Harwood's Literary Hoax

Until yesterday, I hadn't realised that Gwen Harwood had perpetrated a hoax almost as successful as the famous Ern Malley one - this is an interesting account of both incidents. Apparently, when Harwood was unmasked as the perpetrator of her own poetic trick, what annoyed her most was the way she was described by the newspapers as a 'housewife', rather than a poet.

I have never thought of her as anything but a poet, although I would have to admit that the poems of hers I am especially fond of often deal with subjects that could be said to be drawn from a housewifely kind of realm. This one is a good example:

Cups by Gwen Harwood


They know us by our lips. They know the proverb
About the space between us. Many slip
They are older than their flashy friends, the glasses
They hold cold water first, are named in scripture


Most are gregarious. You'll often see them
nestled in snowy flocks on trestle tables
or perched on trolleys. Quite a few stay married
for life in their own home to the same saucer


and some are virgin brides of quietness
in a parlour cupboard, wearing gold and roses.
Handleless, chipped, some live on in the flour bin,
some with the poisons in the potting shed.


Shattered, they lie in flowerpot, flowerbed, fowlyard,
Fine earth in earth, they wait for resurrection.
Restored, unbreakable, they'll meet our lips
on some bright morning filled with loving kindness.

Gwen Harwood

Australia has more than its fair share of terrific poets and I think I've been wrong to mention only Les Murray (great though he is). Gwen Harwood, who died in 1995, is another favourite of mine and, as I have been thinking lately of my oldest dearest friend from school, who died too young, leaving a six-year-old son behind her, this poem, which Harwood wrote in memory of a close friend of hers, seems especially moving.

Driving Home
To the memory of Vera Cottew

Stones, I think. They rise, crying.
Plover. One cloudy afternoon,
looking for mushrooms, we discovered
a plover's nest. "See how these eggs
marry colours of earth and stone."

Homeward in your old Baby Austin;
a mottled sky. You talked of Ruskin
finding in clouds a deep, calm presence
"which must be sought ere it is seen
and loved ere it is understood."

Passing a shabby country town you said,
"I love these lonely places
waiting for someone to be born
who'll make them great - but then they'll lose
their fields and plovers' eggs and mushrooms"

Miles. Years. This later landscape streaming
through earlier eyesight. You remain
somewhere in the confused arcades
of memory and longing, talking
of light and colour, bird and stone,

"St Mark's porches so full of doves" -
(Ruskin again) - "that living plume
and marble foliage seemed to mingle."
Come from the shades to comfort me!
You do, as I switch on the headlights,

though not as I expect. As often
in life you charmed me with surprises,
you draw out from my memory bank
a Brisbane City Hall recital:
an earnest pianist playing Bach.

The silvertails are bored. You nudge me,
flick your eyes upward: on the cornice
running right round the hall, a rat
has found himself without an exit.
Head after head begins to turn

and follow his demented circuit
round the ornamental ledge. It seems
he has to run when he hears music.
Between one item and another
he stops to rest and preen his whiskers.

Nobody listens to a note.
But oh, the applause! The pianist looks
bemused. We dry our tears of laughter.
Slowly, alert for dazzled creatures
on the dusty road, I reach my gate.

Presence not understood, but sought
and loved, remain with me tonight.