Poems

The Party of Life was published by Flying Islands in the Pocket Book series in 2015. Translated with love and care by Ruby Chen. Huge thanks to series editor Kit Kelen. 

Beth Spencer is an award-winning author of poetry and fiction. Her work has frequently been broadcast on ABC-Radio National, and her books include How to Conceive of a Girl (Random House), The Party of Life (Flying Islands), Vagabondage (UWAP) and The Age of Fibs (ebook published by Spineless Wonders and winner of the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award).  She lives and writes on Guringai & Darkinjung land on the NSW Central Coast; she has a website at www.bethspencer.com, and can be found on social media @bethspen

The party of life

For my twenty-fifth birthday the invitation said ‘wear black.’ 

An old primary school photo with my anxious face circled 

(including the big white bow in my hair)

had an arrow and the words ‘Will this girl make it to 25?’

scrawled across the bottom.

Perhaps it was those sixties cartoons 

that declared ‘Never trust anyone over…’

Or maybe I just always felt

I would burn myself out.

Each new crack in my heart —

each new cut of experience 

digging a grave in soft soil.

So we called it an ‘instead-of-a-suicide party’

and told everyone to wear black.

In the kitchen my housemates prepared a storyboard 

out of the pickings from a cardboard box of photos and souvenirs.

Below a snap of my cubby house up on a trailer

(taken on the day it was given away to neighbours)

Lynne wrote: ‘Never knew a permanent home’

and stuck a pin in it.

Ridiculously, we fought over this.

The historian, versus the journalists and fabulists.

I was over-ruled, of course (howled down / wriggling).

They evicted me from the party room — after all, I was dead.

Leaving them free to sift and interpret the traces

with latitude and glee. (Never let the facts, etc.)

     And here I think about this

     twenty-five years older and wiser,

     as I draw the curtains inside my 

     hightop campervan

     wash my cup and plate,

     climb into my narrow bed…

On the evening of my twenty-fifth birthday

I was shoo-ed out of the kitchen, away from the party food,

and commanded to lie in state in my bedroom.

So I put on my Miss Haversham wedding dress

(complete with faint patches of mildew)

and arranged myself on top of the covers.

Jill’s boyfriend came in to keep me company, sitting quietly

in his black turtleneck, my unofficial confessor.

Each time I heard the girls calling

‘Oh she makes a lovely corpse’

— their voices drifting down the hallway — 

I stubbed out my cigarette, 

stashed the champagne under the bed,

clasped my rose, closed my eyes, 

crossed my bare feet neatly.

Mostly, the guests were speechless.

The flickering candles, 

the baby-powder on my face.

The bandaids just visible at the edges of my wrists.

(Did we go overboard?)

Even the trendy-punks from down the street muttered 

‘This is macabre’ and left.

Only Theresa and Jenny after pausing in the doorway for 

just a heartbeat (or two, maybe three)

flung themselves at my feet weeping, wailing

and gnashing their teeth.

I listened to them recounting our lives together 

(‘Oh, remember when, remember when…’)

and smiled a secret smile in the candlelit dark.

Outside, in the bright living room the guests bonded 

over the polystyrene tombstone,

the epitaph from Plath, 

the black crepe-paper-chains

and the cardboard coffin 

containing the dips and chips.

The volume grew steadily as they became ever more 

Exuberant (relieved just to be alive).

Through the wall: voices rising, laughter, music.

— The Clash, Blondie, Human League, Marvin Gaye —

every now and then 

the brittle sound of a glass being smashed.

Never knew a permanent home.

I honestly can’t say why that one rankled so much. 

A fibro cubby house with its fake Fred Flintstone-walls.

As if that was my childhood home —

that small, that flimsy?

(‘From the town of bed-rock

there are things right out of his-tory.’)

But I guess it is true

I always had

an urge (or a habit, not entirely conscious)

— a penchant — 

to cast myself adrift,

trusting to the invisible parachute.

The schools I chose, the uni where I knew no-one, 

moving state, jettisoning relationships.

Always an eye out for the clean slate,

the chance to reinvent (write the storyboard).

At midnight on my twenty-fifth birthday

I rose

and joined the party in the living room.

We sang Happy Birthday and

Hip hip hooray.

And I shed the lace wedding dress

emerging whole in a vintage white mini

with a beaded neckline and danced till dawn.

Virginal amid the inner city black.

I rise… I rise…

And now.

  Here I am

at fifty

(rising, rising)

trailing wisps of stuff down the highway

(the odd patch of mildew).

In a cubby house again on wheels,

still looking 

for the living room. 

*audio version here: https://soundcloud.com/bethspen/the-party-of-life

The Party of Life – launch speech by Bernard Cohen — https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2016/01/19/eccentric-sustaining-bernard-cohen-launches-the-party-of-life-by-beth-spencer/

Lou Smith is a Melbourne-based poet of Welsh, Jamaican and English heritage who grew up in Newcastle, NSW. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies both in Australia and overseas including Wasafiri, Mascara Literary Review, A Slow Combusting Hymn, Overland, The Caribbean Writer, Nine Muses Poetry, sx Salon, Soft Surface and Caribbean Quarterly. Her book riversalt was published by Flying Islands in 2015.

Lou has worked as an editor and proofreader and was the co-founder of independent publisher Breakdown Press, publishers of political poster series and books such as How to Make Trouble and Influence People: Pranks, Hoaxes, Graffiti and Political Mischief-Making from Across Australia and YOU: some letters from the first five years. 

She is currently working on a number of writing projects including two new books of poetry, one of which is set in her hometown of Newcastle during the Great Depression. 

Lou has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Melbourne where she sometimes teaches. 

 www.lousmith.net

Here are three poems are from my collection riversalt.

An Evening Swim at Kilaben Bay

Between the wooden slats

of the boardwalk

distant lights of houses

blur in a diffraction of amber

like Venus through drizzle

or in the curve of waves

fanning from shore

Sugar

My grandma

sprinkled sugar

on banana fritters

caramelising it in butter

specks of sweetness 

dissolving through batter

into the melting warm fruit

this island was built on sugar

Mum will only eat strawberries

when coated

in enough castor sugar

to form a hot pink pool

in the bottom of the bowl

swirls into thickened cream

like blood entering water

this island was built on sugar

in the day’s heat

men with machetes slice 

through hedges, the cutlass

a legacy from when those

who had been enslaved

cut sugarcane

hands bleeding

like sugary sap

this island was built on sugar

Quarry

The dampness flows  from the hill

the dampness

moulds us

taproot still

the dampness flows

from the hill

and we scoop up water in jars

catch tadpoles with

glutinous eyes

in the quarry

where the men used to mine

with horse and dray

in the quarry

in the heat of summer days

skin off shoulder blades

peels like dried glue sheets

and words hang from trees like rotting vines

not sapped, not blood that drips

and pains amber red

but green and fungal

smelling of carcass flesh

lantana delicate pale pink and lemon,

the scent of not here,

lantana camara, everywhere

in the quarry 

skin pitted on hard small rocks

gravel used for roads

like this cul-de-sac

where time travels in circles

the crow caws

and the bush beckons us

through spotted gums and shade of leaves,

to leave the yellow ochre 

ground,

barren-hard

and walk into the cool