Oh, no.
The poet Dorothy Porter has died.

This is terrible. Just terrible.

Her book The Monkey's Mask shook my world. And now she's gone.

Valete, Dorothy.

Man, this sucks.


I should write more on how she was important to me, the instances when her life touched on mine.

Once I wrote a poem and entered it into the Daffodil Day Poetry Awards. This was about '97 or so. Dorothy Porter was the judge and my poem received a commendation. The thing that thrilled me most was not the commendation but the thought that Dorothy Porter had actually read my poem. And then that she liked it well enough to commend it. It's still a thrill actually. The other thrill was that the poem was enlarged and printed on a banner, and hung inside the Telstra building in Melbourne. That was pretty cool.

Another time was hearing her in an interview and the interviewer calling her Dot, familiarly, affectionately. And I thought, she's a person, too! A person with a nickname. Not just a poet.

Because I still accord the honorific 'poet' with a superstar halo.

Reading The Monkey's Mask and finishing it, knowing that there can be possibilities in poetry I never dreamed about, thought about, wanting something like that for my own writing. Maybe I can do it, too.

This just feels so unfair that's she's gone.

That Frank O'Hara line is looping in my head: 'oh Lana Turner we love you get up'.
- posted by Ivy @ 9:53 AM ¦ | ¦