Belinda Jeffrey

Turns out that Launceston did exist and the iphone is not the be-all tool of the modern world, it does have it’s glitches. Not only does Launceston exist, its poetry scene is alive and well-and-truly-kicking butt.

Beginning on a very frosty Friday night, we shivered to the poetry of both featured and non-featured poets, hearing from the likes of Ross Donlon, Kevin Gillam, Nathan Curnow, Robin Archbold and our own poets, of course.

Saturday morning at Fuller’s Bookshop, art gallery in the afternoon and the crowning event that evening, The Launceston Poetry Cup.

It was a long day of poetry and, as great as it is, it does do strange things to one’s mind if in the zone too long. Like sending a small group of us in search of the hotel roof with a bottle of champagne (age was no barrier to this merriment). Deciding the roof was a tad dangerous, we changed venue to the balcony of a stone mansion (there is no other word for this building) behind the hotel. No one was home. We didn’t think they’d mind (it looked like a community centre or somesuch). It looked like the stage (complete with stone fountain in the front yard) for a midnight rendition of Romeo and Juliet by torchlight (we did contemplate this but it came to nothing.)

So. The cup. Rules are you have to perform a poem in under a minute. Poem with the best applause wins. Simple. I thought there was no point being immersed in the poetry world for a week with some of Queensland’s finest without penning a poem myself. I wrote, I performed, they clapped loudly – there was mild stomping. I didn’t win. The cup (there is an actual cup) went to Ross Donlon (well deserved) for his great poem called Menu. I stamped my feet and wolf-whistled for him. I did, however, win sixth place in the raffle and Kate Kennedy’s novel, The World Beneath, is coming my way.

If you are in Launceston next year, first week of October, I strongly urge you to check out the poetic action in the South. You won’t be disappointed.

Here’s the poem. Adapted from a scene in my novel.

FOR THE REAL KATE LEIGH, AKA MUM, 1936

Printed in the Kings Cross Times she was Kate Leigh

but in the back alleys if you wanted a whore or were a whore or wanted sly grog or she just plain liked you

she made you call her Mum.

At the Orphanage young Sam and his mates stole papers to get a look at her ‘cause she said Kings Cross was her place and anyone loyal was family.

She could hold a man’s troubles on her shoulders and there wasn’t anyone she didn’t know and nothing she couldn’t handle.

She’d wield a razor to save your life or end your life but if you got her,

if you managed to stick the boot and she was taken in,

she’d never rat you out and that was truth.

She had pictures with celebrities,

did time in Long Bay Gaol and friggin’ hated her rival Tilly Devine.

She handed out money to charity, put up Christmas trees in the streets of Surry Hills and gave out gifts like she was Santa’s moll.

Mum rivaled Jesus, church and the god-damn virgin Mary

‘cause it don’t matter to a boy what happens in the here-after

when the-here-and-now is shivering on a concrete floor

and starving at a wooden table

and thanking God for nothing.

She gave an orphan the right to say  “Mum” like it wasn’t anything pussy.

Imagine that

Sam could say over breakfast

Our Mum

knows Thumper- lightweight-Jackson.