Comments on: Taste, memory, chickpeas & Dorothy Porter

By: Charlotte

Charlotte — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:08:32 +0000

Andrea, I’m thrilled you dropped by. Thank you so much. And Dorothy’s new collection sounds beautiful, I am definitely getting my hands on it as soon as possible. (We did the permission thing via Dot’s agent Jenny Darling so I’m not surprised you don’t remember, the release of The Bee Hut must have been a very tumultuous time for you.)

I’m glad you got to read all the other loving words about Dot here too. Best wishes to you, and for Dot’s new book.

By: Andrea Goldsmith

Andrea Goldsmith — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 06:33:41 +0000

Charlotte, I stumbled on your website today and such pleasure it has brought me. I confess that most of 2009 is a blur and I don’t remember your contacting me. I will try the chickpea fritters – like Dot I, too, am a vegetarian – but food aside I have loved reading all these memories of Dot. She was a generous teacher, always blunt and fearless, and yes, a mesmerising reader. She loved trawling the web and would have delighted in the posts here.

I was browsing today to see what had been written about her new collection. Simply called LOVE POEMS, I have brought together all her love poems starting from her first collection, Little Hoodlum, published in 1975 when she was a baby poet of 21, to her last, The Bee Hut published last year. LOVE POEMS is published by Black Inc and it is wonderful. We all miss her enormously, but the poetry helps – it certainly helps me, and these luscious, edgy poems of love most of all. Anyway thank you and all the people who have written here.

By: A paean to the pea « How to shuck an oyster

A paean to the pea « How to shuck an oyster — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:14:58 +0000

[...] 6, 2010 Regular visitors to this blog will know that I am an avid fan of the legume (see here, here, here and here, just for a few [...]

By: Punk rocks « How to shuck an oyster

Punk rocks « How to shuck an oyster — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:04:39 +0000

[...] The other night, after some initial reluctance the younger one happily chowed down on some chickpea fritters; convinced to try one, she plunged in for [...]

By: Charlotte

Charlotte — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:12:28 +0000

Lovely posts, Eileen & Annette. And so interesting, isn’t it, the mature age student thing. It’s why I can’t bear all the HSC hand-wringing and misery that comes if someone doesn’t do well and can’t get into this or that course – I always tell them it’s waaaaay better if they go to uni later, when they can actually love it. Here’s to Dot once more for making us think about it.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:41:37 +0000

All this has stirred a lot of memories for me. I was lucky enough to meet DP when I hooked a ride with David who had a 3 week residency. She and Jonathan Mills were putting their final touches to Eternity Man. As you all know she was very open and generous and David fell in love with her. He cooked her special vegetarian meals because she didn’t eat meet. We were heartbroken to hear she had gone. As for ‘Jerusalem’ – i spent 3 weeks there about 10 years ago.The street food was fantastic. I lived off felafels. I can’t believe DP wrote a poem about this. As a mature aged student of the 70′s I well remember the deep divide between them (young ones) and us. MAS’s spent most of their time in the library photocopying stuff out of text books, ti read after they had put their children to bed. MAS’s took up a whole row in the big lecture hall 08101 – The West in Early Modern Times – grouped together for safety I guess.A tutor once told me not to worry about a difficulty I was having understanding a poet, because, he said with a sneer, it’s well known that married women to better than other students. The implication is we were all being supported by wealth spouses and had oodles of time to frit about at uni.Well I’m so glad to have got all that off my chest. Thanks Charlotte

By: hughesy

hughesy — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:19:42 +0000

Oh – and BTW – I was one of those mature age students surrounded by smartypants younguns, and what you mistook for tragic loneliness was infact smug superioroity. Edumcation is wasted on youth. I found ‘Paradise Lost’ at Uni – for the children, it remained a mystery. Likewise Proust. How the hell can you possibly comprehend ‘In Search of Lost Time’ when you have all the time in the world?

By: hughesy

hughesy — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:10:53 +0000

That ‘Ninth Hour’ reading by Andrea left me gasping. I heard Dorothy read years ago at one of the first Brisbane festivals down on the river bank. Then she read Ginsgerg’s ‘Howl’. There wasn’t a dry seat in the house and it received uproarious applause. To hear that poem there, in the town that a whole generation had fled in cultural desperation 10 years earlier, put me into an emotional spin.

Afterwards, being a baby agent, I found myself standing beside Dorothy and Andrea with a group of authors and other agents. I was so affected by her reading that I just couldn’t think of anything glib or groovy to say in that company. All I can remember is that I when I was introduced, I was consumed by a wave of tenderness and I heard my timid little girl voice ask if I could hug her. She didn’t shink away from my stalky weird request – she looked into my brimming eyes, then turned up her palms and invited a stranger put their arms around her and hold on tight. I’ll never forget the feeling of being inside her forcefield.

Vale DP.

By: Charlotte

Charlotte — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 06:22:25 +0000

Thanks all – am glad to hear this has spread word of DP poetry a little further afield. And Rubyfire, coming and talking books at Literary Feast is always a pleasure.

The chickpea fritters look healthy but don’t taste it, if you know what i mean – lots of flavour and, given the fritteredness, fair amount of decadence. Plonk that yoghurt dressing on and it’s a fatfest, basically. In a good way, of course…

By: Rubyfire Writes

Rubyfire Writes — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:33:26 +0000

The chickpea fritters look delicious and healthy. Do you suppose they will atone for the bucket load of rum balls I made (ate) this afternoon?

Thanks for your recent visit to Literary Feast, lots of food for thought.
http:rubyfirewrites.blogspot.com