John Clarke - Significant Events

In my appreciation of a writer’s work I like it when I come across clever humour, wry humour, quirky humour, dry, subtle humour ……… And that’s what I’ve found in a little poetry book by John Clarke, ‘The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse’.  John is well known in Australia as an author, on television, radio and in a couple of funny movies (‘The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie’, 1972; ‘Crackerjack’ – 2001; ‘The Man Who Sued God’ – 1993).  For years John Clarke and Bryan Dawe (Clarke & Dawe), have been doing a weekly skit on television and radio where John usually appears as a political figure being interviewed by Bryan on some topical political or social issue.  They carry out a clever discourse, appearing serious but actually taking the piss in a very ‘Yes Minister’ style.

‘The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse’ is not a collection of poems.  It is a complete piece of work that mocks a number of famous poets from the past and their work.  Only an Australian would do this.  I think it’s because Australian’s have something in their psyche that draws them towards being self-deprecating.  We hold it as a measure of acceptance and balance that a man is able to laugh at him-self and not get upset when somebody takes ‘the mickey’ out of him.  John Clarke is ‘taking the mickey’, and this is evident in the first paragraph of the introduction to his book, quote:

 

“For many years it was assumed that poetry came from England.  Research now clearly demonstrates, however, that a great many of the world’s most famous poets were actually Australians.  Works by major poets have been discovered in various parts of Australia and are published here for the first time.”

 

For this post I’ve taken one of my favourite pieces from John Clarke’s, Complete Book of Australian Verse.  It is titled, ‘Significant Events’, by a fictitious poet whom John has invented as Paul Dorkan.  I’m not totally sure who the poet is that John Clarke is referring to in Significant Events (most of his other poets I can identify, like, Bill Blake; Arnold Wordsworth; b. b. hummings; W. H. Auding, etc).  I think Paul Dorkan is a cover for Philip Larkin because Significant Events puts a mundane twist to life, and Philip Larkin was also known to use the commonplace and dreary details of life as the basis for his poetry.

Significant Events

(Paul Dorkan)

 

Twenty years to the day after Edmund Hillary

Conquered Mount Everest, Terry Peterson conquered

Heather O’Dwyer

Who was at the time,

The highest woman in the world.

 

Exactly fifty years after Einstein discovered relativity

Mrs Glenys Simpson discovered that under the house

Without the aid of time or space

And using only friction and an active imagination

Her son Bevan had effected an increase in mass.

 

In 1925 James Joyce left Dublin for Zurich, with Nora.

In 1983 Suzie Daley left Brisbane for Melbourne with Barry,

A man she’d met on a train, who had something to do with

computers.

‘Don’t forget to write’ her mother had said, but unlike James

she never really bothered.

 

Eighteen years after the famous tied test between Australia

and the West Indies,

Nipper Dixon and his team ran exactly as far as the police,

Although it has to be said the police covered the distance

slightly faster.

Onlookers said it was all very confused and they weren’t there

And they didn’t know where they’d got the microwave ovens.

 

Nearly four hundred years after William Shakespeare wrote

to be or not to be in Hamlet

Owen McKenzie wrote to be in the draw for a luxury unit on

the Gold Coast.

‘You can’t win it if you’re not in it,’ vouchsafed Owen within

the privacy of his own mind.

 

Half a century after Wittgenstein had taken issue with

himself and revised his entire position on language,

A plumber in Orbost changed his mind about the nature of

elbow joints and thereafter did them in plastic.

 

I think Significant Events is brilliant (as are a lot of other poems in the book).  It is typical of John Clarke’s work.  Armed with that style, dead pan serious and a humorous twist to the end, I set about trying to come up with my own material.  And the material came to me from listening to news reports.  No matter how tragic or serious a news item appeared to be, there was always a comic twist to it if I cared to chase down and find the irony – if I was prepared to laugh at myself.  I’ve called my poem, ‘Hudibrastic Bits,’ taken from a type of mock heroic verse that an English poet called Samuel Butler used way back in 1600 something in a poem he wrote called, ‘Hudibras’.

 

2010.  I hear ridicule, irony and satire continually reported as news, on the radio, on television.  Samuel Butler wrote mock heroic verse in 1663 / 1676.  400 years later, there’s still stuff happening.

Hudibrastic Bits

In true tradition of the Anzac spirit, “Bazza Doyle”,

96 year old veteran of the North Africa campaign,

9^th Division, Tobruk, El Alemain,

gets himself mugged and robbed

of his poker machine winnings

by a young couple,

who tip him out of his mobility scooter

as he leaves the Campbelltown RSL

in full view of security cameras.

“Bazza” said he wasn’t scared, and

that he put it down to his military training

on how to exit from a travelling LAV

that he didn’t suffer more serious injuries.

 

Following a code of sporting conduct

forged in the stadium at Randwick,

back to back ARL winners, the Melbourne Storm,

were found to have deliberately breached their salary cap,

thus guaranteeing themselves first pick

at the best players in the game.

“Charlie” Peterson,

one of the Storm’s most loyal fans

and locker room roustabout,

said it was disgusting, and

called it cheating,

but still did OK from a footy-TAB bet

he managed to place

just before they announced publicly

that his team was being axed

from the competition.

Right place, right time, said “Charlie”.

 

Brought up to accept honesty is the best policy,

“Dolly” and Daryl Edwards find themselves

abandoning their beliefs

when they discover $100,000

in the lining of the second hand suit case

they purchased for $15

from their local Vinnie’s shop

for their son Trevor, to take

on his Antioch weekend retreat to Canberra.

When threatened with prosecution, and

a possible jail term

if they didn’t hand the money back,

“Dolly” said that they never found any money, and

besides, it probably would have been spent already

on gambling and anonymous gifts to charity.

 

Upholding an unwritten rule

of honour among thieves,

“Rayelene” Crump, long time devoted

girl friend to the notorious

gangster, Con “Cutty” Cathcart,

comes to terms with his death,

resulting from a beating he

received in the exercise yard

of a maximum security prison

where “Cutty” was serving

a 40 year jail sentence

for murder, execution style

of no less than six

rivals in broad daylight

on the streets of Marrickville.

“Rayelene” said she was shocked,

Con was such a kind and gentle man,

when you got to know him,

unlike the scum-bag who did him in,

who must be nothing but a maggot.

 

In a personal demonstration, of

Prime minister Gillard’s belief

that a good education

holds the key to

the future of our nation,

recent Hamilton High school graduate,

“Brendon” McIntyre, sets fire to the rental property

he was sharing with three mates in Mayfield

following an attempt to refuel

a Victa two stroke in the lounge room

and right next to an operating gas heater.

When combustion did occur,

“Brendon” had the presence of mind

to scatter the fuel with water, and

spread spot fires down the hall

to get the mower to the front lawn.

In an interview on the footpath for the local news,

with emergency service vehicles, and

the smouldering Victa still in the background,

“Brendon” said it may have been an electrical fault, and

he didn’t feel he was to blame, because

nobody had told him.

 

In responding to a challenge

from animal welfare agents

over his freshly thought out concept of

‘free to roam’ chicken farming

(as opposed to ‘free range’ chicken farming),

that strongly suggested the only area

in which one of his chickens could roam

was the size of an A4 sheet of paper,

“Bluey” Fenwick, Chooks-4-U, conceded

that, yes, in the facility

there are other chickens

and of course as they all grow larger

there naturally occurs a correspondingly equivalent reduction

in the amount of actual free space

in which any one individual chicken may move.

The emphasis is on the ‘free’, said “Bluey”

more than on the ‘roam’.

 

Experiencing yet another sucker blow

in a long line of rotten luck acts,

“Dinga” Bell, double leg amputee

loses his little doggie on cracker night

and has no money to pay the $200 fine

for rescue from execution in the pound.

Dinga’s neighbours said they felt sorry for him

so organised a whip around

but could only come up with $69.

When told the disappointing news

“Dinga” agreed, maybe it could be seen

as a bit of a piss weak effort,

but then, said “Dinga”

….. it has been a tough Christmas for everyone.

 

In an extreme case of denial,

“Cecily” Dawson, out of work

beauty consultant and

part time housewife, flees

from a security guard

at her local shopping centre

following an accusation of stealing,

collides with an unlucky pedestrian

and drags him 300 metres

clinging desperately to the

bonnet of her KIA Cerato.

“Cecily” said she didn’t know

what came over her, and

she thought she might be pregnant

and put it all down to hormones.

J. O. White