My poem is simply called, ‘Reversable Poem’.

Reversable Poem
© Garth Dutton, 2010

Long morning.
Car windows misted-up.
Crows call from stobie pole.
T.V. is on, but the program is off the mark.
Mailman brings no letters.
Waiting for change of fortune.
Listlessly listening to music.
Beer or wine?
Winter day.
Rain squalls.

Rain squalls.
Winter day.
Beer or wine?
Listlessly listening to music.
Waiting for a change of fortune.
Mailman brings no letters.
T.V. is on, but the program is off the mark.
Crows call from stobie pole.
Car windows are misted-up.

We were given a dozen pieces of paper of varying sizes and shapes, and had to write a line of poetry on each of them. Then we had to shuffle the pieces of paper into a heap, draw them out at random, and however they came out was the poem.

The result of my effort is simply called ‘Collage’

Collage
© Garth Dutton, 2010

Reflected light from a rock pool.
In Kansas it is easy to believe the world is flat.
‘Centre of a triangle’ written at the centre of a triangle.
Daybreak rises.
Trip on kerbing and nearly break wrist.
Cold wind whistles around drainpipe.
Friends come back from McDonnell Ranges, three days early,
rained out in July.
Icelandic volcano closes down Europe’s airways.
Hooray! Coopers Creek flood reaches Lake Eyre.
The River Torrens is trying to stay calm
in the wind. The waves are reduced to ripples.
If I lock my screen door at night,
I’d never get out in an earthquake.
White gum blossom/ lots of honeyeaters/ too cold for bees.

Hope you like it…

Window
© Garth Dutton, 2010

Window pane is cracked.
Paint peels from weatherboard.
Mining town
when mines have been closed.
Even the pub is run-down.

In October 2004, I went to
the South Island of New Zealand,
on a new direct flight from
Sydney to Christchurch.
It was well worth my while.
I took the 10 hour bus trip from
Christchurch to Te Anau,
with its beautiful lake.
Then, a couple of days later,
I took the bus trip to Milford Sound.

The Milford Road would have to be
one of the most spectacular roads in the world,
for it winds through Fiordland.
The mountains there are huge,
and the whole landscape
has been torn asunder
by repeated Ice Ages.

What are left are towering snow-capped mountains,
vertical-walled U-shaped valleys,
(gouged out by ice),
and deep fiords at the coast.
Valley bottoms and lower slopes
are covered with thick forest,
except where it has been cleared
by numerous avalanches
during winter and spring.

Then there is the Homer Tunnel,
which goes right under a mountain range.
It was mostly dug by pick and shovel
to employ the unemployed
during the Great Depression,
and finished off after the War.

Much of it is one lane only,
with passing bays here and there.
It is always full of buses, caravans and petrol tankers,
and the walls are still rough-hewn.
It was a scary experience going through.
Then the long winding drop down to Milford Sound.

It was raining while I was there,
but that was a good thing,
for it meant waterfalls
cascaded down from the mountains
all around the fiord.
Spectacular!

I’ll definitely go there again sometime.

Spring Evening Walk
© Garth Dutton 2008

I go for a walk around the district
on a balmy spring evening.
The warm weather has caused weeds to grow tall.
Some lawns are neatly trimmed,
but others look overgrown.
The latter await a visit
from that artificial grazing animal,
the lawn mower.

Morning Walk
© Garth Dutton 2009

On my morning walk
I see that spring is on its way.
In the next street
an almond tree
is in bloom,
but as yet
bees and honeyeaters
seem in short supply.
Both days and nights
are getting a bit warmer,
but my flat still seems
like winter.

Cat On A Window Ledge
© Garth Dutton 2008

A cat sleeps on
in winter sun
unaware
that in Australia
cats have become
ideologically unsound

The book was published in May 2005.

A Sign Of The Times (Part 1)
© 2004 Garth Dutton

At Frankston Shopping Centre
a sign of the times.
Three shops in a row…
A St. Vincent de Paul Centre
set between
a shop selling new & used surfboards
& another
marketing virtual reality.

A Sign Of The Times (Part 2)
© 2004 Garth Dutton

At Highett
on the Frankston line,
beyond a graffiti laden
back fence,
women in white
play lawn bowls
on immaculate greens.

A Sign Of The Times (Part 3)
© 2004 Garth Dutton

A sign on a wall says
“FIGHT POWER – NOT EACH OTHER.”
Another says
“BRITISH ARMY OUT OF IRELAND.”
Another says
“EDUCATION?”
Wonder what they mean by that?
All the rest are ‘tags.’
No… Hang on…
Some more slogans come into sight.
“MEAT IS MURDER”,
“MUTATE NOW – AVOID THE RUSH”,
“DESTROY THA SYSTEM”.
(Yes, it was spelled T H A.)
“WORK, CONSUME, BE SILENT, DIE”.
That’s It!
The rest are ‘tags’ like
EPIC…PNO…ZONA…POPS…
“In” messages for the initiated.

A Problem With Australian English
© Garth Dutton 2009

I have been living in Australia for quite a long time, but Australian English I find to be ‘beyond me’. I have no hope of getting a complete mental picture of the language, because in it a range of adjectives have become nouns.

The only other time I know of this happening is in the field of vicious political and ethic propaganda.

I speak Portuguese English, and in it nationalities can only ever be adjectives. For example, she is Italian, he is Brazilian etc. But in Australian English the equivalent terms are nouns, she is an Italian and he is a Brazilian.

And there the problem lies… In a singular noun you can only ever have one mental picture, and there is no such thing as a single mental picture of someone Italian or Brazilian. Yet Australian people appear to have one.

For a single picture of someone Italian, who would they choose? Someone with black hair and olive skin from Sicily, or someone with blonde hair and blue eyes from Trieste? And who do they see as ‘a Brazilian’? Pele, who is of black Angolan descent, or Ayrton Da Silva Senna, who was of mixed Portuguese and American Indian Descent?

Try as I may, I can find no answer, but I still can’t believe Australians see all nationalities as stereotypes.

I can think of some historical examples where adjectives have become nouns. In the first half of ‘Mein Kampf’, Hitler calls Jewish people ‘Jewish’, which is an adjective. Then he changed his mind and used the term ‘a Jew’ instead. As he now had a noun with only a single mental picture to work with, he created the most vicious ethnic stereotype in the history of propaganda.

The result of the change from adjective to noun was six million dead.

The First World War would have been over at the Christmas Truce in 1914 if the soldiers in all the armies had had their way. Generals and politicians wanted the war to go on and chose propaganda as their weapon to make sure it was fought to its conclusion. So they used the term ‘ a Hun’ to describe the average German soldier in saturation propaganda.

The war went on till 1918 and only ended when the constant barrage of hate propaganda caused German Army morale to collapse.

In the late 1940’s in America, Senator Joseph McCarthy took the adjective ‘red’ and turned it into a noun ‘a Red’. He had one mental picture to work with, so he created a vicious political stereotype of a Communist.

It turned into a ‘witch-hunt’ and many thousands of innocent people were persecuted and imprisoned. But there is one used by Australians of nationalities as nouns that has become dangerous.

Zimbabwe is a multi ethnic nation like Malaysia. There are two quite different black ethnic groups who live there, Shona and Matabele, and a white ethnic group who have no choice but to call themselves ’Zimbabwean’, because Robert Mugabe took away the only other name they had for themselves when he changed the country’s  name from Rhodesia.

The country fought Britain over independence for 14 years, under the rule of white leader Ian Smith, and his black successor Bishop Muzorewa and Australian visitors still insist on calling white people there ’British settlers’. Sadly they have no choice…

They have the term ’a Zimbabwean’ in their vocab and so can have only a single picture, and that’s of someone black. And what do black people on the rest of the continent think of white Zimbabweans?

Ever since Ian Smith declared unilateral independence in 11 November 1965, successive generations of them have gone to work for some years in other African countries, doing essential skilled work for local wages.

Britain has an appalling image in Africa due to the rapacious practices and exploitation  there by British big business. There couldn’t be a more insulting term than to call white Zimbabweans, “British settlers”.

I believe this tragedy for Australian English came about, because of the ‘oath of allegiance’ all primary school children had to take in the 1950’s. They had to salute the flag, then say aloud “I am an Australian.”

At my school, not one immigrant child would say it, because to all of them “Australian’ was an adjective, not a noun. But for the Aussie kids, they went on to call other nationalities by nouns as well.

We don’t want to lose Australian English, because, as a vehicle for rhyming poetry it is in a class all of its own. The only course of action I see available is a major education campaign in newspapers and in schools. Let’s hope the political will is there to do it.