Brisbane, two days ago: I jogged about the Roma Parklands in the early morning where I was met by the most handsome, intoxicating and very large Eastern Water Dragon. Almost 80 cm long, and the gardener told me, still growing! There was nothing shy about the reptile, he simply posed in the sun and waited for natural magic.
I traveled to Brisbane to visit schools and poets. One included, ‘Sheldon College’ who are running our education program, with poet, Bronwyn Lea. The school is close the home of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and far away from the construction heavy Queen Street Mall.
Back in the city, Nathan Shepherdson and I spent the afternoon in swivels, on the Hilton Hotel chairs where the room lights were lolly pop pink and zooming lifts so high, I felt ill : the ghosts of the Kings of Queensland were everywhere. We talked about turning our ‘Poetry Picture Show‘ project into a virtual learning resource and whether you should laugh or cry when someone asks a poet ‘so when are you going t to write a novel?’ ; as if poetry doesn’t count! Nathan and I got as violent as is possible whilst surrounded by whispering suits – as we talked about the conservatism taking over the Australian Literary Review : those destructive and arrogant articles lately that bemoan the state of poetry and damning anything that is language – isn’t poetry itself, language? Why does The Australian publish such wet?
I think the heat made the time in Brisbane so intense; the hugeness of poems being written, poetry being made wherever you tread and people asking me why I do what I do – as if I know! Half the time you just feel your way though and too much thought as to why has been returning to the blank state of pointlessness.
I arrived home without my keys and am waiting by the post box for their return.
I lost Lachlan Brown in The Forest Lodge on Saturday afternoon. We’d planned to find one another between beer stalls and friands yet he (and for him, I) were nowhere before eyes. I took to hunting this poet by venturing into daggy Glebe; was Lachlan disorientated in the Markets or had he fallen into sleep under the fingers of an aggressive masseuse that frequent the Glebe area?
Morning, I swam the swimming pool and sipped coffee with Ms Jane Thorn. Together, Ms Thorn and I planned away the morning trying to turn talk into action – instant ways to implement Red Room’s education program, having been distressingly unsuccessful with both Arts NSW and CAL. If it wasn’t for the generous support of the Keir Foundation I (and maybe the rest of the board) would have spent Easter Sunday dressed as a Bunnies, handing out pamphlets for an Oxford Street Club Bunny Party, in order to raise coins for poetry.
Sir John Betjeman, English poet (1906-1984) poems everywhere in England, especially the 
