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| Missing Up: Pam Brown Reads in Devonport
18 February 2015 |
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The first poem, 'West End Blues' was written for a friend who was, at the time, in hospital and seriously ill. He is a music aficionado and collector who has a weekly radio program called Mellow Down Easy on 2BLU-FM in Katoomba, New South Wales. 'West End Blues', the tune I'm talking about in the poem, is a twelve-bar blues by Joe King Oliver. I'm referring specifically to the 1928 recording of an instrumental version by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five. The final notational poem, 'The Taps' was written while I was staying at the Old Government House in September 2013 and is a record of my visit to Auckland and Matapouri. I'm not really adept at analysing my own poems but I suppose the poems I read in between these two are responses to the social anomie and ecological deterioration of the world-at-large. At times I make a joke which apart from providing some relief could also be read as an attempt at remedying severe scepticism which seems in my case, nowadays, to tend mostly towards pessimism. 
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The group of poems I read in Michele Leggott's kitchen in Devonport, Auckland in February 2015 is from a manuscript-in-progress called 'Missing up'. They were written sometime between late 2012 and late 2014.