I like it, Max, mind you, there's much in Strine that goes all the way back:
'dag, daggy' for instance.
2009/7/14 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
>
> My John Dover Wilson, 1963
>
>
> The pleasure of my company being
> requested, I stand at attention, shake hands,
>
> feeling (fresh out of Auckland)
> ill at ease in Edinburgh,
>
> and stoop to fumbling talk with scholarship's
> venerable Shakespearean, John
>
> Dover Wilson. 'Your research?' he asks.
> 'Auden', I say. 'But he's alive! and is
>
> he any good? You know, for me, poetry
> still hasn't recovered from the death
>
> of young Rupert Brooke.' My moment passes,
> I am dumb; telling others afterwards,
>
> I tend to stumble, saying Keats instead
> of Brooke. To be English and inwardly
>
> assured of all that continuity!
> From some unlettered countryman's lips
>
> (he liked to say) some phrase of Hamlet's might
> still be heard, pithy, wise, and English.
>
> So poets draw on the folk's rich word-hoard.
> 'You rough-hew them, Oi'll shape the ends.'
>
> That's what Wilson on a country walk had heard.
> Auden and I, what did we have but reading?
>
>
> Max Richards
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> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
--
David Bircumshaw
"A window./Big enough to hold screams/
You say are poems" - DMeltzer
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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