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Robert Eshelby
Let the Poetry Begin!
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I read my poem, ‘Desert Piece’, recently (see below), to try to remember the young me. The poem felt so sad and desolate, that I felt I needed to redress the balance and write a poem of hope. After all, failure at twenty-one doesn’t have to mean failure for ever! Actually, it made me doubly determined to carve my way and to create a curriculum vitae that was, at least, interesting. In the fifty plus years that have passed since 1968, I have had many successes and not a few failures, and have learnt that in life you win some and you lose some! With this in mind, I thought that I would use the Australian outback as a theme once again and find a real positive in its mystery and its contrasts, its rain forest and its deserts, its mountains and plains, its drab and its colour, its wet and its dry. Australia is a continent of stark differences. There is life in the dry centre, where logic says that there should be none. Bush fires destroy everything, but they also prompt the germination of new growth in a regenerative cycle that has taken place regularly over millennia. When the monsoon-like rains finally fall on the centre, following years of drought, there is life a-plenty in its wake. After the flood the desert becomes a sea of wildflowers. Recently, thanks to global warming, there has been an excess of fire and flood in Australia, often arriving unexpectedly and causing heartbreak and disaster for its inhabitants, human or otherwise. Traditionally, life goes on. For me, the outback will always be a country where triumph and disaster go hand in hand. It is a land of extremes, where people, animals and vegetation just keep going, riding the onslaughts, living their lives, and delighting in their unique environment. Surely that is an image of optimism and worth a poem! Dead Centre
There is hope in the centre, in the dry, scorched desert, In the dusty billabongs and ancient mountain ranges, there is life. Rustling creatures, powdered red, commute with industry, prowl with intensity, slither with certainty, Kangaroo, wallaby, bandicoot and lorikeet, potaroo, dingo, cockatoo and crocodile, modelled by millennia, mingle in the dreamtime, Aussies to the core. Too, there are people, old as the hills, wise in their ways, purposeful, confident, who know their land, share their sand, understand. And there are seeds. Dusty pods, underfoot and under belly, waiting for the ten-year rain to slake their thirst. Distant dreams, suckled by the centre, parched, inert, patient, apart, waiting, pleading, for the warm, wet wind of India to flood the gravid floor, ignite a desert fire. Sturt’s rose and suncap, dandelion and marigold, king cup, poached eggs, pussy tail and parrot pea will blaze on damp earth, and set the central sea aflame with flower, raging and roaring like a blacksmith’s hearth.
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I wrote ‘Desert Piece’ at the age of twenty-one. It was my first poem as an adult. I was feeling very depressed about life in general and life in Australia in particular. Two years earlier I had arrived in Queensland with my parents and twin brother, Jim, determined to make a success in my new home. My school experience in a Somerset public school had been less than an overwhelming success. I disliked the system, which was designed to subdue the individual and to promote obedience and uniformity. Going to Australia, the land of huge spaces and individualism, seemed perfect for me. I wanted to go to university, to study English and, above all, I wanted to be an operatic tenor! My first move was to get into Queensland University, in St Lucia, Brisbane. I enrolled with the Queensland Correspondence School and did a crash course to pass my Senior Public Examination in five subjects in just over six months. I had no conflict with teachers to distract me and passed with flying colours. Unfortunately fate then stepped in. I was called up at the age of nineteen for National Service in Australia. Only one male in ten was balloted and Jim and I were among the lucky ones! I volunteered to apply for officer training in Portsea, Victoria for eleven months, and was accepted. As a twin, Jim could then do six years in the Citizens’ Military Forces as a part-time soldier. I didn’t particularly want to be a soldier, but it was the start to a career, and I badly needed a career. For reasons best known to my training officers, I found myself a bit of a square peg and resigned, after ten months, before they could kick me out! I behaved impeccably, but apparently, lacked leadership qualities! Oh well! I was back where I had started, but a year older and totally lacking in self-confidence. It seemed to me that the dry outback was just the right image to describe me! I wrote this poem as a way of expressing my feelings of frustration with life and felt better afterwards. Years later, I realise that, while poetry can’t fix the world, it can release ideas and images which are both therapeutic and insightful. As with most things in life, things got better with a bit of hard work and application. The good thing is that I am left with a poem to show for it. Better than a medal! Desert Piece
I’ve trudged the dry outback – extruded roads, a rolling patchwork back-drop, scrubby dust and flies, the country talking in their shivering wings grizzling. I’ve seen sun’s fried egg on blue snap the bouncing dust-ball raindrops back, and so, too, have I been sucked of moisture, spat and fallen, dried sand, to the ground. |
My LifeI was born in England soon after the war. I moved , with my family to Australia in 1966, where I was a soldier (briefly), a public servant, an opera singer, and an English teacher. Archives
November 2022
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