AUSTRALIAN POETS AT WORK SERIES 2
David Barnes
Selected by Coral Hull
[Above] Photo of David Barnes by photographer unknown, 2007.
CH: What are you working on at the moment?
DB: Currently I am fully involved in updating and developing an old Numbat Poetry Journal after a year's forced break. The upgraded poetry web site will be called Numbat - Pdu Numbat – Pdu, a take on the original first poetry site, named Poetry Down-under, hence the breakdown to Pdu. Further, I am fully in the process of formatting poems from an excellent range of world class poets from around the world; starting with my own State, Western Australia, then the Eastern States of Australia; then from Israel to America, and New Zealand.
CH: What is your most memorable childhood incident?
DB: There is very little that I remember from my childhood; I was born during the Second World War in 1943 where I was raised in Melbourne, Victoria, as a Ward of the State. I was placed in the home at the age of three, and resided in St. Johns Home for Boys until around the age of thirteen or fourteen; that is when I absconded completely.
The most memorable event of my childhood was when Peter and myself, another boy in the home, climbed up to the roof of the three storey Bluestone brick home, and literally stripped the lead-lining from around the chimneys. Then we snuck down to the iron mongers and sold the lead. Consequently winter came, and I leave it up to you to envisage the aftermath, the leaking roof. We were all lined up, all eighty odd boys, ranging from three to four years old to sixteen to seventeen, and were dobbed in, not that it really mattered; we were the obvious culprits, having been up to this kind of mischief all our growing years.
I think it took us quite a few days just to be able to sit. Suffice to say it was not a pleasant upbringing by the fathers.
CH: Do you believe in a power greater than yourself?
DB:
Yes I do believe in a power greater than any man can possibly imagine. The following is one instant.
I have personally have had at least three inexplicable experiences. “Laugh if you wish, disbelieve as much as you want”; however, I knew the moment, the very instant of my son’s conception, and I was made aware that the child would be a boy. I told my wife and she was sceptical; along came that time again, and this time three months had passed, and my son Daniel hung in there like a limpet-mine; Libby had to spend a lot of her pregnancy being careful and abed.
What you must understand is, my wife Libby was unable to carry a pregnancy no “longer-and-less than two to three months”. For sixteen years we tried having a child and we lost seven to blighted ovums. We were both checked out by specialists and advised we would not be able to have children. I was forty-four years old and my wife was forty-one; suddenly we had an abrupt change in life, and gave thanks to the Allmighty, the power called God or Jehovah. Daniel is now twenty years of age in twenty-seven days time (2007). So believe what you want to believe.
My greatest sorrow was when Libby died of lymphoma, when Daniel was only eight-and-a-half years old, however, I take comfort in the knowledge that my heart, my soul mate, had at least those years with our son as a mother to Daniel, which we'd thought would never happen. So yes, I do believe in a power great than humankind.
CH: What is your favourite animal and why?
DB: Strangely enough, I really enjoy carpet snakes. People tend to think of them as scaly things, but they are smooth to handle. I also like miniature English Daschounds, they are very protective, and for a small dog they do have very sharp hearing, and a well rounded bark to boot, plus teeth - you do not wish to get chomped on. (grin). That’s the limit of my pets I’m afraid.
CH: What did you want to be when you grew up?
DB: I never had anything in mind. I started work as a labourer at the age of thirteen-and-a-half years old and did a variety of jobs over the years. Then I became an apprentice carpenter; when I finished I went to Woomera Rocket range on a twelve month contract. We were building the “Island Lagoon Tracking Station”; then back to Melbourne, and another contract with the then Department of Works in Alice Springs for another twelve months.
I then went to work for the Department, of what was then called the 'Department of Native Welfare', building and finishing the settlements. What I saw still makes me sick in the guts all these years later, so I quit and went to work for the 'Department of Water Resources', learning to become a driller. That is when I did my spine in at the age of twenty-two and had four operations before I moved to Perth; I spent nine years in Alice and loved it. I then worked behind bars, became a bar manager, then Tavern manager, I was offered a job in Real Estate and I worked there as one from 1974 until 1989, then I sold out of the (2) franchised branch offices, Mair & Co, Vic Park, and Mair & Co - South Perth, to my partners, to look after Libby and raise my son Daniel, while going through another four operations. The last being in 1992 while Libby was dying.
My best job of all, was raising my son, Daniel.
Overall - I have had more miscellaneous jobs than cut lunches with a water bag ...
CH: If you had three wishes, what would they be?
DB: 1. That my wife still lived to raise and see her son become the fine young man that he is, and to revel in the raising of him - as I have.
2. Well, it’d be nice to have a normal healthy body, something that people take so much for granted.
3. To live long enough to see grandchildren, bounce them on my bony knees before these drugs finally kill me.
CH: Do you believe in life after death?
DB: Emphatically. One of my other inexplicable experiences was about four months after Libby died; she came to me in the night and held my hand, and lay beside me, no spoken words, just the warmth of her love. Asleep, a dream, no, I physically felt her holding my hand and being next to my naked flesh on a summer’s night. Once again, you believe what you want to believe. It happened.
CH: What kind of working environment best suits you?
DB:
A peaceful setting:
When I am at work, whether writing poetry and/or working on my web site, I like to be basically alone. At home; working in a quiet environment - no music in a background to distract me. It is when I am totally alone, immersed in my work, that I find thoughts flow through my mind randomly. Sometimes they fix themselves and give me the particular word, or words that I am looking for in my poetry, the world I seek. It is even the way that I do the web site ...
In the quiet of my mind, is where the heart and soul reside in me. It is this place I always seek, whenever I am working.
Even my son Daniel knows when I am totally immersed in my work, lost to this physical world. I seem to go else-where. I am here, but at the same time I am not. At most times I do not even notice he is around. I am literally as I said, lost to this material world.
What I seek in my work environment, is the quiet of my home and the balance of self, within that place we all seek.
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Parkinson's Workshop
dedicated to Dennis Greene
fingers tremble
slowly moving through pages,
yet with certainty the pen moves through
imposed restrictions, shifting language in precision,
words come; go by the way, discarded,
painting the colours of expression.
seasons flow through him
pass, return; stimulating mind, implants;
hands retrieve the balancing case, colored pills
ingested, a semblance of respite from unwanted burdens.
i have learned much about Parkinson's Disease
from hesitant poetic hands.
i listen to his criticisms
as he lacerates my words, moving black pigment
on crisp white pages.
we didn't ask for this
his disease, my infirmity,
though we know the broken road, word-for-word.
and he would be first to say,
short stanzas potent in meaning
need no biography, no explanation.
Sheltered in the Shade
What he wanted- was behind
a discolored sandstone wall,
Hidden in a garden,
under the fragrance
of small purple blossoms
amongst the simple beauty of things.
He had always looked forward to growing old,
reminiscing with ripened friends;
some depart this life, from time-to-time,
someday, it shall be his turn;
and after that:
only then,
shall he lie - where he has so long -
longed to be,
together -
beneath, the scent of jasmine.
A dirt road, Alice Springs
Outback, on a sand & stoney road,
we came across a rolled car
on its side; inside,
both parents dead.
I found a young boy
wrapped around a Mulga tree,
scalp sliced, exposed -
still alive.
Under torch-light, we cleaned
the ants
clinging to his skull;
I held his scalp, pressed
against his head.
A mate drove fifty miles
to Alice Springs.
I stayed with the living -
and the dead:
No one remembers.
I do,
A young man
only twenty.
Materialization
Today I saw Picasso
in my kitchen;
he glanced at me mournfully,
a sinister, jaded green, stark within the frame
on my wall ...
thin, gaunt, haunted,
haunted eyes, frail flesh, skin on bone.
So much grief
cleaved to canvas.
Did he ever understand,
the impression he would leave ...
that millions would pass,
through colors ...
into his world, of worlds within.
His gaze left me
feeling ...
Somehow a work of art,
paint,
ready to dry out,
drying,
deteriorating with age.
I deduce one day,
my son will say of the picture
he holds of me;
my flesh, skin on bone, was pastel,
not jaded green.
And in my passing,
I was no Picasso. |
About the Poet David Barnes
|
I have been an active Perth poet & internet poet, and have been published in many online poetry journals in America, Australia, England and France. I was first published in hardback in the Paris/Atlantic, a literary journal, in 2001. And in the Poets Hall of Fame Anthology, released late 2001, with further work published in two Anthologies released in 2001 & 2002 by Empowa Inc here in Western Australia. My work has also been published in Firefly Magazine (USA). My poetry was accepted for inclusion in Anthology Number (ii) released in Austin, Texas, 2003. I was invited to be a featured poet in the September Issue of Poetic Voices, 2003. And I have poems in an anthology, Inside Out: A Gathering of Poets, published by Tombolo Publishing, USA, 2004. as a seventy-page anthology of poetry from the work of sixteen poets. In late 2004 I was invited to be the guest poet, featured in Blackmailpress: nzpoetsonline.com, Issue 11; In addition to writing I have been the publisher/editor of Poetry Downunder and an online poetry site, fondly known as Numbat, 1998-2007. |
[Above] Photo of David Barnes by photographer unknown, 2007.
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Exit I
Thylazine No.12 (June, 2007) |
