I was met with sadness today as news circulated that Australian poet and verse novelist Dorothy Featherstone Porter died early this morning from complications caused by breast cancer.
She is (not was) a writer who courted spark and unknowingly commanded the respect from all who knew and read her. Her agent (and very good friend) Jenny Darling said Porter was at the 'height of her powers.' After feasting on El Dorado on the first day of its release, I couldn't have said anything closer to the truth.
I struggled to savour it on its first reading, but have since returned to it, languishing over the sparse, yet delicious undertones of narrative and plot. If you've never read Porter, do yourself a favour and start with either The Monkey's Mask or Wild Surmise.
A recent poem Foggy Windows, had been published in the Spring edition of 'Overland' and it displays the tight grasp Porter has with language and its relationship to the every day.
My own verse novel - 'seven layers of a wound' (extract below) - was in part inspired by Dot and my only hope is that by the time it has been brutalised by a merciless edit, it will be half as good as any of her work.
Condolences go out to both her family and partner, novelist Andrea Goldsmith.
Porter will always be a revelation, from Crete to The Monkey's Mask and beyond. Dorothy Porter, I salute you.
Pax vobiscum
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She was a friend when we were at Sydney Uni together. We were in the same writing group/club, Sydney Uni Poetry Society. She burned so bright then too.
ReplyDeleteI was cherishing getting in touch with her again at some stage…..
Now not to be.
This poem came.
I imagine there will be people who will be thinking how to honour her, in the language she spoke and believed.
Dorothy Porter's Death
It was as if
You died early
to fit your story
to malignant breast cancer.
It wasn' t what anyone wanted.
But the fit was to your passionate life,
despite our exultant failures.
As if you were holding an umbrella
with the word "Calamity"
written in bright yellow
between a pink triangle
and a triangle star,
bricks falling like disasters,
smashing the ribs
of words to beautiful
and desperate puddles.
So much gleaming blood,
when the sun of your smile came out.
Delicately you picked
through our innards,
our shit,to find
the shiny diamonds
we had swallowed.
You were rage, writ large,
our comfy, fierce mother
of the rancid breasts.
Poems have that quality of seeking a reader. Not necessarily a public. I do hope it is ok to have posted this. Please excuse me if it isn't.
My condolences to family and friends.
Brad
Brad, your comments and poem are more than welcome. What a beautiful tribute to such a fine woman. I still can't quite grasp that there will never be another verse novel from Dot. She will be so deeply missed.
ReplyDeleteCancer is always sad. Everyone in my family except me now has had cancer.
ReplyDeleteIt's like a word we're afraid to utter because it takes on a life of its own.