Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Preface
- Foreword By John Lucas
- Prologue
- To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- On the Right Side of the Earth
- We meet at last
- I've been wanting to ask …
- Dear Mr Simpson
- Taking things in
- A Bummer
- Swanport
- And for the Record
- Fax from Launceston to Michael
- A Hasty Rejoinder
- Something you can't deny
- The Interview
- In Mount Field National Park
- News of a Death
- On the Answering Machine
- In Flowerdale
- Hadn't we the Gaiety?
- About as far as we can go
- Your art Mrs Meredith
- The Princess Theatre, Launceston, 18th October, 1995
- Threads
- Journal entry for Tuesday, 31st Oct.
- Dangerous I know
- A Poem for Wybalenna Chapel
- Making an Exhibition
- A Last Glimpse
- Epilogue
- Melbourne Central Cemetery
- Select Bibliography
I've been wanting to ask …
from On the Right Side of the Earth
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Preface
- Foreword By John Lucas
- Prologue
- To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- On the Right Side of the Earth
- We meet at last
- I've been wanting to ask …
- Dear Mr Simpson
- Taking things in
- A Bummer
- Swanport
- And for the Record
- Fax from Launceston to Michael
- A Hasty Rejoinder
- Something you can't deny
- The Interview
- In Mount Field National Park
- News of a Death
- On the Answering Machine
- In Flowerdale
- Hadn't we the Gaiety?
- About as far as we can go
- Your art Mrs Meredith
- The Princess Theatre, Launceston, 18th October, 1995
- Threads
- Journal entry for Tuesday, 31st Oct.
- Dangerous I know
- A Poem for Wybalenna Chapel
- Making an Exhibition
- A Last Glimpse
- Epilogue
- Melbourne Central Cemetery
- Select Bibliography
Summary
Stuffed parrots and wild flowers
from Van Diemen's Land, four months
down holds of scudding ships,
which cousins, remember, sent and you
put under glass in your very own
painting room, where you, just like
your easel, were set up, with not
the least idea of venturings — that ear
drum of a whale from dear, dear Charles
on the chimney piece with purpose only
to confound, provide after-dinner jousts
of wit.
Engravings, your own paintings
up on the walls, bookcases smug
with well-heeled tomes, a crisp drawer
of shells, stern busts, your china, and even
the pelt of a thylacine.You had it made,
Louisa Anne, artist, scribbler, at home
among your curiosities, the Midlands great
outdoors all yours to go a-sketching in —
luxuriating, your word. One
disappointment, though: the nautilus shell
that didn't come, dear Uncle George!
who then, insensitive! invited you Down Under,
as governess to his brood!
Where would be
my literature? Sonnets to whales and porpoises!
Canzonets to kangaroos, madrigals to merinos!
Dirges to black swans!
And, oh dear, Mrs M,
did you say portraits of engaging
lovely natives there?
(Remember This island's mine which thou tak'st
from me).
Were you on the rebound then?Was it terror of the shelf? Was it love
made you, against your mother's wish
(seventy years and in poor health), abandon Brum,
set out with the chap who'd parcelled up
that extraordinary bit of whale?
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- Information
- Cutting the Clouds Towards , pp. 27 - 28Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999