Perth Words… exploring possibilities.

Burns Beach – Frances Macaulay Forde © 2013

Some may know I was the resident poet at a local cafe for 6 months as part of a program with Poetry Australia during 2013.  Going through my notes of meetings, I thought I’d share these.  I presume the married owners were in dispute about who was the boss:

30^th May 2013:  THE POETRY READING.

After rushing around Joondalup frantically trying to source a small amp to use at the reading and $167 later, I was 10 minutes late for set-up with the advertised event due to happen in 20 minutes.  It was pouring and I looked like a drowned rat.  The hubbub in the cafe was loud because every customer was squashed into a small space with the heater turned up high.

As I lugged the amp and my bag of books etc in, I rushed to my usually reserved table to find it occupied.  “Good Morning, are you ladies here for the poetry?”

Frowns; “No.”

“Oh, OK, sorry – it’s just that’s usually my table but I see they’ve reserved this one for me.” and smiled.

I bend to my task of plugging in the amp and about to test the microphones (one for me and one for my guest poet, Rashida Murphy) when a sour faced woman approached (looking quite similar to one of the ladies at the 1^st table).

“I am the owner and I don’t want my customers disturbed.”

“Sorry?”

“You can’t use that – I don’t want my customers disturbed.” pointing to the amp with a nasty smell under her nose.

“So you don’t want me to do the reading?  It’s been advertised for three weeks and this was all arranged…”

“I don’t want my customers disturbed.”

“OK, but a media statement went out and the newspapers mentioned they may attend.  I have no idea what they look like so if anyone asks would you mind apologising?”  I’m not really good at sarcasm.

I think that did it – and she walked away.

The atmosphere had changed and you could have cut it with a knife.  I’d never seen that ‘owner’ before and the wait staff who usually looked after me so well, were obviously feeling bad.  They knew how much time and effort I had put into the event, not to mention the advertising with brochures and posters.

The whole experience was to offer customers a chance to share their words as well – many had expressed real interest and said they secretly wrote poems.  I wanted to hear some, so was very disappointed.

I packed up the amplifier and made some frantic phone calls to say it was cancelled.  Thank goodness the international poet I had invited had been unavailable; I would have been mortified to have her arrive with my friend, the Professor of Language and Literature at Edith Cowan University – and both unable to read!

So, with my face bright red, I took a deep breath, did my usual and placed a poetry postcard on each table inside and out, smiled and chatted when customers expressed interest.

One chap outside greeted me with “Hello, Poetry Lady” and a big grin.   He said he’d been looking at my face for three weeks and seemed quite happy about it – not ‘disturbed’ at all!

I couldn’t get hold of Rashida in time, but she was good about the cancellation and we thoroughly enjoyed catching up and reading poems we’d worked on since our last chat.

7^th June 2013 Update:

Yesterday although I was at Burns Beach Cafe, I was outside, distracted by photographing the waves crashing, so walked in a couple of minutes late. There stood the manager,  Lynda waiting to let me know there were two ladies waiting to see me – locals Maureen and Ginny.

They said they’d just completed a 6 – week poetry course at a near-by writers group and had heard about me from Maureen’s hairdresser who picked up one of my poetry postcards from the cafe. 

20 minutes into our poetic chat Maureen remarked ‘how much (she) had learned from me – already!’ We’d shared our work, critiqued a poem or two and did a short exercise which we promised to write and bring back to critique next week. 

Our session ended just short of two hours because they were off to attend a prose class. They’ve promised to come back next week and every week they can…

And they did, for the rest of my residence!  We even met each month for 6 months afterwards at Ginny’s house to talk about her book and Maureen’s play.

#FrancesMForde  #FrancesMacForde  #BurnsBeachCafe