Last Chance to Win

Tonight I am putting all commenters between last week and now (well, except for those spammy ones) in the hat for a chance to win the book that has two one* of my poems published within. Wow!!!

There is, of course, a story attached.

As I may have mentioned, once upon a time I had aspirations of being poetically inclined. I still sometimes get the inclination - it is trying to get the inclination to peak when time, pen and paper coincide that is the problem.

Once upon a time I had plenty of time, reams of paper and many beautiful pens.

I actually began my "performance" career at school camp when I was six, with a recitation of "Alexander Beetle" - well, I was meant to debut there, but I have a feeling that stage fright may have curtailed the poem at its first verse.

I started performing my own stuff at boarding school as a way of winning debates and impressing the sort of boffin boys I was attracted to. I did help to win debates with it, but I am afraid that I more impressed the sort of girls who wanted to use my words inspiring laughter to impress the sort of boys they wanted to impress and the boffin boys were being well looked after by other girls and failed to notice the short fat joke-teller as the femme fatale she had designs on becoming.

When I lived in Sydney, I resumed my career after a some study and lost memories that were the early Brisbane years. I wrote prolifically, went to poetry venues at least twice a month. I was even invited to be a feature poet as part of a festival!

When I lived in Melbourne, I wrote, watched and performed often. Do you know the BEST thing about being a poet in Melbourne? They actually print in the paper a listing of the weekly poetry gatherings!!! I did a few features, fended questions about publication (if you don't send, you don't get rejected) and male poets (I even wrote a poem about it!)

When I lived in Brisbane, I still followed my desires - of course, I followed them right to the point of having a beautiful baby girl to a man I knew through poetry but hey, that's art life.

When my daughter was only still a baby, I was invited to be one of the ten feature poets at an event about 100km to the north. It was a wonderful evening - there were many great poets and patrons, a lot of laughter and for (apparently**) a good cause.

The organiser did put a few noses out of joint with recording and filming the evening without written permission, and payment promised ended up being copies of the book that resulted from the evening. That is why I still have so many!

So anyway - I will leave you with one of the best things I did get from that day so many years ago, and that was a chance to be friends with the woman in the following video.

WARNING - it does go for 10 minutes and has drug references, coarse language, sexual innuendo and possible political undertones - much more than you can pick up from your average pub, girls!! Don't watch at work or in front of your mother (oh, and Mum - don't you watch it either)

A lot has happened in all these years - some good, some great, some bad, some terrible - and she has been a mate throughout. Love ya Kate.



*Oops - the CD they made to flog has two of my poems on, just noticed only one made the book LOL. Unfortunately, you won't find any of Miss Kate's poetry in the book - but she is on the CD, of which I know of the existence of hers and mine - not sure how many were pressed!

** The cause was excellent and one of the organisers I would trust to be charitable. The other, however... lets just say that it was for a generic grouping so the money trail may have run cold.