Australia, (b. 1949)
helot
- yawning from the headache of losing myself
- in books, the dust glows and points the way
- up the road for a change, to tell stories
- of yeats as currency inspector and hoping the
- design of coins would not make pigs of men
- I lean on the bar, you are scraping food
- slapping backs not loving this fraternity:
- how fake how funny and how often in control
- whilst the appearance deceives, wrong in the eyes.
- who is forced to leave? who watches the birds
- as they wake up mornings? I must watch the
- cosmos as it is only a slave ocean in my head.
Editor’s Note:
William Butler (W.B.) Yeats played the leading role in the creation of the first coins for the Irish Free State government in 1926. He chaired a committee that chose the designs, with a harp on one side and animals for the different denominations on the other.
These included a woodcock for a farthing, a hen for the penny, a pig for a ha’penny, a bull for a shilling, and a salmon for two shillings. Yeats wanted simple symbols, and some of the chosen designs by Englishman Percy Metcalfe survived decimalisation in 1971 and lasted until the introduction of the Euro.
About the Poet:
Garrie Hutchinson, Australia, (b. 1949) is a poet, freelance sports journalist and writer. In 1969 he became involved in the flourishing performance poetry and theatre scene based at La Mama Theatre in Carlton. In the early 1970s Hutchinson began publishing his poetry in literary journals including Poetry Australia and Melbourne University Magazine and he published three poetry collections during this time.
In 1970s Hutchinson was also heavily involved in anti-war activism and alternative journalism. By the late 1970s Hutchinson moved away from writing poetry and towards a journalistic career.
Since the 1980s Hutchinson has been a football writer for the Age. Hutchinson has since written a number of other books on sport, as well as several works on military history, travel, and other general interest prose. He has also worked as a speechwriter for a number of national and Victorian politicians. [DES-02/18]