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The Penguin book of modern Australian verse
Book by ED. HARRY HESELTINE
- GenresPoetry
214 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 23, 2025
I wrote about one of the poems that really spoke to me during a recent experience in hospital....
Like most people, I suppose, I'm not at my best when I'm not well, but what helped me to tolerate my recent experience sharing a hospital ward with a dementia patient was remembering a poem that I had so recently read in The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Verse. The book has a permanent spot on my desk while I aim to read at least one poem each day, and sometimes more.
Evan Jones (1931-2022) was part of a Melbourne University poetry circle from the 1950s and 1960s that included Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Vincent Buckley and Dinny O’Hearn (who was one of my English lecturers in second year Arts). Jones' 'Transfiguration and Death' was first published in 1978 by the Australian National University Press, in Recognitions, and then collected in my 1981 Penguin anthology edited by Harry Heseltine. (Selections from it were set texts.) But even if we'd been expected to read 'Transfiguration and Death', it wouldn't have meant much to me back then because I didn't know anybody old enough to be living with dementia. It was not until I was much older myself that I had the experience of seeing its devastating effects up close...
I can't quote all of the poem for copyright reasons, and I can't find it online to share, but these segments are what I remembered on that interminable night:
It was humbling to realise that the few hours I spent with this woman tangling and untangling simple words, shouting and pleading and demanding again and again to know where she was, were daily life for the weary daughter who stayed with her until the nurses shooed her home. That old woman wasn't ill: she wasn't being treated for any malady, and it was not she who needed respite care. It was her daughter.
We're just not getting aged care right, are we?
PS Nice to see Antigone Kefala has two poems included. I read some of her writing before and she seemed to resent being sidelined as an 'ethnic' writer. But in this collection (from 1981), she is just one of the poets.
Like most people, I suppose, I'm not at my best when I'm not well, but what helped me to tolerate my recent experience sharing a hospital ward with a dementia patient was remembering a poem that I had so recently read in The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Verse. The book has a permanent spot on my desk while I aim to read at least one poem each day, and sometimes more.
Evan Jones (1931-2022) was part of a Melbourne University poetry circle from the 1950s and 1960s that included Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Vincent Buckley and Dinny O’Hearn (who was one of my English lecturers in second year Arts). Jones' 'Transfiguration and Death' was first published in 1978 by the Australian National University Press, in Recognitions, and then collected in my 1981 Penguin anthology edited by Harry Heseltine. (Selections from it were set texts.) But even if we'd been expected to read 'Transfiguration and Death', it wouldn't have meant much to me back then because I didn't know anybody old enough to be living with dementia. It was not until I was much older myself that I had the experience of seeing its devastating effects up close...
I can't quote all of the poem for copyright reasons, and I can't find it online to share, but these segments are what I remembered on that interminable night:
I
Small, birdlike, brisk, industrious and mean,
towards the end she couldn't keep things clean:
thirsty, we couldn't bring ourselves to drink
without first washing glasses, but the sink
itself was covered with a film of grease,
the tea-towels smeary, everything of a piece —
So buttoned-up so long... At ninety-one
fever undid her: when she was undone
things tumbled out, the jumbled stock of years
in utter disarray
To everybody else, she was out of her mind
she was dismaying. Waking, sleeping were
indifferently terrible to her
her worst delusion a display of light
II
Transferred to hospital, she lost her place.
... querulous, hard to stop,
were talking, talking, talking at their top.
Clumped around that antiseptic space,
it seemed each dying woman had been placed
where nobody was dying but herself,
neighboured by younger women
It was humbling to realise that the few hours I spent with this woman tangling and untangling simple words, shouting and pleading and demanding again and again to know where she was, were daily life for the weary daughter who stayed with her until the nurses shooed her home. That old woman wasn't ill: she wasn't being treated for any malady, and it was not she who needed respite care. It was her daughter.
We're just not getting aged care right, are we?
PS Nice to see Antigone Kefala has two poems included. I read some of her writing before and she seemed to resent being sidelined as an 'ethnic' writer. But in this collection (from 1981), she is just one of the poets.
Displaying 1 of 1 review