On Sat, 2010-02-06 at 19:11 +1100, Alison Croggon wrote:
> Max, I have a real prejudice against centred poetry. At least, I can
> think of one time when I used it; and I think it looks amateurish. 

This is what I felt also about some of that bush slam stuff. When I was
caring for my mother before she passed away one of the garden club
members use to visit and read her the latest poem she had written. I
went to my computer and hid out of sight but she made sure she read
loudly enough that I could here.

After that, I have become much softer and much more tolerant of amateur
poets. Although I try to hide as much as I can that I am an
internationally published poet and artist, wanting more to be unknown,
the bush telegraph says otherwise. The very fact that people value
poetry enough to take it up as a hobby... what does this say? This woman
did not want my approval. All she wanted to say was that she valued
poetry and life. And it gave my mother some reprieve from her last
crippling wheel chair bound painful months. And at the end all I could
do was hold her hand while a distressed painful voice from somewhere
else pleaded; help me, help me, help me. Her kidneys had shut down. Her
pad was dry. The Australian health bureaucracy made sure my mother could
not have access to morphine when she needed it most. What a cruel and
awful world we live in. And some still think computers and digital is
progress!

So, after this, I guess I need to rethink. My doctor is on holidays. I
have run out of opiate pain relief because some dead brain ignorant
replacement doctor thinks I don't need it! I want to kill myself.