Monday, May 31, 2010

Bring Me the Forest Salad: R.I.P. Peter Porter



The poet Peter Porter died a couple of weeks ago. He was a wonderful poet. He was very kind and supportive to me as a younger poet.

In the middle of the dark period that I fictionalised in Candy, I once, for some reason, wrote him a long letter - a kind of fan letter, I guess, that did or said I don't know what, I no longer remember. It was like a missive from the dark subterranean heart of addiction to some kind of godlike, distant figure - a functioning poet, in London! What was I doing? Willing myself towards hope? I no doubt mentioned how much I liked his work, and which poems and books in particular. I no doubt mentioned that I was a poet, but I don't think I included any poems in the letter.

I never sent it; I threw it way. I remember it felt like a hopeless idea, as most everything did back then.

A few years later I emerged from that world; having been in a tunnel for so long, it was a staggering, stuttering year or two, emerging into the brightness of the world. Eventually I gathered my poems together into a manuscript of sorts. I didn't know what to do with it. I just wanted some basic kind of feedback. I sent it to John Tranter, the poet (and now editor of the excellent Jacket too and to Porter, via his publisher in London. Both sent friendly, supportive replies, which I still have somewhere, back in Sydney. Over the years, when he was in Sydney, I had the odd cup of tea with Porter, or I'd pick him up and drop him off somewhere (he always seemed to be needing delivery), and we'd talk, always about poetry and poets. He read Candy at some point too. He was fascinated by addiction, being so far from it.

In 1975 Porter did a limited edition (1000 copies, signed and numbered) book with the painter Arthur Boyd, The Lady and the Unicorn. Two lines have always remained burned in my brain:


Bring me the forest salad, the topmost leaves which wait upon the sun
Then I will eat my own will and be nothing but light for you to preen by

Saturday, May 15, 2010

From Malibu to Marfa to Cannes, from the Sublime to the Ridiculous but in No Particular Order





A long and disappointing story, but technical difficulties prevented the screening of Air at the Malibu Film Festival, both on the scheduled night (sorry to all those who trekked down there - really sorry) and the day-after when it was supposed to be screened again. Alas and etc. Then I went to New York, briefly. Then to Marfa, Texas, which, due to the Malibu situation, became the world premiere of Air. (Yay.) It looks really good on the big screen, so I was very happy to be down there and see it. Marfa is an amazing town, with a very cool film festival, now three years old. I've been to Marfa three times now and realized this time that what makes it really interesting is that pretty much everyone who lives there - who chooses to live there - is like a character out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. It's this tiny art town in the middle of wide-open sweeping Texas. Nice festival website too:
Then I had frequent flyer miles so I flew to Paris to finish the edit of my short film L'Imbecile. Got off plane in Paris at 4pm last Monday and caught taxi straight to editing room. Worked in a kind of extended jetlaggy hallucination for four hours Monday night, then all day Tuesday. Then caught train down to Cannes (because why not?) for three days. Cannes is simply mad.

Now I'm at Heathrow and my flight is being called. So this blog entry is just the bare bones of some information.