirling tangle
of sea debris like shredded newspaper
& small spinning fragments of black dust
Nathan, get out of that tree!
You can’t write from up there!
What’s it got to be about, Miss?
Does it have to rhyme?
-Above Kurnell a Qantas jet angles
piercing the blue noon the bubbling rumble
entering through his feet & hands shaking
pummeling the floppy neck of moment’s sweet silence
Miss, do you have a new pencil, mine broke?
OWWWW!! Stop chucking rocks Ryan!
Time’s up class- We’re going up the hill to read our poetry
Miss, mine’s going to kick ass! This is how it goes:
‘The girl I saw at Bundeena
Oh man! You should have seen her
The sparkle of her gleaming hair
Could dazzle the pants off a grizzly bear
From the locals she had nothing to fear
Their eyes were focused on the local deer’
Well done Nathan! Excellent use of end rhyme
And striking and original use of metaphor
Trevor you’re next
Do I have to Miss?…
- the ferry back to Cronulla
wide steel windows of mansions
double glazed faceless
pulsing lifelong desires
starboard an unraveling
pan of sparkling yachts
the wind whispering
faintly upon pungent diesel
Posterity
A couple of months ago
my best friend an established writer
and avowed new formalist
pleaded with me
‘The best thing you can do man
for the sake of Art
for posterity
is to stop writing poetry altogether’
He scrutinizes me wearily
ready to dodge a blow
He says, ‘Hey, I only want what’s best for you.
I want to save you and your family the embarrassment’.
In the weeks which follow
I take his advice and stop writing
I feel good. Really good.
Instead of the daily grind of shaping meaning
of truncating sentences
of splitting infinite clauses
of reducing language to its common denominator-
I am free of the page and each morning
jog down to the beach & dive into the surf
*
We meet by chance on the train one day
He looks haggard/ pissed off as usual
I say, ‘Thanks Buddy, you did me a real favour
I’m happy
I’ve got heaps of spare time
I no longer feel an urge to write crappy poems
for crappy journals that no one wants to read-
You’ve changed my life!’
‘By the way’, he says, ‘I’ve started up a new
literary rag, do you have any new material?’
George Anderson grew up in Montreal and presently lives and teaches in Sydney, Australia. He
has published poetry in dozens of magazines worldwide. He edits the student
literary magazine Ephemeral.
Email: George Anderson
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