Almanac Prose Poetry: People and Places
Iris
Memories of my grandmother, Dad’s mother – connected to shadowy places. Old hotels where we’d counter lunch, ageless crimson carpet on the floor, sunlight filtered through ‘Ladies Lounge’ stained glass, dust particles in the air, me drinking lemon squashes, or raspberries, eating a plate of fish and chips with a quarter of lemon on the side. Or my family in her backyard late on a summer afternoon beneath a shady pergola covered in gnarled, aged vines. Or I think of the houses where she lived, ancient, dark, high ceilinged. Enormous padded lounge chairs. In the room with the piano which no-one could play, a photo of her de facto, Ken, as a young serviceman heading off to war, bright-eyed and full of hope. He is coughing with emphysema in the next room, the last in a succession of kind-hearted, useless men with whom she shared her life.
House by the Sea
Why, across years, decades, does my mind keep returning to an old weatherboard house by the sea in winter? To white-capped, deep blue waves, on the other side of nearby dunes, seen through the glass of a slightly open window? A curtain turning and tossing in a fluky wind? What about the cracks in the plaster of this room’s walls and ceiling? The antique black-and-white TV in the corner, switched off, it seems, forever? And the yellowed wallpaper dotted with tiny pink flowers? The dusty coffee table with a cut-glass vase in the centre, upon a once-white lace doily? The creaking timber of the house’s frame, the high-pitched grinding of the sheets of the corrugated iron roof? Why am I suddenly, palpably there, here, wondering why I’m present?
(Acknowledgements: ‘Iris’ previously appeared in my third poetry collection, Orpheus in the Undershirt, Ginninderra Press, 2018; ‘House by the Sea’ debuted in my fourth collection, Sacredly Profane, Ginninderra Press, 2020.)
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About
Kevin Densley is a graduate of both Deakin University and The University of Melbourne. He has taught writing and literature in numerous Victorian universities and TAFES. He is a poet and writer-in-general. His fifth book-length poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws ... I'm Feeling Too Indolent, was published in late 2023 by Ginninderra Press. He is also the co-author of ten play collections for young people, as well as a multi Green Room Award nominated play, Last Chance Gas, published by Currency Press. Other writing includes screenplays for educational films.
We’re of a similar vintage, Kevin, and while the images of the people I have from that era may be different in their detail and settings, the atmospherics and the incidentals are very familiar. Thanks for sharing this perspective and insight this morning. No doubt I’ll go back in my mind as the day progresses to revisit images of my grandparents (and their era) and my boyhood home on the farm.
Many thanks for your comments, Ian – I’m very pleased the two prose poems resonated with you in the way that they did.
Regarding what you so interestingly term ‘[a[tmospherics and incidentals’… prose poems are typically very much concerned with these kinds of aspects, I believe, perhaps even more than (non-prose) poetry, which is often a longer and more ordered (for want of a better word) form of writing.
Really enjoyed these Kevin. Great evocations of place. The details in ‘Iris’ ring especially true and for me the homes of the elderly always featured a ticking clock in the otherwise quiet mid-afternoon ennui. The prose/poetry form holds significant appeal too.
Thanks, Mickey – your comments are appreciated, particularly coming from someone such as yourself whose work often evokes place very well. For example, there is a distinctive “Mickey Randall Kapunda” – a particular kind of Australian country town ‘world’ – that is wonderfully conveyed whenever you choose to write about the place in any detail.
And yes, the prose poem is a fine mode of writing, too – hard to do well, I feel, but highly effective when it works.