Australia, (b. 1949)
Outdoor Pig-keeping, 1954 & My Other Books on Pigs
- Pig Farming. Methods Of
- was a book I wrote in 1945
- tho what I knew then of
- pig farming you may wonder. It is
- a human enough activity.
- I mean ‘universal’ – did they have
- pigs on Easter Island, the New Guinea
- highlands, did the Maori? Virgil
- knew about pigs, tho I associate him, more,
- with bees, my Latin education centering
- on a limited number of texts –
- bits of Caesar’s Gallic Wars
- or Punic Wars (“Carthage delenda est”?) –
- & not much else. Virgil. Ideas of
- pig farming might be innate. (?)
- Where do correct ideas come from?
- “The head, boss.” Pigs pretty much
- know what they want (isn’t that
- often thought to be the problem,
- the thing held against them?),
- give it to them. “Long pig” was somehow
- special dark knowledge when I was
- a schoolboy, I mean the term.
- A human dish. (No one else ate it,
- except the odd lion or tiger –
- as a one-off: humans also
- protect their own – better probably not
- to eat them too often.) But, to return
- to the term, “long pig” implies knowledge
- of “pig plain” sure enough. It seemed
- insulting, to me, back then – to the idea
- of the human & humanity & I didn’t like
- to utter it. I remember once
- someone telling me of an abandoned
- hippy farm where they’d been producing
- heroin. The pigs were fed
- on scraps & excrement
- & were squealing. Addicted.
- Apparently the noise was horrible. I did,
- at some time, sleep near where a pig
- – or pigs – squealed all night. I can’t remember
- now whether it was simply very affecting
- or whether it was specifically because it sounded
- human. It was loud, incessant & frightened.
- I can’t remember where or when. An
- abattoir. In 1945
- I had not read Virgil. I do know that.
- It seems we’ve passed this way before. In
- ‘another life’ I may have been a pig farmer:
- I see me, late at night at a plain kitchen table
- writing Pig Farming, Methods Of. It’s
- electric light – tho it could do with a stronger
- bulb. I write it in a child’s school exercise book.
- My only daughter has died? It’s hers, hardly used,
- & I turn it round & start at the back? – or maybe
- continue right on from where she left off.
- She had been studying & had written amo, amas,
- amat etc. The vocabulary list begins with
- “agricola” – farmer. As I see it the farmer
- does not become especially sentimental about
- the exercise book. He may have done, must
- have done, at some time since his daughter’s death,
- but now he writes. Perhaps he writes with
- extra care because it is her book. Perhaps he writes
- because it is her book. He has not written
- anything else before. He writes now
- because she is gone. She was the future
- & he was content to work to see her through –
- to her adult life. But now she is gone
- he must make something else. He is a widower.
- I was brought up by my own father,
- alone, me & my sister. We kept dogs & cats
- & pigeons, a horse. No pigs. Anyway,
- there it is, & it has my name on it, 1945 – Pig Farming, Methods Of.
Editor’s Note:
There is a probably-out-of-print 1950s farm manual called Outdoor Pig Keeping that was written by a different Ken Bolton. When he came across the other Ken Bolton’s book Ken wrote the above poem.
[IMAGE]
About the Poet:
Kenneth Reginald Bolton, Australia (b. 1949), is a poet, art critic, publisher, and editor of the literary magazines. Since 1982 Bolton has lived and worked in Adelaide, where he is associated with the Experimental Art Foundation, and operates a press, Little Esther Books. He is also the editor of the literary magazines Otis Rush and Magic Sam.
Bolton’s poems have been published extensively in Australian literary journals, and he has published more than a dozen poetry collections, as well as a number of collaborations with John Jenkins. His interests also include art history and theory, as well as continental philosophy and experimental literature. Besides poetry, Bolton has published art and literary criticism. [DES-5/15]
Additional information:
- Australian Poetry Library on Ken Bolton
- OCLC / WorldCat on Ken Bolton