Suggesting a Theme

  

'Grey hair' he said

and tilted back his chair

mentally counting, perhaps,

the ones on his head.

How many?

And how many years in here?

And ... 'what's the scent of parsley?'

(We'd talked of Dylan Thomas earlier.

'How's it above?'

cry Dylan's drowned).

          ******

Today in the prison poetry class

the men, all young, explained

why they grin in sorrow

why they laugh through pain.

W hat's the taste of vegemite?

Is Outside real by now?

We laughed until we wept.

He grinned in his tilting chair

and suggested a theme:

grey hair.

11/9/81

I've recently been sharing memoir excerpts about conducting poetry workshops in Pentridge prison a long time ago, on behalf of the Poets Union of Australia. At Poets and Storytellers United this week, Magaly asks us, in Friday Writings #38, to share something inspired by the phrase, 'to stay creative, is to stay happy and alive'. I'm not sure that's absolutely true, but it certainly helps! While this piece was not inspired by it, the prison poetry workshops were a case in point, even if the happiness was limited. Herewith a poem I wrote in, and about, one of those workshops.

Notes on the poem:

In workshops, I often call for suggestions for a theme that we can all  write on.

Those serving long sentences were oppressed by the thought that they were growing old in there.  

In the prison, tears (they explained) would have been seen as weakness, to make one preyed upon by other prisoners.

When I read them the poem later, the one who inspired it took offence at the idea he might laugh at anyone else's pain. But I meant they would laugh at their own – outwardly at least. So I have only just now, after all  these years, changed 'laugh at' to 'laugh through', and similarly 'grin at' to 'grin in'.

The Sun Setting

It’s been a sad week, one way and another.

Tanka for Bev, and for Manfred

The news comes –

two different friends

dead this week.

The nights grow colder 

with brilliant sunsets.

************

Landay for John

My face in the mirror pinched and old –

I approach the sad part of the memoir I’m writing.

July. This is the same month he died

in a long ago year when the sun set for us both.

After the sunset, the long dark night.

Inexorably, the sun rises again – for one.

Forty years past I shed many tears.

I open the page and find I have still more to fall.

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United in Friday Writings #36: Sunset.

Sunset photo © Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2019

Writing the Prison

(After Anne Sexton: 'Ringing the Bells')

And this is the way we go
to work in prison
and this is the gate where we stand
still for the metal-detector and open our bags
and open the books in our bags,
and these are the writers in prison
who wait for Friday,
two hours a week that feel like freedom;
and because we are working in poetry
and because that’s another country,
an open space outside what is known,
we are the circle of laughing poets
who lounge in the plastic chairs in the Education shed
and smile at the baffled officers
who watch but leave us alone,
who watch us escape
the gates and doors with locks;
and these are the bluestone blocks we pass
on the way into the prison
guarded by guns as if it were true
we are not free, we are not free;
and these are the tunnels we walk on Tuesday
in maximum security,
cages that whisper open electronically,
whisper open electronically and whisper closed;
and this is how the poetry shouts,
as outspoken and bold
as a fearless child,
and this is always my freedom responding
to the words that respond to the prison
where poets write and are free
two hours a week, on Tuesday or Friday,
when the door in the wall cracks open
and lets me in, and we meet;
and although I may work and go
out again through the tunnels and gates and locks,
I am the one who will never
escape the prison.


Written in 1987
First published La Mama Poetica anthology (Melb. University Press 1989)
Also in Walking the Dogs (Pariah Press anthology, 1994)
Included in the author's Secret Leopard: New and Selected Poems 1974-2005 (Paris, Alyscamps Press, 2005).

Sharing now with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #34, where we are invited to write a piece including one or all of several words, including 'freedom'. I'm taking the liberty of choosing this piece, written long ago, not only because it is so much about freedom, but also because it directly relates to the memoir I've recently been sharing with P&SU.