F OREWORD
Dorothy Porter never went anywhere without a volume of poetry. Whether to the local coffee shop or to Antarctica, a book of poems, and often several, travelled with her. She counted reading poetry among her greatest pleasures and her greatest blessings.
Her own poetry glows and shimmers with a lifetime of reading and this volume is no exception. All the poems, with the exception of the Freak Songs and a couple of others, were written in the last almost-five years of her life. It was a period of great happiness and satisfaction; the best, according to Dorothy, she had known. She produced a large body of new poetry, including her verse novel El Dorado ; there were her collaborations with musicians Jonathan Mills, Paul Grabowsky and Tim Finn, and her work on the film of The Eternity Man , directed by Julien Temple. She was aware of a new depth to the way she inhabited her days, and often spoke about this. Always captivated by the wonder of existence, in the last years of her life Dot learned to live each moment as it occurred, to linger and dwell. She delighted in the everyday: home, family, friends, work, our cat; and she delighted in our travels, vividly represented in this collection, to Africa, Antarctica, the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, London and New York. She acknowledged her good fortune several times each day.
Every few weeks during 2004 when she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, Dot would spend the weekend with her friend Robert on his farm. She loved the country air, the birds, the quiet, the glimpse of the ocean on the horizon, and she was fascinated by the old hut, not far from the house, which had become home to a colony of bees.
The bee hut became a metaphor for these last years of her life â overwhelmingly healthy years, I should add. She marvelled at the bees, as she had always marvelled at life, but she was also aware of the danger amid the sweetness and beauty.
It was not the same, as she writes in one of the poems here, after she was first diagnosed with cancer. But as these poems show, Dorothy Porter saturated every moment with life right up to the end; her last poem, âView from 417â, was written in her hospital room on 26 November 2008, two weeks before she died. In The Bee Hut she has left behind a volume of poetry to travel with us through the days and years ahead.
Andrea Goldsmith
EGYPT
The most powerful presence
is absence.
When the pyramid dissolves
you will keep
its shadow. its deep rich space.
in you.
Today you are strung,
shivering, with a haunted history.
You are singing dying songs
that hurt. but make you.
Perhaps in Egyptâs death
is your salvation.
Its wailing gods. Its red
heart of desert. Its river
flowing like a stinging
harvest. Cling
and grow you richly.
Bless Egypt.
Bless her passing.
ON READING E.M. FORSTER âS
GUIDE TO ALEXANDRIA
âThe best way of seeing it is to wander aimlessly about.â
â E.M. F ORSTER
Imagine a city
where itâs mostly
âimagineâ
imagine a city, the story goes,
where one minute youâre a bride
in your own wedding procession
next minute
the ground coughs and collapses
engulfing and delivering you
dusty and astonished
into the embalmed arms
of Alexanderâs equally astonished
lost corpse
lying gilded in a forgotten catacomb
under the traffic fumes.
Imagine a city where closeted
Mummyâs Boy Morgan under Pompeyâs Pillar
feasts on erotic love for the first time
now imagine a city
with sexually-healed flâneur Forster
taking your elbow
through the seedy Rues
to light candles, cigarettes and the poetâs best whisky
with Cavafy
imagine afterwards
to wind down from all that smoke, stoicism and intoxicating talk
you do the Greco-Roman Museum
and vulnerable still
you let the tomb terracotta statuettes
do your head in
because Morgan calls them
âthe loveliest things in the museumâ
because youâre still unsteady with
Dorothy Porter never went anywhere without a volume of poetry. Whether to the local coffee shop or to Antarctica, a book of poems, and often several, travelled with her. She counted reading poetry among her greatest pleasures and her greatest blessings.
Her own poetry glows and shimmers with a lifetime of reading and this volume is no exception. All the poems, with the exception of the Freak Songs and a couple of others, were written in the last almost-five years of her life. It was a period of great happiness and satisfaction; the best, according to Dorothy, she had known. She produced a large body of new poetry, including her verse novel El Dorado ; there were her collaborations with musicians Jonathan Mills, Paul Grabowsky and Tim Finn, and her work on the film of The Eternity Man , directed by Julien Temple. She was aware of a new depth to the way she inhabited her days, and often spoke about this. Always captivated by the wonder of existence, in the last years of her life Dot learned to live each moment as it occurred, to linger and dwell. She delighted in the everyday: home, family, friends, work, our cat; and she delighted in our travels, vividly represented in this collection, to Africa, Antarctica, the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, London and New York. She acknowledged her good fortune several times each day.
Every few weeks during 2004 when she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, Dot would spend the weekend with her friend Robert on his farm. She loved the country air, the birds, the quiet, the glimpse of the ocean on the horizon, and she was fascinated by the old hut, not far from the house, which had become home to a colony of bees.
The bee hut became a metaphor for these last years of her life â overwhelmingly healthy years, I should add. She marvelled at the bees, as she had always marvelled at life, but she was also aware of the danger amid the sweetness and beauty.
It was not the same, as she writes in one of the poems here, after she was first diagnosed with cancer. But as these poems show, Dorothy Porter saturated every moment with life right up to the end; her last poem, âView from 417â, was written in her hospital room on 26 November 2008, two weeks before she died. In The Bee Hut she has left behind a volume of poetry to travel with us through the days and years ahead.
Andrea Goldsmith
EGYPT
The most powerful presence
is absence.
When the pyramid dissolves
you will keep
its shadow. its deep rich space.
in you.
Today you are strung,
shivering, with a haunted history.
You are singing dying songs
that hurt. but make you.
Perhaps in Egyptâs death
is your salvation.
Its wailing gods. Its red
heart of desert. Its river
flowing like a stinging
harvest. Cling
and grow you richly.
Bless Egypt.
Bless her passing.
ON READING E.M. FORSTER âS
GUIDE TO ALEXANDRIA
âThe best way of seeing it is to wander aimlessly about.â
â E.M. F ORSTER
Imagine a city
where itâs mostly
âimagineâ
imagine a city, the story goes,
where one minute youâre a bride
in your own wedding procession
next minute
the ground coughs and collapses
engulfing and delivering you
dusty and astonished
into the embalmed arms
of Alexanderâs equally astonished
lost corpse
lying gilded in a forgotten catacomb
under the traffic fumes.
Imagine a city where closeted
Mummyâs Boy Morgan under Pompeyâs Pillar
feasts on erotic love for the first time
now imagine a city
with sexually-healed flâneur Forster
taking your elbow
through the seedy Rues
to light candles, cigarettes and the poetâs best whisky
with Cavafy
imagine afterwards
to wind down from all that smoke, stoicism and intoxicating talk
you do the Greco-Roman Museum
and vulnerable still
you let the tomb terracotta statuettes
do your head in
because Morgan calls them
âthe loveliest things in the museumâ
because youâre still unsteady with
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