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
Swanport
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
had been a drag:
father-in-law (stickler
by the sound and look of him)
made allowances, thinking you
doubtless in dread
of the touch of scarlet fever
on the children but then
asserted such illusion
dispelled by your subsequent
avoidance of the place.
And to be sure you believed
it grew yearly more and more
sluggish, monotonous; did not
show yourself the model
daughter-in-law.
There was that in you
which would not compromise.
What says that character in Ibsen?
Compromise is the very devil.
But you hated whiskery Henrik
or anything commonplace.
Repulsive, uninteresting
was your typical beef
about his characters and plots.
You sat on your cold-arse monument
impervious to the fact his Nora
in A Doll's House smacked of you.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Cutting the Clouds Towards , pp. 33Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999