Hi Max,
What a pity the ministerial limo didn't wait for you. The way things are going
in NSW at the moment there could a space opening up there.
Enjoyed it!
best,
Jill
> My Ministry
>
> In my dream, the Premier wanted me
> as State Minister of Poetry
> Victoria¹s very first.
> I was alone standing on the street
> near where Spring and Bourke meet,
> gazing at my ministerial vehicle
> the size of a caravan, white
> without windows or visible
> wheels, its metal skirt
> hovered just above the asphalt.
>
> It lacked door-handle, door or window;
> a cool monument neatly iced over.
> I kept my hands in my pockets,
> trying to conceal my puzzlement,
> pondering an agenda.
>
> Waking now, I smiled in the dark,
> thinking: possibilities...¹
> letting them form and develop.
>
> Maternity wards would hear from me first:
> for every newborn a large book of verse:
> in front, Mother Goose and lullabies;
> behind, the archives of the Opies.
> Next: folktales, Joseph Jacobs¹ versions,
> Edward Lear and annotated Carroll.
>
> My team of helpers would soon
> be visiting each home.
> Are the adults and older children
> singing and reciting well?
> Dandling and chortling, chanting
> the English-language canon,
> how¹s it all coming on?
>
> Are the state¹s kindergarten
> teachers chiming in unison?
> TV and radio fulfilling their quotas?
> Big Poem Brothers, Big Poem Sisters
> hover among the new generation
> making sure memorization
> is joyful and on schedule...
>
> Returned to the corner of Bourke and Spring,
> I found no sign of my ministerial vehicle -
> like ice dissolved, evaporated, gone.
> The experiment was off.
>
> On the big screen at Federation Square
> no epic events in striding hexameters,
> nor oedipal anagnorisis and
> catharsis, no sublime rhetoric,
> no richly comic vernacular,
> nor tender intricacies of love,
> but - see the big men fly!¹,
> and clash of titans!¹,
> and poetry in motion!¹.
> Football still held all eyes.
>
>
> Wednesday 3 August 2005
>
> Max Richards
> at Cooee, North Balwyn, Melbourne
at Cooee, North Balwyn, Melbourne
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