POETRY SPOTLIGHT: 'Going Home' by Geoff Goodfellow
This week's poetry spotlight shines once again on Australian literary icon Geoff Goodfellow, whose most recent release, Out of Copley Street, received glowing endorsements from Tim Winton and Helen Garner.
'A rollicking slice of an unlikely life. Watch young Geoff find poetry – and a few scraps of wisdom – the hard way. Ears up, chest out, flat-chat, punching on and wising up.' – Tim Winton
'A dry, sparkling clarity, a pure tone that hovers on the edge of laughter: these stories are a revelation.' – Helen Garner
Post written by Maddy Sexton
This week's poetry spotlight is a special one: we are publishing a brand-new poem, written by Geoff while he was in hospital for a bad back earlier this week.
Those who know Geoff, or have heard him speak, will hardly be surprised to hear that even when hospitalised, Geoff can still dash out some hard-hitting lines of poetry.
I was only five years old and most days Lenny would have one or two older boys working the milk round with him. One morning when he was working alone, I asked if I could come along in the cart and give him a hand.
‘I don’t know about that Bluey,’ he said, ‘how old are ya? I reckon you’d only be about five, wouldn’t ya?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but I’m nearly five and a half.’
‘We all like to reminisce as we get a little bit older,’ says Geoff Goodfellow. ‘I thought I’d write about the fifties and sixties, in the working-class inner-northern suburb I grew up in – and give a voice to the people who lived that sort of life, at that time.’ In Out of Copley Street, his boyhood memoir, he traces his early influences and misadventures in beautifully evoked stories that reflect his fierce work ethic, his devotion to family – and perhaps most of all, his complex relationship with the father who taught him to be a storyteller.
Dad would always say, We’re from a nation of storytellers. We’re Irish Catholic. We don’t have books – we talk. We’d sit around the kitchen table and eat together every night, and everyone was expected to tell the story of the day.
Geoff left school at fifteen (after ‘punching on’ with his English and Maths teacher). ‘I was told I was an idiot at school,’ he said. ‘And I never believed it. Or, I half believed it.’ After years of various jobs based on hard physical labour, Geoff hurt his back and went to university for the first time when he was thirty-two. He knew it wasn’t for him after just six weeks, though he stayed for a year, to prove to his kids he wasn’t a quitter. But what it gave him was confidence.
That confidence carried Geoff to performance poetry, where he quickly became known for his electric performances, channelling the anger of the disenfranchised people his poetry gives voice to. In Out of Copley Street though, Geoff shows a softer side.
A lot of people think I’m the rough, tough people I write about. I can be part of that world, but I’m quite a soft and gentle man, deep down.
Geoff's softer side shines through in this week's poem, 'Going Home'.
Going Home
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