Details:
Thursday 26th November 2009
6-7.30 PM
The Royal Australian Naval Sailing Association
SIr David Martin Reserve
New Beach Road
Rushcutters Bay

Our ‘Sea Things’ film is finished and Tyler is happy – both of us amazed by how much improved the visuals are with quality sound – that sonic life improves the visual images; as if it is a physical substance that paints the pictures. I am hearing Graham’s poem in my mind’s chamber, over and over he is talking about a ‘drowned cathedral’ a ‘Neanderthal skull’ and ‘church bats’. The more I recall his poem the more Gothic it is becoming.

The duffle bags are roped up and ready for the car trip to the space. All the poets arrive this morning and at 2 O’clock we depart to the venue space to set up. Tamryn has made the most exquisite poems-in-bottles which shall be for sale for a tiny donation of $2 or more.

Friday is markedly different from Thursday where I sat at a deliriously classy restaurant and listened to stories about climate change being a governmental conspiracy, how the inner city is still in need of quality after school care for kids with nowhere to go when the bell rings and then myself, fumbling out reasons why poetry transforms the big and the little worlds, all the time thinking, a poem would better explain what I want to say but, nerves and all, I couldn’t recite one.

Share It

Hide Sites

Now, it’s up to Tyler to complete our creation and then, tomorrow evening, we shall screen it for all of you who make our event. Compared to the experiences I’ve had editing our previous films, this time I have been amazed that in three days we can weave together a ten minute piece. Part of that comes from paying people professional wages (okay, excluding Elliott who works pro-bono for us) and not depending on favours or mates’ rates. The other reason is that a deadline, as we all know, can prevent us from procrastinating or from indulging our creative fantasies.

I have a zippingly high level of epinephrine when doing these projects (perhaps all things) and today’s mantra is that others need to sleep and eat, even if I do not, quite so much.  Having said that, my eyes refused to open this morning and when they did they were so heavy they remained alert for under thirty seconds, shut and then lifted an hour later. Now I’m writing about eyes, they can sense it, and I feel them weighing down, trying to take me to sleep.

Listen eyes, I don’t think so. Open!

Share It

Hide Sites

This particular film is required to document the project in a style an audience, totally uninformed about the project, can comprehend. Equally, the film must enrich the creative being and offer newness to those involved in or familiar with this endeavour.

I think it works and I think it doesn’t work. What the film has done is made me aware of personalities in projects; that the only way one gets a special result if those who made the film care more about the film than any other job at hand. If you’re working with anyone less than obsessed the film you get will be weaker than the original idea that it was born out of.

It is always people that make or break things. Yes, things.

Share It

Hide Sites

I shan’t re-tell all the tales in one blog but invite you to the film screening and poet readings, all part of Sea Things on:

November 26th from 6-7:30PM; The Royal Australian Naval Association, Sir David Martin Reserve, New Beach Road, Rushcutters Bay, Sydney. RSVP 02 9319 5090 or tamryn@redroomcompany.org

Share It

Hide Sites

Sea Things followers: here is a very entertaining account of how one of our poetic ambassadors collected the duffle bag.

Hi Johanna

A sweltering Darwin morning, the build-up in full swing. A road to the coast that I, a very new Darwinian have not travelled before. And why? To collect a duffle bag of poems. Somehow it all seems rather covert, certainly out of the ordinary.

I hand over my brand new NT driver’s license to an oil-stained man at a boom gate. My visitor’s pass in hand I am allowed to proceed, and follow a long curved road down towards the East Arm Wharf. A large sign announces that private vehicles must stop here, so I park, and walk across a huge expanse of bitumen sparsely populated by men and massive machines. The heat is oppressive and rises in enervating waves off the tar.

As I finally reach the wharf a kindly woman in an air-conditioned car pulls up and offers me a lift. The car is like a fridge. Grateful doesn’t begin to cover it.

At the P&O office no-one can believe I walked so far. Apparently I should have ignored the sign. I ask a bunch of blokes in overalls about a duffle bag full of poems and they exchange looks that subtly suggest insanity on my part, but one escorts me to the other office – where female office staff receive me in much the same way.

But wait… there is a bag of poems… she’s not crazy after all! (Well, not completely … she did walk all that way…)

And one of the ‘overalls’ is kind enough to give me another air-conditioned lift all the way back to my car.

Ciao!

Robyn McLean
Office manager

NT Writers’ Centre
Frogs Hollow Centre for the Arts
56 McMinn St
GPO Box 2255
Darwin NT 0801

t: 08 89412651
f: 08 89412115
e: info@ntwriters.com.au
w: www.ntwriters.com.au

Share It

Hide Sites

The plane home was four hours and the passenger to my right was trying hard not to throw up, think about a cigarette or drop his head into my lap. This evening’s sunset was mythical and I read a story, ‘The Boat’ all the way home. The morning was spent on the Wharf and between reading poems and rallying the fish market dwellers as our audience, I was wondering how the AGM for Red Room’s Patron went, today. The ABC were most enthusiastic in Darwin: local and regional radio and poems read over the airwaves. I had a dream of crocodiles and a lot of blood on an anonymous bathroom floor. In the middle of the night there was a Darwin storm with cracks of lightening and thumps of thunder. Already I miss my friends in Darwin and already I want to sit in a waterfall and be amazed that stones and rocks can be such perfect pinks. R

Share It

Hide Sites

Here, in Darwin, I am preparing to venture into the heat and explore the Wharf for tomorrow. My legs are limping having swum a few too many laps in a freshwater pool and then followed that by a hike through Litchfield Park where the ominous colony of magnetic termite mounds hold fort.

It is hard to stay still, mentally or bodily; Thursday Island and the Trinity Bay are calling me and now that we have Tyler, as our cameraman, Gretchen from the ABC, Graeme our poet and all the sharks prepared – I am thinking that we are going to create a shipping tale to rival Robinson Crusoe.

Share It

Hide Sites

My body was cooled in twenty laps of a pool at Nightcliff, enveloped in expanse of water and lots of babies with little guts, wandering the pool edges, looking for their reflections. It was only a few poems ago I was in Brisbane with Luke Beesley, sitting under a tree, reading poems and sharing sea tales with school students and a Captain. The Brisbane handover was, as each handover is, memorable for the good spirit that flowed from the poems to the poet to the mariner. In a few minutes I’ll head out to the Ski Club from belated Birthday drinks and feel young in comparison to the surrounding rocks and owners of them.

Share It

Hide Sites

Friends, I am late for walking my parent’s dog, Dolly. Yesterday Dolly helped me by panting and following my every toe placement around the house as I and gorgeous E unpacked boxes into my new home, in Glebe. Today though, I left her to sleep at mother and father’s house as her ancient Staffy coat was beginning to smell out the  wood polished floorboards of the new home.

I’m writing to let you know that the event at Parliament House, on Wednesday last, was great fun. With a mixture of readers – politicians, poets, musicians, students, reading their work. The crowd was mostly over thirty, except for The Red Room crew and Francis from The Week and the audience was Anglo Saxon and did not reflect the diversity of poetic cultures in the state. What was successful included the venue, the involvement of politicians, the guest readers, the partnerships developed between Red Room and The Week and the Government and the magnificent greenery looking in at us, from the Botanic Gardens.

As I had no inviting to do myself it meant minimal anxiety over bums on seats and even when there were no seats left, I was able to close my worries and concentrate on the poems being read. David Malouf and Judith Beveridge were stars.

The division bell, to everyone’s annoyance, rang through Judith’s final poem only to cease the moment I took the microphone – a frustration for all. For once, cheese platters didn’t look like an impoverished last minute attempt at sophistication.

On the Sea front – we’ll be holding our Brisbane duffle bag exchange this Wednesday at 11AM, in Brisbane. Make certain any of you with poems, turn up and slot your magic verse into the canvas bag, your very selves.

Share It

Hide Sites

With fifteen minutes before our due time for the dufflle bag opening at the Old Wollongong Lighthouse we arrived at the Port Kembla Port Office, collected the bag and new additions to it and drove at just below illegal speed to meet the group of Illawara contributors. The group was a trio that included a poet from the Shire, three locals and a vivacious photographer. Into the bag went a navigation chart with a poem attached to it, a treasure chest and illustrations and poems by the Canberra based poet of Viking blood, Alan Gould.

Now, I sit at my new desk with bold sunflowers brighting onto me as I type and eat some cake that my friend’s baked for me today, my birthday.

Share It

Hide Sites

Meanwhile, The West Australian published a short piece on our Perth duffle exchange. Today we and the sea are planning for our duffle exchange at Port Kembla on Sunday 25th October. Then, it’s Brisbane on the 28th October.

Share It

Hide Sites

Each duffle bag exchange is unique. The ship, the participants, the maritime communities all add their individual mojo to our project and yesterday was no different. It wasn’t until 9:30am that we confirmed the students would make the event. We are still awaiting our boat, The Kimberley Rose, to arrive! The Harbour Master, Graham Haldenby, was most generous in his talk to us about there our ship was and I was amazed by how apologetic he was for not being able to bring the ship to our doorstep! In reality, his good will is so thrilling that I am still in shock we’ve managed to get not just one boat but ten boats to take part in this adventure.

Share It

Hide Sites

Kimberly Rose; Coastal Freighter: 6,000 tons; 108 m; 18 m; 7.5 m; 13 knots

Kimberly Rose carriers break bulk and general cargo mainly in containers. She can carry 377 standard shipping containers. Seacorp has a State Government contract to provide coastal shipping services which link North West ports with Fremantle and Darwin. The shipping services, which run on regular 17 day cycles, sail between Fremantle, Dampier, Port Hedland, Broome, Wyndham and Darwin. The Kimberly Rose provides this service.

Share It

Hide Sites

We invited media to profile the handover but, if they did, it seems they were more thin than the wind as we couldn’t see them. The reduced crowd at the Melbourne arrival, however, meant an impromptu invitation to visit on board, with the Master.

With lemon safety vests and poems close to our chests we entered the ship’s body, so huge it can fit trucks, farms, families and an infinity of sea echo. Petra White was the center of our attention for she had come to deliver her exquisite poem, written for our project. Petra made her stage in the control room. The walls were glass and you could see sea and ships from all directions. The crew and visitors circled around Petra whilst the ship rocked gently as Petra read her poem. The event was also an opportunity for those present, including a school teacher with about ten poems by her students, to read their duffle bag submissions.

The next stage was that the Iron Monarch would sail the bag to Port Kembla. This is no longer possible as the duffle bag has torn itself and must be sewn together using expensive wires, before it can make the next leg of our journey. To allow the bag time to convalesce we are holding off on our Wednesday arrival and instead making the departure from Port Kembla, the focus event. The departure date will be on October 25th and if this date changes, you shall made aware.

Share It

Hide Sites

Closer to now though – we can confirm the Melbourne stop: Thursday 8th October; 9AM.Arrival point, at Williamstown Rd, Port Melbourne.  Our ship is the “Victorian Resiliance”.

Present at the port will be poet, Petra White to read her ‘Sea Things’ poem. If you join us please do contribute your sea poem to the bags!

Share It

Hide Sites

Books and reading has filled my not-that-long long weekend : Rhyme and short stories about Sad Dogs, Lost Animals and How to Count. The genre of books that cover the floors and stock the bookshelves of those good friends, who have recently popped out a person.

Even the most minute child enjoys sea like activities; cradled in my arms, rocking up and down, their doughy smiles suggest the experience of being rocked and of looking into sun light slants, through blinds, is joyous.  Today I was cooing to a three month old who, by scratching her face and stretching into and out of a twist,  showed much empathy as I told her how Graeme’s (Hobart poet) baby, Angus, was not able to journey on the Hobart boat for the launch because there was no life jacket small enough to contain his tiny sea yearning limbs.

*add your own poems and thoughts on ‘The Sea’ at Pool

Share It

Hide Sites

The RAN are providing extraordinary support for this project. For those who keep an eye on our twitter, or the Pool site, you may have discovered the original duffel bag went missing on the plane from Sydney to Hobart… So, at 09:00:03 Commander Vine (pictured) phoned around the docks and, under ten seconds, secured us a giant, cream duffel bag, into which we placed the first commissioned poem. Commander Vine is a mini machine : knowing everyone on and off the water and able to get anything done, even the most obscure requests, such as locating a log book that would allow us to write poetic entries into it and also provide useful data for routes taken, on this trip. Commander Vine is also anthologizing a collection of poetry and he can recite all sorts of printable and non-printable rhymes.

By 11AM a crew was assembled on the wharf and we’d had our first ‘public’ submission from a retired NAVY Captain who had turned up unannounced to join the party.

Southern Cross TV (Hobart) filmed us setting sail and esteemed photographer, Matthew Newton, snapped the sea out of us as we and a crew of twelve sailed around the dock. Also on board were school students, training with the RAN, who were treated to Graeme reading his poem, whilst nearly being knocked over by the excited gales. Mesmerized they all were and the poem reading resulted in the kids creating an ‘activity’ as part of their course which features writing and submitting a group poem for the project.

Right now my head is swimming in Hobart apple juice and what it means ‘To Serve’, which seems to be the most popular motto for the ships, around here. In the internet cafe, from which I write, the owners have obviously had an afternoon sugar hit and have turned up the music so loud I think the fish outside can hear it.

Share It

Hide Sites