I was scheduled to read on the last afternoon of the festival - an outdoor reading round a big, Roman swimming pool. It had rained all morning but by midday it had stopped and the sun was out. Just in time for my bracket.
As I stepped up to the microphone, a short, scruffy man came out of the crowd, saying how he'd heard me at the open reading the day before and was wondering if I'd mind if he accompanied me on harmonica. I gazed out over the audience, brain-dead from three days of continuous poetry, and thought, why not?!
Almost as soon as I started, I knew it was a mistake. He jumped in on the off-beat and stayed there, hunched over his instrument, caught up in his own world, blowing notes chosen at random, musical decisions arrived at in mid-air, then lost in a pause for breath on the downbeat, oblivious to the words, to me, to everyone. It was terrible.
When the poem ended I told him thanks, but no thanks, but he was only warming up. "C'mon," he said, "let's do another one."
So I tried again, and this time it was even worse. The noises coming out of the mouth organ had nothing to do with what I was saying. He may as well have been playing in another country. I wished he was.
When I finished the second poem, I told him: "That's enough. I'll do the rest on my own." He looked crestfallen. He said we siounded great together. But I wasn't going to read another word until he left. When he finally realised I wasn't going to change my mind he shuffled off.
A few days later, the poet, Pi O, took me around to meet the legendary Eric Beach who, I thought, I'd managed to miss at the festival.
A tired looking man in a brown dressing-gown with a matchstick between his teeth opened the door. It was, of course, the same guy who'd playing harmonica.
"You!" he said.
"You two know each other?" Pi O asked.
Eric took the matchstick from his mouth and sucked his teeth. "This is the one who kicked me off the stage at Montsalvat."
We went inside and drank coffee. No one had ever kicked him off a stage before.
Of all the poets I got to know in the late 'seventies, Eric was the one who had the biggest influence on my writing. Every time I was in Melbourne I'd go and visit him, to show him the new stuff I was working on. He was a great teacher. He could spot a bad line a mile away.
"You don't need this," he'd say, sipping a beer while indicating an overly poetic phrase. "Too many adjectives," he'd complain. "Too many similes. Make it simple."
So I'd explain to him in very simple language what it was I was trying to say, and when I was done he'd tell me that that was how I should've written it down. It proved to be excellent advice. Listen to yourself. Listen to the sound of it when you're not trying to be "poetic" or "literary" or someone other than yourself. Poems are made out of the voice of the poet - the true voice - not some jumped up idea of HOW poetry should sound.
Photos courtesy of Giles Hugo (copyright holder) Email Hugo
