Stupid
I’d say it is surprising
a girl like me
can clean a chook
unbog a truck
fight a fire
lay out the dead
make the bread
deliver babies
write a poem
move a man to tears
rear the kids
and keep on
acting stupid
Kate Llewellyn
The first book launch I ever attended was in 1997. It was the launch of Kate Llewellyn’s (then) latest book of poetry and I want to say it was “The Water Lily” but frankly, ashamedly, I can’t remember. All I can remember was that it was held in a Bathurst bookshop and I think I was only really invited because I was friendly with my English Professor and they wanted to drum up the numbers. It was a perfectly civilised affair, with wine served in those squat little clear plastic glasses, and lots of women standing around chatting about all things literary and sophisticated. I felt very privileged to be there and in retrospect, the older, wiser me could haphazardly wonder if I was quite right to walk out of there without purchasing the book, but, hey, I was a student. I could barely afford to purchase the long-life noodles I was supposed to eat for dinner later. If I ate at all.
What lingers most is the positively euphoric feeling I had as I walked to Adam’s house straight after the event. He only lived about three blocks down the road, right on the highway, where the trucks would wake you at 3am in the morning as they carried their corn harvests (hey – it’s the country) down to the factories to be processed. At the time, I had a heat in my cheeks – the heat of a glass of wine, but also of a secret ambition: the one day I might have a book launch of my own. Wouldn’t that be COOL?!?! (Infuse that with as much teenage enthusiasm as you like).
Well, all going well that will happen later this year. But first, I want to talk about the poem.
Published in 1982, it reads…well, quite negatively, wouldn’t you say? Full of a dark irony. She’s come to this realisation, I’m sure, after many hardships (Llewellyn was 42 when she wrote it) and you’d think there was a nice kind of assertivism with the opening thought, “I’d say it is surprising/ a girl like me…” but notice the tense: “is”. It means it’s still relevant and pertinent. I believe there’d be a whole different meaning if the “is” was a “was”. Maybe? There would introduce a breath of objectivity; that she was speaking beyond the crux. As it is, she remains a kind of ‘feminist problem’ waiting to be solved.
As are many women, I’m sure. Would that we all could examine our motives and alliances; workings and doings in such a way.
