a letter from kris hemensley, of collected works bookshop

Dear Michael, This is from a draft of a letter I wrote to Geraldine McKenzie dated 23/9/98. I've searched in my journals & notebooks for commentary on her book launching (DUTY) in 2001 at the Shop but can't find very much at all. The book was launched by Gig Ryan and there was some discussion later commented upon by people including John Leonard. Small gathering but in this case quality compensating for quantity was correct verdict! Retta H. recalls universal surprise and wonder at Geraldine's ability to recite her poems from memory. A contemporary oral poetry : I believe she forms the poems in her mind before writing them. Anyway, for its worth and as a contribution to the blog discussion :

"Dear Geraldine, On storm-threatening Melbourne spring day, riding the trams from one end of town to the other, I reread your sonnets and say again what a pleasure it is to hear you. Please excuse me for not answering sooner. The usual schedule of days at work, more or less with it, then evenings in which I gradually yield to fatigue. Some poems along the way (....)
Monday, I should tell you, young woman came to the Shop asking if I had your address since you'd been recommended by Mike Shuttleworth, of the Victorian Writers Centre, as a poet to be invited to read at every opportunity. The young woman was arranging a poetry reading in support of literacy project --something like that. I confirmed Mike's opinion of you but said it might be difficult to get you down from NSW for a gig. She hadnt realized you werent local --
local to me though --maybe it is the Shakespeare then? --tho' I can tell you're steeped in it whereas I've merely been a kind of sneak in & around the edges-- But you remind me so much of English poets I associated with in the 70s --tho' the sex is something they rarely treated but which you do sort of mockingly or in a self-implicating mockery which yet works sexually --
The layering or fretwork --neo-classical, arts/muses/fates --is dense & suggestive as Peter Greenaway's bucolic deconstruction (Drowning by Numbers I'm thinking of)--
And then the spanner-in-the-works of III & IV --well, certainly III -- If III bore a reference to Wilfred Owen at your reading then I'm allowed to think of WW1 --if not, then I confess WW1 is a lot on my mind these days, mixed in with Georgians and despite DH Lawrence & Pound, the Bloomsburys (as pre-Raphaelitism's other side?)-- But maybe it's WW2, --"reading the S.S. paper" throws me -- But, whatever the case may be, your music plays on --and has me all ears, sighs, some tears.
Thank you for sending to me,
How can I reciprocate, --apart from telling you how relieved I was to have done a good job launching (phantom) BOXKITE [at the Melbourne Writers Festival] and to have as chorus Hibberd, Hart, Ryan, Elizov, and you, minstrel? too!
Actually I could send you a copy of one of my "mirror sonnet" narratives, -- a book about love & friendship --autobiographical by way of history, art & literature -- the first sequence written a few years ago (& the book's got a couple more narratives to write)--. Awkward, I think, compared to yours, but how I'd hope it stood "as those who are themselves, a kind of light." [McKenzie]
With all best wishes,
Kris Hemensley