Dispatch From The Front: Day 21

Emmylou Harris, David Rawlings and Gillian Welch arriving at W.B. Yeats' Oyster Shed at Brooklyn.

W.B. Yeats’ oyster shed.

After climbing in through my window, Lucinda told me a terrible story that not only mirrored what Michael Dransfield had seen in Greene’s lab, but added a few darker details. She was in a real state, sliding her bracelets up and down her arm and tapping the toe of a snakeskin boot on the floor. “I sought refuge in the arms of a man who throws dice with the devil,” she said. “I have known true disgrace.” She then told me her bleak tale of comfort and betrayal.

While Greene had slept, she’d gone to investigate the low, constant hum she’d heard the day she arrived at the apartment. Behind a red curtain in the laundry she’d found a door leading into the dark. She went down the stairs and found his laboratory. As well as the pink nippers and beakers of LIMP2, there were beach worms as thick as her wrist, their black holding-fangs like those on a funnelweb spider. On a stainless steel bench she found the head of a huge yellowtail, its mouth still opening and closing, its gills bright red with oxygenated blood. In a glass tank, the headless bodies of yellowtail and frigate mackerel were swimming around as if they could see where they were going. Their wounds had sealed over.

“It was hellish down there,” she said. “I’ve heard of the breeding tanks under the Red Bunker, of how Seidel and Shelby are loose cannons, but this is beyond the red and the pale.” Lucinda stood up and turned to face me. “We need to do something, Geoff. We need to take action now.”

As the sun came up over the harbour, Lucinda Williams fell asleep on the couch. I sat in the frame of the big bay window and watched light come in like a flood-tide. Out beyond the tuna boats and recreational craft, the Red Oblong glittered and swayed at its mooring. Like the re-usable and headless live-bait in Dr Greene’s lab, this huge shape needed no crew, sail or propellor to drive it forward. I heard Dorothy cursing on the wharf: “The Red Oblong,” and “we’re all fucked.” It was time to find out what I could about this disturbing, influential symbol.

In Brooklyn, things were getting out of hand. The Sons of Zebedee were tired of being kept out of the loop, and had taken matters into their own hands. They went to the Angler’s Rest where they knew John Berryman and Geoffrey Hill would be in the old back bar. Sure enough, the Sons found the two poets deep in discussion and drinking stanzas of Guinness. Berryman put his bottle down when they walked through the door and stood up. “Ah, the sons of the sons of the sons of Trouble,” he said through the grey wires of his beard. Jack grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him up. Jimmy did his best Gene Wilder impression, speaking into the side of Berryman’s head: “Where is Henry when you need him?” Jack chimed in: “What are you two planning? We need to know. We don’t like blow-ins, especially poets who think they can fish.”

Geoffrey Hill put his bottle of Guinness down on the table as if he were lowering a lure into an ice-hole. As the Sons pushed and shoved Berryman, he reached into the special pocket he’d sewn into the inside of his overcoat and pulled out a plank made from a length of crepe myrtle. Then he walked over and started swinging. The Sons went down and strayed there. John Berryman shook Geoffrey’s hand. “I knew when I first read King Log that you’d be a handy man to have in a fix.” Bill Wisely had witnessed Hill’s finesse with the plank from just outside the door. “I like you,” he said, and walked off. Geoffrey Hill picked up his bottle of Guinness and took a long hit. He swallowed and exhaled loudly. “Let’s go find Yeats,” he said.

W.B. Yeats had taken over one of Dutch’s oyster sheds, a barn of a place built from corrugated iron and iron bark - a huge cavern with an elevated floor at one end that Dutch had used for sorting and shucking oysters. Yeats thought this might make a good stage for poetry readings and for giving lectures on the fine points of live-baiting for Waggas. This was a shed that could accommodate at least five hundred people if necessary.

Bill came back from the Angler’s Rest and told W.B. that Geoffrey Hill and Berryman were looking for him. “Oh that’s a fine thing then because I’ll need them before long.” W.B. seemed a bit distracted but he was nevertheless pleased to hear Bill’s news. He was sitting at a makeshift desk writing with the quill of a pelican, setting down the basic rules for the eradication of all Waggafish. He figured there’d be ten Commandments, to make things sound Biblical, and therefore have more rhetorical sway.

Outside there was the sound of a car pulling up in the yard. W.B. looked out the open window and saw a sleek black limo slide into the space where Dutch’s tar-vats used to stand. Bill said “Well fuck me, who the fuck is this, some idiot looking for a dozen oysters?” The back door of the limo opened and out stepped Emmylou Harris, David Rawlings and Gillian Welch. They were dressed in stylish country clothes and Emmylou and Gillian wore their best cream coloured cowboy hats. W. B. Yeats walked out into the yard to introduce himself and welcome them to his shed. They weren’t looking for oysters at all, they were looking for a venue.

Emmylou had heard about the ‘needless slaughter of Waggafish’ and wanted to do a concert to raise funds for a new organization called RAW (Release All Waggas). The look on Yeats’ face was a study of deep symbolic confusion and anger. Bill told them to fuck off because this was Waggafish Central and its job was to bring about the total extinction of waggas throughout the world. “We have been delivered directly into the black heart of the Beast” said Emmylou to Gillian. “This is going to be a very interesting day. I think we should go back to Brooklyn and collect T Bone Burnett, he’s trying to book us into the Angler’s Rest. I think we’re going to need his sage advice.” Before anyone could reply, Bill had grabbed a couple of planks and was coming towards the little group of country singers. They managed to jump back into the limo and tell the driver to get out of there fast, but Bill landed a couple of blows on the bonnet as the limo spun its wheels and fishtailed out of Yeats’ property. As they reached Brooklyn Road they saw T Bone walking along with Geoffrey Hill. They pulled up and told them to get in. “What’s happening man?” asked T Bone. “We’ve been attacked by a madman and have just met W.B. Yeats, who turns out to be one of the main people involved in the slaughter of Waggafish.” Said Emmylou. “W.B. Yeats, the poet? Is he still alive?” “Yes to both questions!” replied David Rawlings. “Well, then far out” replied T Bone.

Geoffrey Hill glared at the country singers. “And what’s the true problem may I ask?”  Emmylou looked hard at Hill: “The real question is that we have come to stop the slaughter of Waggafish. We are giving a concert to raise money for RAW, as we find this brutal murder of fish an appalling insult to all living things.” Hill’s eyes narrowed and then opened wide. He glared fiercely at the singers for a few moments before he started laughing, a terrible black laughter, bitter, twisted and with a sound that sent the fear of God into the hearts of the Americans. “Stop this wretched vehicle. I cant abide people with brains the size of pickled walnuts, let me out of this vacuum chamber right now!” 

G. Lehmann, at the Front and Back.

Dispatch From The Front: Day 20

The bionic mosquito: an early experiment of Dr Greene’s.

A youthful Dr Greene at work in his lab creating re-usable live-bait.

Shelby pumping pink nippers for Dr Greene's experiments.

A prototype of re-usable live-bait.

Shelby and Seidel didn’t care that their every move was being observed, and Ted Hughes and T.S. Eliot seemed oblivious to the fact that they were, for all intents and purposes, hostages and in the company of dangerous men. They went to the maritime museum together. They went to the park for picnics. They walked up and down the main street, looking into shops and talking with the locals. The badger had become a real hit, and a photo of this odd beast appeared in the Ulladulla Times.

I was staying at The Afterglow, a lovely cottage-like pub on the outskirts of town. At my suggestion, Dorothy, Merv and the poets who’d arrived on the oblong checked in as well.

Dorothy Hewett was in a rage. “Shelby and that maniac Seidel are running around with Hughes and Eliot and no-one’s doing anything about it! It’s fucked. You disappoint me, Geoff. You write a great, fearless book about Nero, and yet you can’t even get off your arse and go and sort those idiots out!” I looked over at Dransfield, J.S. Harry, Vicki Viidikas and Kerry Leves. They were listening to the new Jackson Browne album on the pub’s old battered stereo. Dorothy was pacing. “I went to that island to do something. I spent three bloody weeks preparing things for you lot, and now look what’s happening! You can’t even stand up to old Ooga-Booga, and that Shelby is a fuckwit.” I watched as she put on her coat. “Where are you going, darl?” Merv asked. “I’ll bloody well sort this out myself,” Dorothy said, and went out the door. “It’s that fucking oblong,” Merv said, and went after her.

Lucinda Williams looked out the window of her room at The Wheelhouse. The harbour looked incredible: ink-like flourishes of decklights on the water, the silver fizz of insects in the light of the wharf lamps. When she looked down at the road she saw a man wearing a fox-skin cap looking up at her. She turned out the light. When she looked again the man had gone.

I could’t sleep. Behind my eyes, a colour-saturated, badly-edited movie of the last few weeks was on repeat. Scenes rushed past and into each other. I saw Phil Spector riding a giant red bat up to the watch tower, where he leapt off into a Wall of Sound and opened a bottle of Ronnette, which he shared with Frederick Seidel. I saw Sharon Olds get pash-rash from kissing Billy Gibbons with Coral Hull’s mouth. I saw a badger wearing a black swan mask walk up to a Waggaist and give it a mouthful of “Go and get fucked.”

Outside on the street, a nightwatchman was painting the doors and shutters of houses and sheds with the beam of his flashlight. Or so I thought, until a yellow beam came wandering over the walls of my room, followed by a tangle of arms and legs coming through the window. I leapt out of bed and turned on the light. Lucinda Williams killed her flashlight and started raving.

Back on The Island, having found the ongoing weight of responsibility too much to bear, Rodney Hall was looking for a new leader. He was hoping to find a replacement before leaving and returning home to the South coast. Yet when he called a meeting, and asked for a volunteer, no-one put up their hand. The poets looked away or down and shuffled their feet nervously. “What about you, Philip?” Rodney asked. Philip Hodgins thanked him and declined his offer, saying he’d rather tongue-kiss a tiger snake than have to deal with another Waggaist. “And you, Bronwyn?” Bronwyn Lea knelt down and started going through the odds and sods inside her big cane basket. “Is there no-one who will take responsibility for the group and take over?” he asked, his voice trembling. “I’ll do it! I’ll be the leader!” Jamie Grant called from where he was standing at the wire of his cage. He’d managed to remove the fountain pen nib and paper clip mouth guard. “I’ll take charge!” he shouted.

While W.H. Auden went off with a plank to sort things out, I pondered the one special gift that being a war correspondent had afforded me; the one thing that eclipsed all others and left them smoldering in its wake: being omnipresent was a total fucking hoot.

I had another rough night thinking about who was going to be the new leader. Rodney was the perfect man for the job, but we needed someone who could fill his shoes. Around midnight in my room in The Afterglow I was still seeing coloured lights, though this time because a migraine had taken over my head. I looked through my medical supplies and found a couple of broken Black Drop tablets that Coleridge had given me. I swallowed these with a shot of malt whiskey and then started worrying about Sam Coleridge - what on earth had happened to him? I hadn’t seen him since the first few days on the Island. He’d been thinking of setting off with Wordsworth on a squid boat, of going to Tasmania to collect a Devil from Tim Thorne. But these thoughts fell apart as sleep came falling like a cast net. I felt trapped as a black tide of powerful opiate started flooding through my veins. My fever and headache lifted, but these were replaced by dreams, or nightmares concerning rhomboids, obelisks, pyramids and dodecahedrons, then a truncated tetrahedron filled the dark cave of my head; though behind these shapes, always the haunting shadow of the Red Oblong.

I woke and almost cheered when I saw the sunlight in my window. After a shower I walked down the hallway and found myself in the breakfast room. Sunlight poured through the bay window and reassured me the nightmares were gone. Two people were finishing their breakfast. I noticed one of them was Mandy Beaumont so went up and said hello. “Sit down, have a coffee with us,” she said. Mandy seemed nervous and I felt she wanted to tell me something. “What happened last night?” She replied by relating an incredible story. Mandy spoke without pauses and I found myself believing every word she spoke. Her tone rang true. This what she told me:

“Last night we went to the Ulladulla Yacht Club. The had a show. Hex were playing and Lucinda Williams and Gig Ryan rocked out. It was great.  Around 1am things slowed down and we were drinking on the terrace. We watched a man row up the bay and tie up at the wharf. He walked up to the club and came in looking dazed. It was Michael Dransfield. He’d just escaped from Dr Greene’s lab under the fishing shop. Vicki, Kerry Leves and J.S. Harry were still there, loaded up on LIMP. Greene had been hitting them up, mainlining the stuff. Though by the time reached Dransfield, the drug had worn off and Michael decided he’d had enough. Greene had trouble finding a vein, and when he was stooped over, probing for one, Michael reached for something on the bench behind Greene and smashed a bunsen burner onto his head. Greene crashed across the table, smashing beakers of red liquid, sending live-bait flying and flapping as  jars hit the floor. Michael took off. He ran down the hallway and jumped through a window. There was a pontoon at the back and he leapt into Greene’s net-boat and rowed up the bay to the Yacht Club.

When Michael arrived, he took up the story. He was so articulate, remembering every detail of his kidnapping and he tied these fragments into a description of the experiments he witnessed. Greene was even more a monster than any of us thought. In the secret lab he was in the process of genetically engineering pink nippers. Creating nippers as big as crayfish that were virtually indestructible. He wanted to market ‘re-usable’ live bait! Beautiful-looking pink creatures hovered in the glass vats and changed colours in the manner of squid. They waved their marbled claws, and whenever one broke the surface, it would snap shut, creating a sound like a rifle shot. There were other half-finished projects going on in there, but Michael was visibly shaken when he tried to recall the details.

The crew of the Red Oblong were totally drugged with a new version of LIMP. Greene had refined the formula. Anyone under the influence of LIMP2 could be mesmerised by the sound of the voice they happened to be listening to as the drug hit home. Dransfield couldn’t work out the mysteries of the Red Oblong either. However it’s red pulsations were a fascination to him. He’d even written several odes to the oblong. When they were at sea and the LIMP was wearing off, Michael would reach for his pen and scrawl some more verses. 

As Dransfield reached the end of his tale, I felt so moved that I put my arm around his shoulders. I felt his body tremble like a fawn, without words, his voice, his poetry. When it all fell away, he was a frail creature.

It was clear Mandy was falling in love with Dransfield, and I wondered where this would end: what could I do to shelter these young lovers from the Redness about to spread through this unsuspecting fishing town?

The Club closed and as we all walked back to hotel, we could see the pulsating red glow down at the docks. On the top of a street light Mandy pointed out an unusual bird. It was an Arctic Jaeger. The others went to their rooms but I went through my case and found my field guide. It’s correct name was the parasitic jaeger. I read the following lines aloud:  “Like other skuas, it will fly at the head of a human or fox approaching its nest. It can inflict serious damage, an attack by a jaeger is a frightening and painful experience.”

G. Lehmann, at the Front

Dispatch From The Front: Day 19

The tackle shop in Ulladulla above Dr Greene’s secret laboratory.

David Malouf aboard Slessor’s Halvorsen cruiser, reacting to the story of Phil Spector being taken down in the lake.

Ulladulla harbour at dusk, just before the arrival of The Red Oblong.

When David Malouf introduced John Milton to the poets, some called Milton for an escaped Waggaist - his red cape confused them, and his intense stare was similar to that of someone coming down from LIMP. “Put him back in the cage, David!” Roger McDonald shouted. Roger had abandoned fiction and returned to poetry, and even though he was too late for The War, he was loving the company of friends he hadn’t seen for more than forty years. “Yeah, what the fuck are you doing? Is this some kind of fashion parade?” Kevin Brophy yelled. Others join in. Milton was used to being heckled, and simply stood his ground until the abuse had subsided. Finally he turned to Malouf and said: “A great, pervasive spirit resides at the heart of this gathering. May it remain so. Now, if it be your will, guide me through the aftermath of this unholy war, this wreckage of mad design and cruelty.” Malouf looked long and hard at Milton. Even the worst parody of the great man’s speech would have been preferable to what he’d just heard. Still, it was better than not having him there at all, and so off they went on a tour of The Island.

Lucinda Williams slipped her bracelets on and ran a brush through her hair. She looked at herself in the mirror, then looked beyond her face to where Dr Greene was lying on the bed. The last thing she’d wanted was to have an affair, especially with someone whose life seemed so at odds with her own. At first she’d fallen into a drunken embrace. Two days later, after countless embraces, she was still in Greene’s apartment in Ulladulla under the shop he used as a front for his experiments. Now it was time to go. She turned to face him. “You look ravishing,” he said. “I have to go,” she said, and started to gather up her things. Greene got out of bed and went to her. He put a hand on her waist. “Don’t,” she said. “Please.” Greene watched her pack clothes into a bag. Her perfume was like sandalwood and driftwood smoke. “I was hoping we’d be able to start a new life down here,” he said. “I was never a fan of country music until I met you.” Lucinda stopped packing and half-turned towards him. “Then I suggest you return to what you were listening to before you met me,” she said through her hair. “Are you always so cold and aloof at the end of an affair?” he asked. “Only when end is another word for shipwreck,” she said, then picked up her bag and left the room.

A crowd of tuna men and local jetty rats had gathered to watch the ambulance pull into the wharf at Ulladulla. It was a crazy spectacle. A 1950s Austin Sheerline, its roof and bonnet festooned with seaweed, a dead gull hanging by a string from the aerial, and the face of a badger peering out from the passenger window. When Seidel and Ted Hughes stepped out of the ambulance, one of the tuna men said “Looks like youse are the only sick fucks needing treatment around here.” Seidel opened the rear doors, and Shelby emerged backwards, helping T.S, Eliot up the little ladder on the side the wharf. Eliot stood blinking and leaning on his cane. “Land’s End,” he said. “Good job, driver.”

Milton was exhausted. Rodney Hall and David Malouf had taken him in Kenneth Slessor’s Halvorsen cruiser on a water-based tour of The Island. Rodney had pointed out the various places where most of the action had taken place. He’d done his best to explain why the poets had fought the Waggaists, and had been animated in his description of the day Phil Spector had come to grief in the lake. Malouf was wide-eyed and had demanded intimate details. As they returned to the wharf, Milton stood on the bow of the cruiser, his red cape fluttering out behind him. “Figure this out, figurehead!” a poet had shouted as one of the confiscated Waggaist ampules hit  Milton’s shoulder and exploded. “Zest!” he exclaimed. “The essence of what the mind can achieve, under pressure!”

Dr Greene watched as Lucinda Williams got into her Chevy Silverado and pulled away. He’d put on his white lab coat and had gone out the secret side entrance to the apartment. He wanted to see her again, though didn’t know where she was going, or if she knew anyone in the area. He would find out.

Greene’s fishing tackle shop was above his lab, and was doing a fine trade in bait and lures. It was the perfect facade for his serious work. Only one person knew of what lay below the tackle shop, and they were behind the counter, selling lures to the tourists who had just begun to arrive in earnest on the South coast. The man’s name was Bobby Russo. He was a well-known fishing identity, famous for wearing a fox-skin cap and budgie-smugglers, and head-butting yellowfin tuna and bronze-whaler sharks into submission on the rocks. His book The Day the Bottom Moved - the story of how he caught a 300kg Waggafish alone, at night, from The Tubes at Jervis Bay - had been a best-seller. Dr Greene called him from the lab: “Bob, put out the word on a Chevy Silverado. I want to know where it finds a berth for the night.”

I’d taken a water-taxi from The Island to Brooklyn, then driven down to Bermagui to reach Ulladulla by night. Before I left, Dorothy Hewett had taken me aside, saying “Just get yourself to Ulladulla and I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.” She told me that Merv Lilly was coming to pick her up in his pole-barge, and they were then going drive down in the white Merc. 

I looked out over Ulladulla: an orange moon was floating up the sky from the black water.  To my side, a crested pigeon exploded from the grassbank, the jingle-bells in the sound of its flight described an arc across the cyptic twilight. Then I saw something moving on the water, at first it appeared to be another tall ship—but soon realised it was a thing I didn’t really want to see. A shape from the murky past, some old repression, was now making its presence felt in this beautiful setting. It was The Red Oblong. A glassy looking vessel made from some unknown material - it must have been at least twenty metres long - and best way to describe its shape is to call it for what it was: a large oblong that was illumintaed from within. It created a pulsating light that could travel across long distances. I grabbed my old field glasses and had a good look: on deck there were four figures, moving about in postures of unease. Two were kneeling and the other two were laying themselves onto the deck and then standing again. It looked like they were moving to some kind of religious choreography. Ater watching for some time I realised they were praying. The Oblong pushed its blunt way through the harbour and made a messy wake that chopped up the black glass into lumps of crazed redness. This evil geometric vessel was powered by either a big V8 or some old navy diesel plant— I could hear the pistons firing like the throaty purr of some fabulous big cat.

As I watched the Red Oblong being pushed into its archorage by a tugboat, I wondered if Dorothy had been tipped off about this craft of extreme redness. A row-boat had delivered the crew who had been praying on deck of the Oblong. As they walked up the steps of the wharf and into the light I recognised them all: Michael Dransfield, Vicki Viidikas, J.S. Harry and Kerry Leves. The whole crew were dressed in black and humming some turgid mantra, their eyes were glazed and they couldn’t seem to focus. I went up to Vicki and asked her what the hell was going on, she just looked straight through me and seemed unable to respond. The others in turn did the same, they appeared to be members of some kind of red cult, all spaced out and without wills of their own. Was this a manifestation of some Waggaist hex? Who was behind it? Shelby, Dr Greene? These people were all fine poets and head-strong individuals, and it would have been extremely difficult to have brain-washed them. What was the allure of the Red Oblong? They formed a single file and walked straight by me, heading into the town. I waited until Dorothy and Merv arrived in the Merc. Dorothy walked to the end of the wharf to see what was moored there. Throwing back her hair, she moaned: “The Red Oblong, we’re all fucked.”

Ted Hughes, Frederick Seidel, Shelby and T.S. Eliot made a bizarre sight as they walked up the main street of Ulladulla. Shelby had long-since put the LIMP needle away. Hughes wasn’t going anywhere. 

They checked into The Wheelhouse, a bed-and-breakfast near the harbour. Later that evening they were sitting outside a cafe drinking and talking. A woman with golden hair, wearing a blue denim jacket and with a guitar slung over her shoulder, approached and asked if the men knew of a decent place to stay. T.S. Eliot stood up. “The Wheelhouse is splendid,” he said. As Eliot was pointing and giving the woman diections, Frederick Seidel narrowed his eyes. “Country rock meets the Wasteland. This will be interesting,” he said.

I had been given a second chance at reporting from the Front, and I was loving the challenge. Ken had basically lost heart with the whole scene and had gone back to Kings Cross. We didn’t know if he’d be back. The night before he left we threw a party for him on the tall ship. The pink gin was flowing. Ken was in fine form, making speeches and flirting with Mandy Beaumont, who kept reading from tiny hand-made books of poems and giving the eye to Bukowski. Tim Winton, who’d been told about The War by Dennis Haskell, had come over from the West on his Triumph Speedmaster, low-flying in the minor key the length of the Nullabor Plain. He thought there might be a novel in a crowd of poets tearing each other’s words out. When he arrived by tinny and saw a lot of people laughing and deep in conversation, he climbed the tall ship’s rigging and spent the night in the crow’s nest, reading old issues of Tracks magazine. I went to bed and drifted off to sleep to a Lauren Williams love song.

Geoffrey Lehmann, the Front

Dispatch From The Front: Day 18

Geoffrey Lehmann, poet and War Correspondent.

Interior of the Austin Sheerline ambulance.

Since accepting the brief role as war correspondent, Geoffrey Lehmann had been up each day at dawn. Despite being told by all and sundry that he was no longer needed, he continued to walk around taking photos and scribbling furiously into his own little notebook. You could hear him as he passed by: “Very interesting. Yes, indeed. That’s good. I wonder. Perhaps there are...” When he cornered Bukowski on the wharf and started asking him questions about the various movie depictions of his life, Charles picked Geoff up and threw him into the river. “Ben Gazzara or Mickey Rourke?” Geoff had demanded, streaming water and ribbons of weed. “And who are you? Are you Charles? Chuck? Hank? Henry? Tell me! The world needs details! You can’t just write about battered lampshades, horses, bourbon, cigars, women, fighting, poetry, fucking, vomiting, L.A., bars, Mozart and bed bugs without giving us at least a splinter of the truth!” Bukowski had gone into the river to silence Lehmann, but Geoff outswam him. His freestyle was excellent. Charles came back to the wharf, pulled up a deck chair, opened a beer, and sat there patiently, waiting for Lehmann to come ashore.

Fifty kilometers away, the ambulance was punching through a stiff norther-easterly chop. It was heavy going. Shelby had to strap T.S. Eliot into the stretcher as he kept flying out of his seat and rolling around on the floor. Up front, visibility was patchy. The wipers were slapping across the glass and small waves were breaking over the roof. Seidel and Hughes sat in silence. For awhile they’d listened to old country and western songs on the cassette player Ted had brought along, but now Seidel was in no mood for music. They were travelling about a kilometer offshore. Occasionally they caught glimpses of a headland or beach through the spray. The sight made Hughes think of Cornwall, of the times he and Sylvia had stayed at the stone cottage by the beach and spent evenings wandering around Tintagel Castle, the birthplace of King Arthur. He was remembering how Sylvia would turn her face into the wind, her hair flying around her face, when Seidel shouted “Look out!” Hughes came back and through the chop he saw a yacht bearing down on them, some fifty yards away. At the last minute the yacht tacked away, its crew hanging over the sides. Seidel wound down his window: “You fucking morons we’re in an ambulance are you blind or just plain stupid!” The badger had leapt under the dash when Seidel started shouting, and was now looking up at Ted through loops of trailing wires. T.S. Eliot was demanding to know what was going on. Shelby was close to tears. He got seasick drinking water.

Geoffrey Lehmann had avoided a nasty incident with Bukowski by promising he’d speak to his good friend in Melbourne - the Australian importer for Lagavulin single malt Scotch. Feeling cocky, he was now standing outside the Waggaist cage, asking questions and taking photos. The Waggaists couldn’t speak because they were wearing wire-mesh mouth guards, but that didn’t stop Geoffrey. He wanted to know everything: what Waggaists ate, if polygamy was their thing, had they ever met the Red K, their tastes in music, if they were allowed to read lyrical poetry, what they thought of poets who called themselves post-modernists... The huge red crowd were making muffled, angry noises and kicking at the sandy soil. Geoffrey’s questions continued unabated. He didn’t miss a beat, scrawling answers to his own questions and nodding wildly. In the end, Rodney Hall had to take him by the arm and lead him away. Even in his cabin, he could be heard asking questions, answering them, and practising his best correspondent’s voice.

K. Slessor, the Front

Dispatch From The Front: Day 17

The Fortune of War hotel, Circular Quay.

A small Waggafish, around the same size as the one caught and killed by Bill Wisely seven years ago.

I looked at the departing ambulance and realised this was the time to have a lengthy break. I wanted to know more about the background to The War, who actually started it, what factors from history or social problems contributed to it? I knew it had its roots deep in the creation of the Waggafish - the CSIRO experiment gone wrong - but how did Dr Greene really become involved? Where did Shelby come from? He wasn’t even a poet. The list went on. There were so many implications, so many innocent bystanders, victims, camp-followers and red-raggers. Deep at the heart of this whole episode in history was a dark mystery. What had really started the Poetry War and divided so many diverse people and set them at each other’s throats? Were the fishermen involved simply because a fish - admittedly a fish like no other - was involved?

I was asleep in the Halvorsen when I heard a knock on the window. I parted the curtain and saw Michael Wilding looking in, his nose pressed to the glass. “Can I have a word, Ken?” he asked. I looked at my watch. It was 6 am. Normally I would have told him to go away, but there was something about his expression and voice that concerned me. I hadn’t seen him for awhile, and had noticed his absence. I got up, put on my dressing gown and let him in.

“It’s poetry,” he said. “Poetry and poets.” Michael ran his fingers through his hair and sighed loudly. “I’ve just about had enough.”

I knew that Wilding wasn’t poetry’s greatest fan, yet he had made the effort to come to The Island. His support for a couple of old friends was soon extended, without fanfare, to all the poets during the war. He had become a popular figure: quiet, observant, and with a dark sense of humour.

“Poets. You can’t live with them, and without them your life is less complicated and less likely to unravel spontaneously. Even the most well-adjusted poets are fucked-up. They are territorial and competitive. Secretly, they loathe each other and can’t stand the success of their peers. In private they study literary theory and test the waters of radical reform with regards to style and syntax. In public they feign indifference to poetics and theory, preferring to hit the piss. At festivals they read, yet never attend the readings of other poets on the program. They always get small audiences, and complain bitterly about this fact. They fear the arrival of a new, young talent. Poets are paranoid, bleak individuals who live their lives in a permanent state somewhere between melancholia, acute anxiety and depression. When they laugh, it is usually a nervous reaction to the onset of mania. Bank managers, Writers Festival Directors and most literary journal editors despise them. There is no Prime Minister’s Award for poetry. This is not an accident or oversight. The Prime Minister does not understand poets or poetry, nor do his advisors. They see it as subversive, divisive, and totally unintelligible. All poetry since Banjo Patterson is regarded with cynicism and contempt. No one buys it, hardly anyone reads it, teachers are tyrannised by it and students are afraid of it. Poetry is a threat. When I was at the University of Sydney, whenever I saw a poet coming up the stairs or into the cafeteria, I would hide. Their conversation is stilted. They take minimalism to a new level. Mostly they talk about themselves, and their essays are full of symbolist jargon. Romantic crap. Poets aren’t happy with just writing the stuff, they need to be known as poets. Leonard Cohen once said that poetry isn’t a career, it’s a verdict. Cohen was right. The Poetry War has been brewing for many years. It was only a matter of time. An ego time-bomb.”

When Wilding stopped talking, he stood up and adjusted his tie. “Thanks for listening, Ken,” he said, then he walked out of the cabin and onto the wharf. I watched as he walked off down the beach, kicking at driftwood.

This was the last straw. I really had to get off The Island. I knew I couldn't leave for good until everything had been resolved. I had to get to Sydney for one more interview. All the travel was wearing me down. I asked Frank Webb if he’d take over as correspondent for a couple of days, but he swore at me and opened his bible. I asked Geoff Page and Wallace-Crabbe, but they pretended they hadn’t heard. When I asked Geoffrey Lehmann, he ripped the notebook and pen from my hand and said “When do I start?”

I took the Halvorsen to Church Point, picked up my car and drove to Sydney, knowing reports from The Island were going to be in good hands.

I felt like a late breakfast and a drink. I decided to go to The Fortune of War Hotel at Circular Quay. It was the only early opener I trusted for a decent feed. I had a pink gin and ordered bacon and eggs. I happened to read a coaster on the bar: “The Fortune has a colourful reputation, which includes being the first and last port of call for generations of Australian soldiers involved in theatres of conflict.” Oh just perfect, I thought as someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Shelton Lea. “So where have you been hiding Shelly?”  “I’ve been here for three months, reading poetry at dawn every day for drinks. They gave me a room and now I’m the poet in residence.” I filled Shelton in on The Island war, but he was right up on it. Evidently Jordie Albiston had been commissioned to write an opera based on the goings on at The Island. Shelton said: “I asked her who had commissioned it. She told me she’d been contacted by Kate Jennings, who is working for this patron who loves poetry and music.” And who was this patron? Did he happen to be an American? “Oh yes, I think he is from the U.S. The opera company has a weird name: “Ooga-Booga-Inc.” I mentioned the name Frederick Seidel. “Yeah, that’s it! Ooga-Booga Seidel!” Shelton said with a diabolical spasm of laughter. After a few more beers I asked him how he thought the war had started. He told me this story.

“I actually remember the first blow in the war. Yes, that's right. I happened to be there. I was up at Brooklyn when this bloke came by in an old beaten up tinny and asked if I wanted to go fishing with him. Said his name was Bill. Well, we went way up the river and Bill started cutting up pillies and throwing them over the side for burley. We were using squid for bait. Bill said he had a frozen supply in the pub freezer. It was nearly black but he reckoned it was okay. It must’ve been, because within a half hour Bill pulled in a beautiful mulloway of about twenty pounds. Then he got another one, but half way in Bill thought he’d lost him. When he pulled his line up there was just the jewie's head left on the hook. Fucking Noah’s ark, said Bill. So he throws out another squid and he’s on again, this time he pulled in this incredibly ugly looking fish.

It had a huge head full of teeth, a red coloured body with spikes all over it, and yet it was pretty sleek looking, a real predator. Bill pulled it in, luckily it was a small one. It stared at us with pure hate in its eyes. After a minute or so the fish started flapping around in the belly of the boat. Bill asked me to pass him an old plank he kept under the seats. I handed it to him and he went to work on that little red horror. He smashed it to a pulp and growled and carried on something terrible. After it was over, I asked him what kind of fish it was. He said “I didn’t think I’d ever see one in the Hawkesbury, fucking red swine of a thing. Fucking dog of a fish. It’s a Wagga. A fucking Wagga-Fish!” “So that’s how it started,” Shelly said. The next day Bill had a fresh supply of planks in the boat. “The red tide has turned,” Bill Wisley said, and glared at me. “You fucking idiot.” “And that's the story of the first blow in the poetry war, Ken. Like I said, it’s a mystery.”

Debriefing to me about poets and poetry seemed to have done Michael Wilding the world of good. When I saw him on my return from Sydney, he was looking much happier. Never had I met a man for whom poetry had become such a burden. He mentioned that he thought the war would go on indefinitely, but I told him the Waggaists were a spent force. There'd be no more torture or bats, no more spear guns or darts - and more to the point - no more chicken wire mouth guards. We were safe as long as we didn’t dangle our feet over the wharf. At first Wilding didn’t seem at all convinced by any of this, but as I spoke he seemed to warm to my enthusiasm and positive approach. Just then Geoffrey Lehmann walked up with his tape recorder and notebook. He had a pencil behind his ear, and he was wearing a fedora with a press card stuck in the band. Wilding took one look at him and said “Another poet who thinks verse is in bed with the media, this is just fucking great!”

Late that afternoon, while waiting for Wilding to meet me on the wharf, I noticed a red beam of light coming across the water. When I saw it, I was relieved when Wilding appeared. He was carrying two deck chairs, staring down at the planks in the jetty, so he didn’t notice the red beam until he sat down alongside me. We both watched as the light grew brighter. “Oh, but of course,” Michael said with a cutting resignation, ‘It’s heading in towards the Island. What next? A Captain Cook River Cruise with poetry? A tour of The Island to see poets living out Lord of the Flies? A delegation from the Australia Council come to see that their Poetry War Grant is being used properly?”

The light was way out to sea and I knew it would take at least a half an hour to arrive. Michael said: “It’s a contemporary abomination of the light from the West Egg, a moving light coming straight at us, and a red light just in case we miss the point. West Egg has merged with East Egg and they have turned into the Bad Egg.” Eventually it became clear that a small craft was navigating its way in through the reefs at Flint and Steel, hitting the throttle and roaring towards Wilding’s head.

As we watched the red light approaching, Wilding broke the silence. “What’s that?” he asked.

A fish had washed up on the shore next to the wharf and had been left high and dry on a seaweed-covered rock. It had most likely been stung to death by man-o-war jellyfish in a trawler’s pocket. “It’s a large black sole,” I told him. “Ah, that’s me, a Black Soul.” Michael smiled at his own ironic metaphor. On closer inspection, this fish was an evil-looking creature, with fangs and hollow eye-sockets. It was astonishing. Geoffrey Lehmann wanted to take it and nail it to the wharf, but Wilding told him to leave it where it was. “It’s the Poetry Fish,” he said. “It will devour itself soon enough.”

It was Wilding who first started living on the Island, long before the citadel had been built. At first he’d rented a house, then after years of living there peacefully (except for the times Rudi Krausman swam to shore from his yacht, found his house and climbed in through the window), he’d built his own bungalow. This had been sold and torn down when Seidel offered him twenty times the market price. Back then he was like Gatsby, renting a house in “one of the strangest communities in the country, the long slender riotous island which extends itself due east...”

Wilding looked up almost expecting to see the two enormous eggs that had haunted Gatsby. I mentioned Gatsby to Wilding, and he shook his head sadly. “No, oh nothing like that. Gatsby’s light reading, a relief really, no, nothing like Gatsby.” He smiled at the thought of “something lighter” as we sat back on our deck chairs, watching the red beam coming towards us bringing god only knows what. I asked him what was really on his mind. “What's on my mind, Kenneth? It’s always the same thing, really, in one form or another. Paradise Lost. It keeps repeating itself,  along with Paradise Regained, it’s the story of our lives.”

We were blinded as the Haines Hunter pulled into the wharf. There were civilized accents, a shuffling and bumping, then a man with a rope. As our eyes adjusted to the redness and the bright light, we both recognised the noble dome of David Malouf’s head. “Is that you David?” “It certainly is. And it’s a surprise and a delight to see you here, Ken.” “He thinks you’ve been dead for years Ken, that’s why he seems surprised,” said Wilding.  “And Michael Wilding! This is a wonderful reception!” “Okay, don’t get too carried way,” said Wilding. “And who’s the wonder in the cape hiding in the cabin?” “He’s not hiding,” Malouf said. “He’s preparing for his lecture.” Michael looked crestfallen. “What lecture would that be?”  “The Herbert Blaiklock Memorial Lecture, honouring the poet Henry Kendall.”  “Oh right, good god. What the hell next?” said Wilding in an anguished tone. “Okay, then, who is this fellow?”

A hunched  figure wearing a crumpled red cape emerged from the cabin of the Haines Hunter. “Don’t you recognise him?” asked Malouf. “It’s John Milton.”

At the mention Milton’s name a pelican, coming home late, misjudged its landing perch, overflew the pylon, and crashed into the water. A swirl, a wake of phosphorescent plankton, and a shower of whitebait escaping in terror. A Wagga had taken the pelican down by one leg at first. What followed was a horrible scene. Feathers flecked with red light and blood, moans of anguish from Wilding, cries of distressed alarm from Malouf, and finally the undisturbed, mirror of the tide again. Then the red cloaked figure of Milton, one hand shading his eyes, gazing knowingly at the black water.

K. Slessor, the Front

Dispatch From The Front: Day 16

A man is arrested while live-baiting for Waggafish fingerlings in the sewers under Sydney.

Simon The Hook.

Terry Hack’s son showing off his new line of wedding dresses made from fishing nets.

T.S. Eliot under the influence of LIMP.

Being with Whitely and hearing the Irish minstrel Driscoll raving about his vision of Blake on the Manly ferry had unsettled me, but witnessing the fanaticism of river fishermen had rattled me to the core. It was clear that live-baiting was a secret society. Ian the bait-man, while being a source of local information, was keen to flog his frozen prawns and squid to kids and tourists. The pilchard-tossers would wander in, get an earful of lies about where to wet a line, and leave smiling with their freezer-blackened bait. All that Adamson, Bill Wisely, Simon the Hook, Moose, Terry Hack and others had to do was look in through the windows of his shop, and Ian would be off to lift live squid from his huge aquarium out the back. These cephalopods were perfect mulloway bait: between four and six inches long, their eyes lit up with blue and green, their bodies changing colour with shifting orange and nutmeg pixelations.

I overheard conversations between these men that were beyond comprehension. They were speaking in Live Code: a combination of meteorological jargon, Department of Fisheries statistics, poetry, and the lyrics of a number of obscure alternative country artists. 

My interview with John Berryman and Geoffrey Hill had been a disaster. Every question I put to Hill had been met with random quotes from the DREAM SONGS, underscored by references to Henry being a yellowtail in deep psychic distress. Berryman had proven to be even more difficult. Each question was countered with rapid-fire instructions on how to live-bait for mulloway off Catherine Hill Bay, or where best to pin a squid while fishing in a strong current. He sounded like a cattle auctioneer on high on LIMP. 

I returned to The Island for some much-needed sanity. I hadn’t used my tape-recorder once.

As I pulled into the wharf, there was a curious absence of poets. I looked around, called out, checked boats. It was just after dusk. The red light on the needle tower was glowing. As I wandered around, a Waggaist shouted from the cage: “Is the possum up a tree? Is the possum all-at-sea? Where's the possum? It's a mystery.” 

I could hear voices before I reached the big main doors. As I turned the corner and looked in, the Main Hall was filled with poets. They were agitated and calling out. Entering, I saw Shelby and Seidel on the small stage. Between them, looking pale and ragged, was T.S. Eliot. His walking cane lay broken at his feet. His coat was torn. And he was raving. Lines from The Wasteland had been reduced to a garbled conglomerate of names and dates. He was glass-eyed and dribbling. Whole passages from Ron Silliman’s The New Sentence were flying from his mouth in even more obscure arrangements. He was reshuffling David Bowie’s Life on Mars and filtering the lines through Gordon Lightfoot’s Canadian Railroad Trilogy. Shelby stood with a huge syringe poised at Eliot’s neck. “One more hit of LIMP will turn his brain into red mush,” he shouted.

T.S. had wandered into the Main Hall and looked around. He’d been delighted by the vast, austere interior. He was rapping on the floor and sandstone walls with his cane when he hit the button for the secret panel, and had gone into the tunnels. He’d wandered for hours, making notes for a new poem from the curious things he’d seen: a room with loose coils of chicken wire on the floor, a vault strewn with opened jars and whose ceilings, floor and walls were covered with a fish-reeking black substance. Eventually he’d pushed open the door to a room high in the citadel. Entering, he saw two men in various stages of undress. Torn pages from a stack of books lay everywhere. As he was about to excuse himself and leave, he was tackled to the ground and injected with LIMP. 

Shelby had wanted to alert the poets to Eliot’s capture by taking him out of the citadel and shouting down to the wharf, but Seidel had other plans. He’d gone up into the belfry just under the needle-tower’s tip, and had opened the main window. The red bats had swarmed, winging and screaming their way down to the wharf, where they attacked the poets before returning again to the tower. The poets had regrouped immediately and had gone to investigate. Seidel, Shelby and T.S. Eliot were waiting for them when they arrived.

Ted Hughes was standing in the front row, holding his badger, and Seidel was staring at him. Eliot’s rave was now completely monotone: a raw, seamless tirade against language itself. And then he stopped talking. He looked at his hands. He smiled. He angled his head, cracking the bones in his neck, and then he said: “Ingiusto fece me contra giusto” (“it made me unjust against my just self.”) Seidel gave the syringe to Shelby, who repositioned it at Eliot’s neck. He came forward a couple of paces. Rather than addressing the crowd of poets, he spoke directly to Ted Hughes. “As you can see, we are holding a major card here. I believe you would not wish to see the possum come to harm. He has stepped into a trap and only we can free him.” Ted Hughes was shuffling uneasily. Rodney Hall whispered “What the hell is going on here, Ted?” Seidel continued. “We are going to leave The Island, but you are the one we’ll be leaving with.” Philip Larkin shouted: “It’s my ambulance. I decide who travels in it.” Seidel ignored him. “And so now, if you’re ready, Mr Hughes. We’d like to get going.” The poets moved forward as one, shouting abuse at Seidel and threatening him. Michael Farrell let fly with a lemon, which bounced off Seidel’s head. Kate Fagan sang Caleb Meyer - it’s story of violence, self-defence and revenge wasn’t lost on Seidel. “This is your final warning!” he shouted. “Hindering our escape will lead to Possum being given an overdose of LIMP.” The poets stepped back.

Supporting the now silent Eliot by his arms, Shelby and Seidel stepped slowly down the hill towards the wharf, needle at the ready. Ted Hughes walked in front of them, the badger scooting along at the end of its lead. When they reached the wharf, Shelby opened the rear doors of the ambulance and he and Eliot stepped inside. Hughes and the badger and Seidel got in the front. Larkin was beside, under and over himself with outrage. “You put one scratch on that ambulance and you’re fucked!” he shouted.

As the poets watched, the big propeller under the chrome bumper bar started turning and the water churned and bubbled. The ambulance pulled away from the wharf. The last thing the poets saw, as it headed out into open water, were the big, blacked-out rear windows gleaming as bits of cloud passed over them.

K. Slessor, the Front.

Dispatch From The Front: Day 15

Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes with two reformed Waggaists outside the Citadel.

Manly ferry.

The morning after the end of the war began with a sky castover and cold. The air was still. I woke early and went for a walk. Miles down the beach, I found the Waggaist’s duck-and-swan paddle-boats hidden among the mangroves under a large red canopy. Camouflage was clearly not one of their talents. I took a duck for a spin but the current was too strong. Sitting on the beach, I tried to make headway on a new poem, but it ended badly. Since accepting the job as war correspondent, my own writing had jumped bail. The muse had been, in Claire Gaskin’s words, “Spectored.”

Returning to the wharf, only one poet was up. Mark Strand was sitting on a cray trap, looking for all the world as though he’d just lost a loved one. I asked him what was wrong, and he said “I’ve just lost a loved one.” His top lip was doing a soft-shoe over his teeth. I offered what comfort I could from a rising tide of exhaustion and despair. “My dog is missing,” he said. I was about to tell him there’s often a big difference between dead and missing, when I heard a siren wail.

Out on the river, a 1950s Austin Sheerline ambulance on tapering pontoons was ploughing slowly through the slate-grey water. As it got closer I could see two men up front, waving and smiling. When it pulled into the wharf, a door opened and Ted Hughes stepped out. He was holding a badger in a leather vest, a plaited leather leash attached to its collar. He put the creature down onto the wharf and came to greet me. I wanted to tell him it was the first time I’d ever seen him smile, when the driver’s door opened and Philip Larkin jumped down. He was shielding his eyes, even though there was no sun. “We are here,” he said.

Bukowski came out of his cruiser wearing a souvenired Waggaist bandana. When he saw Hughes and Larkin, he said “Oh fuck, as if we didn’t have enough trouble on this goddam island.” Then he cracked open a beer and went off into the trees.

A loud banging was coming from the ambulance. “Phil, better let Possum out,” Hughes said. Larkin went to the big rear doors and pulled them open. T.S. Eliot stepped out and fell head-first into the river. He thrashed and cursed then, finding himself in less than two feet of water, stood wiping his face. “Are we there yet?” he asked. Larkin looked around. He saw the citadel. He pondered the many different kinds of craft at anchor. When he saw the large crowd of Waggaists inside the chicken wire cage, all wearing wire-mesh mouth guards, he said “I guess we’re a little late for the war.” Then he walked over to the ambulance and ran a hand over its roof. With an equal measure of menace and wonder, he said “All islands, in time, are visited.”

Hughes and Larkin had been visiting Brendan Behan in prison. Behan had heard that Samuel Beckett was in Australia, trying to find an island somewhere north of Sydney, and that a poetry war was about to take place. Behan said he was he was going to break out and travel to Australia to lend a hand. “He was pacing behind the table in the visiting room, cursing us,” Larkin said, the thick lenses of his glasses flashing. “He was convinced we were holding out on him.” Hughes picked up the badger and stroked its head. He spoke quietly: “At one point he came close and put his ear to my mouth. In his darkest Dublin accent, he told me it wasn’t the Liverpool docks he’d been intending to blow up when he was arrested - he’d only gone there to collect more explosives from a container - it was my study in Devon. ‘I’ll bomb you and your feckin crows, he said.’” The memory of the meeting was clearly too much for Larkin - a nerve below his left eye had started twitching, and it looked as though he were winking at me. “We told him we’d heard nothing, and the situation got worse,” Phil said, with a rising inflection. “I was on the verge of calling the guards.” “Eventually he calmed down,” said Hughes, “but only after we’d promised to let him know as soon as we heard anything.” “I emailed Beckett from the Hull library next day,” Larkin said. “I told him about Behan’s reaction, about what he’d whispered to Ted. Sam’s email came back immediately: ‘They court-martialed Behan in his absence, sentenced him in his absence, and no doubt they’ll execute him in his absence as well. Beware the cunning of the drinker with a writing problem.’” Larkin then explained how Sam had been delayed in Sydney after accepting an invitation to read at a private function at David Williamson’s house. He’d then given detailed directions to The Island, and said he’d be getting a water taxi as soon as the gig at Williamson’s was over. “He should be here soon,” Larkin said. Ted Hughes clicked his tongue at the badger, who looked at him through the twin stripes of shadow on its head, and clicked back. “Not the paradise I was expecting,” Hughes said, hands on his hips as he studied the beach and hill. “But we’ll make do.”

T.S. Eliot had wandered off. He was half-way up the hill towards the citadel, swatting at insects or invisible critics with his walking cane. I was tempted to call out to him, but let him go. There was no longer any hint of danger. The citadel was benign.

Larkin and Hughes were unpacking the ambulance. Blodgett and Stevens had emerged from the tall-ship and were blinking and stretching. The LIMP had well and truly worn off. Graham Nunn had caught a pardalote, and was showing Lisa Gorton the white tips on the ends of its wings. Eric Beach was trying to tell Hughes the difference between a little raven and a crow. The scene was calm. It was much like the first few days after our arrival: poets wandering around doing fuck-all, the smell of alcohol and hashish on the breeze, the Waggaists out of sight...

Later that day, this calm atmosphere would break open. The scene would be transformed into something dark and troubling. But right then The Island was a paradise.

I went to the Halvorsen and made a pink gin. I opened my notebook. Having left an open invitation on the deck for the muse to join me, I started writing. One uncertain stanza later, she came below like the stirrings of a zephyr, unpinned her hair and guided me into the poem.

I was incredibly weary. Reporting from the front was hard work and I needed to a break. I went back to my flat in Billyard Avenue Elizabeth Bay and slept for 15 hours. I woke to a breakfast of grapefruit and marmalade toast. Reluctantly I packed my Olivetti and set off for Brooklyn, where I'd lined up an interview with Berryman and Geoffrey Hill. I’d parked my convertible Jag outside my flat. Brett Whiteley saw my car and came over to say hello. He invited me around to his studio to see his new paintings. The jacarandas were in flower, the rainbow lorikeets flew noisily from tree to tree, and the ibis walked in a single file down the gutter towards where the Australian Navy moored its battleships.

It was a beautiful blue day and Brett was in a charming mood. I mentioned the poetry war on the Island. To my surprise, Whiteley said “Poetry war? What poetry war man?” I decided not to go into it. He would find out about the war and the Waggas before long. It was just a matter of time. Brett had been up the Cross looking for a friend, Michael Driscoll, who was a singer and an expert on the Symbolists. It turned out he couldn’t find this fellow - there’d been talk of smack and dealers, charcoal and Jean  Genet. Seeing that Whiteley had come by ferry, I suggested he come along with me. I was going over through the North side anyway.

I’d been at Whiteley’s studio for an hour or so, surrounded by his new paintings of the harbour. There was music playing and spirits were flowing. Brett’s wife Wendy said Driscoll had called on the phone and was on his way. “He’s been on his way for days. “He seems to vanish into the abyss without warning, then just appears as if no time at all has gone by. He’s drifting too far from the shore.” Brett offered some lunch - avocados and salad with tiger prawns. It was delicious. There was a knock on the door and a dishevelled young man with a guitar came into the studio. It was Michael Driscoll. “You’re two days late,” said Brett. Driscoll didn’t seem to hear and just put down his guitar and launched into an explanation of what had just happened to him on his way to Lavender Bay. He spoke in a casual tone of voice. “I was coming to see you. Catching public transport is such a drag, I missed two buses and a ferry. I was down at Circular Quay an hour ago, and the Manly Ferry was about to pull out. I looked up, and there in the bow section was a man who looked a bit odd. I looked again and realised it was William Blake. He was dressed in the same clothes he used to wear in London, the same apparel he wears in the portraits and etchings. This blew my mind! William Blake, standing there with the other commuters as if it were completely normal. I decided I had to talk to him. I ran down the gangplank and rushed over to the other wharf where William’s ferry was pulling out, but it was too late. The ferry churned the dirty waters of the Quay until they turned white and pulled out. William Blake was standing up on the deck looking over towards Fairy Bower. It was incredible. I was so bitterly disappointed. Oh man, I’m still freaked out. I need a hit to get over it, really Brett. Have you got a hit? I mean, fuck man, William Blake on the Manly Ferry, you wouldn’t fucking believe it. I mean if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes...”

I decided to leave before the needles came out. I drove off through the narrow streets draped with honeysuckle and jasmine, up the steep avenues of jacaranda trees, heading for the Pacific Highway. On the way I amused myself, thinking what was in store for the young Driscoll when W.B.Yeats hit Sydney Harbour fishing for Waggas with his gang of Immortals. It surprised me that the crew at Lavender Bay had been so cut off from the poetry war. They mustn’t have read the Sydney Morning Herald, as there’d  been a front page story. If Driscoll really was an expert on the Symbolists as Brett claimed, it would be interesting to see what happened when he came face to face with Mallarme and the rest of the poets recovering in the Anglers Rest.

At Brooklyn things were back to normal. I dropped into Ian’s bait shop before I went into the pub. Ian makes the best coffee in Brooklyn, and besides he always knows the latest news. He writes the fishing report for the Bush Telegraph and is plugged into all the fact and gossip. There’s usually a mixed crew in Ian’s shop. Today there was J.S. Harry, Vicki Viidikas and Gig Ryan. They were all talking about the way David Brooks was writing reviews of their latest books and using a vegan’s measure to judge them - every time the word meat was used he deducted a point; each time a pumpkin came up there was an extra point. David Brooks was getting the reputation as the man who was most against live-bait fishing,  against fishing in every aspect. Vicki said to Gig “It’s ridiculous. Who cares what David Brooks says anyway? Who cares what any critic says in some academic journal? It’s not much different with vampires. They suck the blood out of the poetry.” Jan Harry said “But he’s a vegan, he can’t stand blood.” “Exactly,” said Gig.

Jack Spicer walked in: "Well, what’s happening? I want some live bloodworms.” “I don’t sell them,” said Ian. “There’s no call for them in Brooklyn, they’re all Jewie-mad around here. Mulloway Madness. They only want live squid. “Well, then,” said Spicer “I’ll have to open my own baitshop. I’ll sell bait and listen to the game on the radio as the worms crawl out the door. I’ll sell live prawns, poddy mullet, blood worms, squirt worms, pink nippers, green nippers, crabs, green weed, anything that moves.

There was a disturbance at the door. “Adamson keeps saying he’s going to give up fishing for Jewies and take up fishing for whiting and bone fish. What the fuck is a bone-fish?” It was Bill Wisley, and he was reaching for a plank. Vicki said “You’re all mad, stark raving mad.”

K. Slessor, at the Front.