Finding poetry in grim times: Charles Wooley

Charles Wooley weighs in on the poetry on buses debate and this year’s fascinating fashion and success of the Melbourne Cup.

Poetry or poultry in motion?

Some of the precious folk in the ‘Hobart Arts Community’ are running around like chooks with their heads off about criticism of a somewhat sillier than usual City Council decision to spend $10,000 of your money plastering short pieces of verse on the side of a bus for a few months.

Here’s an example:

‘Crossing the Derwent

a grey zombie army

shuffles and groans.’

Yes, that’s it folks. Make of it what you will. I even ran it backwards looking for a cryptic message.

Then I was completely flummoxed to discover it was written by an 11-year-old.

Far from reading too much into nothing, I detected a hint of social criticism, sympathy on behalf of the commuting masses.

Our adult lives must seem needlessly bleak to a kid. Among the mindless undead workforce of commuting ratepayers, many might prefer to join the ranks of the poet Tennyson’s “mild-eyed melancholy lotus-eaters” and spend sunny and idle days composing haiku. Like this one:

“On the way to New Norfolk

all red-gold leaves

in a white blanket.”

I have assumed such works are haiku, a strict Japanese poetic form of three lines, often with a nod to the natural world.

The first line has five syllables, the second has seven and the third five. Nice and brief. Ideal for a passing bus.

For my attempt at composition, I tried to follow the rules.

But how to distil the grim brevity of life into a snappy, hopefully amusing and meaningful, seventeen syllables?

That is the question.

Life is like a bus

too soon is the final stop

terminus for us.

OK, I concede victory to the 11-year-old. The kid must have been reading T.S. Eliot’s very dark ‘The Hollow Men’.

“We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw.”

Eliot was writing in the wake of the terrible carnage of the First World War. Unfortunately, we live again in grim times, especially for the young.

So, I’m glad the writer won $500 from the HCC and I’m sorry about the mess we are not fixing at Glasgow.

Keep writing kid. Poetry is some small consolation, even if it is hijacked on a bus by an increasingly silly Hobart City Council.

Journalism often looks like a sunset industry which might be how come I now get to enjoy so many of them.

The sunsets at Carlton Beach are the most dramatic I have seen anywhere in the world. We do outdoor lighting very well down Dodge City way.

I calculate if I live long as my mum, the straight-talking Ella (who would wish to be considered ‘dead’ and not ‘passed’) I have only got about 10,000 sunsets left.

When I am home, I never miss one and last Sunday’s was a cracker.

There has been enough poesy in this column so let’s make do with the picture. No filters were applied. It was simply nature overdoing things.

The spectacular sunset over Carlton Beach last Sunday. The Bureau of Meteorology explained this haunting effect of the Halloween sky was caused by “lenticular clouds which are just about stationary … building up on top of one another.”

Photographer Wayne Painter this week described the Carlton lightshow as “Possibly the most spectacular sunset cloud formation I’ve seen.” The Bureau of Meteorology said the haunting effect of the Halloween sky was caused by “lenticular clouds which are just about stationary…building up on top of one another.”

Such formations are sometimes mistaken for flying saucers and by the superstitious, as ‘the end of days”.

For punters who saw Sunday’s glorious sunset it was surely an omen of success for the Irish racehorse Twilight Payment in Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup.

I included that horse along with Incentivise (and one other I have already forgotten) in an unsuccessful trifecta.

Tuesday’s weather at Elwick was brilliant for the Melbourne Cup Lunch where I learned a lot about racing.

Jockeys are taller than they were when I first covered track stories for television and their voices are deeper, except for the girls of course, who now numbered about half the riders in the Hobart event.

Covid restrictions have made it hard for mainland jockeys to get into Tasmania and the women have successfully stepped up.

It’s a fair and equitable guess that they are now here to stay.

There was a Covid limit of 1000 on the track but there were still plenty of colourful racing identities to meet.

Lexus Melbourne Cup

I note that in NSW the term ‘colourful racing identity’ was once used in that state to describe certain shady characters with whom the law hadn’t yet caught up.

Pre-ICAC it was Sydney journalistic code which of course never applied here in Tasmania.

Donna and I were seated at the table with Andrew Scanlan the Chairman of the Tasmanian Racing Club and with Merv Hill the Chairman of the Australian Trainers Association and with Jane Howlett, the Tasmanian Minister for Racing.

Merv suggested I might describe him as ‘Tipper Extraordinaire’ but in my case that would not be accurate reporting. He never mentioned to me, nor had I ever heard of, the Melbourne Cup winner, the oddly spelled six-year-old mare Verry Elleegant.

I didn’t include that horse in my trifecta, but you will notice the name does contain exactly enough syllables to make the last line of a Japanese haiku (now that we all know what that’s about) as in:

I know I’ll never

back a champ hard to spell as

Verry Elleegant.

(No more. I promise my haiku career is finished)

There was also a fashion competition for the best dressed at Elwick.

Numerous women who might be described as Verry Elleegant took part. Most were in expensive designer dresses but the girl who didn’t win was the crowd favourite. And mine.

Rachel James with her $2 op-shop fascinator, who may not have won this year's best dressed competition, but certainly won over the crowd with her entertaining story about how her handy hubby had helped her "renovate" her head piece especially for the Elwick Melbourne Cup lunch. For Charles Wooley column.

Rachel James told the room that her fascinator had been purchased from an op-shop for $2.

Her useful husband reckoned the black and white colours of the headpiece didn’t match the dress. He obtained two sample pots of blue paint from Bunnings and ‘renovated’ the fascinator to suit.

Rachel’s story about fashion had the crowd in stitches.

But of course, as we know from the Melbourne Cup, the favourite doesn’t always win.

I have offered to be a judge next year.

Meanwhile my tablemates informed me that racing contributes $185 million to the state economy and sustains 1515 jobs. There are, in normal years, 319 race meetings and more than 99,000 attendees.

They didn’t tell me how many people leave the track with more money than they brought.

But one person at our table did exactly that.

Racing Minister Jane Howlett suitably demonstrated that punting does not have to be a mug’s game, by putting $20 on Verry Elleegant and coming away with $380.

“I never win anything,” Jane enthused.

Yes Minister.

Except elections.