DOT

Dorothy Porter was never going to go out with a whimper. The Australian poet who once claimed to write best to the tribal din of Melbourne's Hunters & Collectors was a poet utterly transfixed by life. I only knew her in passing, but from what I can glean Dorothy seemed to regard death (her own came earlier this year after a long and courageous fight against breast cancer) as merely one more aspect of life, not its polar opposite. Her last, and perhaps her finest, collection of poetry, The Bee Hut, was written very much in this spirit

have I the strength

to pay suffering its due?

she asks in "The Ninth Hour", one of the most technically accomplished, moving and strangely exhilarating poems about death and dying I have ever read. There is Porter's characteristic tone of defiance here, but for once she is not raging like Xerxes, for

I have come to a river

of blood and vinegar

I have come to a river

where only pain

keeps its feet

and she appears transfixed by this new challenge life has thrown up at her. It is a courage perhaps unique to poets, a courage that knows its limits, and by this very knowledge seems amplified.

Let me join the frilled and flying

damned

and live vivid

as a wet dog.

- "After Bruegel"

After her final verse novel, El Dorado, I wasn't so sure what to expect from Dorothy Porter. Despite a perception in some quarters, I buzz far from the inner circle of Australian literati and simply assumed she had recovered from whatever it was that ailed her. My first instinct was that Dorothy was caught in no-man's-land with a few too many quivers in her bow - poet, novelist, librettist. - but with the phallanx of Australian literati to protect her. For, as compelling an achievement as her best-selling verse-novel, The Monkey's Mask, undoubtedly was, the two that followed will slowly fall between the stools. I doubt I was alone in missing the edgy 3 am dance of Porter's earlier collection, Crete, the deliciously tender mischief of

No sensible woman eats poppies

            or else

she'll dance

she'll fall over

she'll wake up

         with a woman in her arms.

- "Or Else" (from "Crete", 1996)

A poet living in the very act of writing, of picking herself up just as she is falling. I can't tell you how many times I have heard writers complain about how writing drains them when, as Dot Porter knew only too well, it should in fact do the very opposite, for

You can't preserve love

behind foggy windows.

Often when I read American ex-pat, Linda Gregg, I think of Dorothy Porter back in her Crete days of the early 90's, so tender with love, and I can almost sniff the light dancing on that almost interstellar blue of the Mediterranean, but Gregg always manages to break the spell because beneath it all dwells something intent on pulling her down, on harvesting her flesh, her womanhood (by which I, as a man, cogitate freedom). Dorothy Porter's poetic spirit, on the other hand, shouldered up to the breeze and laughed with the ripples and spat in the face of the necromancer casting a shadow over her towel. She could not help herself, for she was mad with life, or at least the poet in her was. Beauty was everywhere in her dusky, wide-set eyes, and in this an early trill in her parting song, we have the imprimatur of Dot Porter's distinct brand of living ( dare I say a very Australian brand of living?)

I can't shake

that ghost-town pub

whistling empty-bottled

through its black windows,

and its strangled verandahs

creaking with a terrifying

ancient thirst

under a two-storey coat

of bristling blackberry.

Is it taunting me

with the dancing skeleton

tune

of my own life's mystery

struggling for rhythm

and lyrics?

I hold in my hand

the greedy, bleeding

pen

that has always

gorged itself.

The bliss-mouthed

gluttony miracle -

that stained Keats

grape-purple

that had cynical Byron

reeling on the ceiling -

when the plump berries

sing

and your pen slashes ahead

like a pain-hungry prince

hacking through

the bramble's dragon teeth

to the heart's most longed-for

comatose, but ardently ready

princess.

- "Blackberries" (from The Bee Hut)

Well, I imagine you can sleep easy princess. Your legacy is safe.