Dorothy Featherstone Porter (26 March 1954 – 10 December 2008) was an Australian poet.
This great Australian poet has left a beautiful and inspiring legacy of her work, life and love. Her presence lingers. Reading or finding raw pleasure in listening to her perform have been sweet treasures. Ms Porter is widely regarded in Australia. Her writing included fiction for young adults and libretti for chamber opera, novels in verse and poems.
Detail from the front cover of Dorothy Porter’s Little Hoodlum (1975). Original photo by Kay Whitehea
Ms Porter talks about her poetry – Lucidity: The Poetry of Making Sense.
Burning lines: the 2001 Australian Poetry Festival Judith Wright Memorial lecture: 8 April 2001 Balmain Town Hall. This piece is 3,000 words or about seven printed pages long. An excerpt from Ms Porter’s lecture from Austlit.com
The title of my lecture is Lucidity: The Poetry of Making Sense
LUCID. What a lovely word. A word that forms a firm shape with the tongue right behind it — but feels full of light and expansion even as one speaks it — or writes it. Its meaning is multifarious — shining, bright, clear, transparent, rational, sane, leading to perception and understanding.
For me it is also means a kind of carefully, even lovingly, chosen language where the light shines through — and in. An illumination.
The Japanese haiku master poet, Basho, often evokes in his poems the fertile tranquillity of the clear mind. In this haiku about a monk sipping his morning tea — and of course tea is said in Zen to clear the mind — one is given a delicious sense of a clear-minded morning moment —
a monk sips
his morning tea, and it is quiet-
chrysanthemum flowers
It wasn’t always thus for me. This lusting after the secret garden of the clear mind. Of course the word “lusting” — the very Western blast of energy and frustration behind it — suggests how far, in a Zen sense, I have to go.
Its Like Sex – You Can’t Fake it (Cordite 10 December 2008)
Peter Minter’s (1998) warm and revealing interview with Dorothy Porter, highlighted what inspired and continued to inspire her poetry, was reproduced in December 2008.
“Peter Minter: I’d like to begin by discussing your earliest experiences of writing. When did you start writing poetry, and what initially motivated you?
Dorothy Porter: I didn’t really see myself as a poet until I was about sixteen, although I did start writing when I was about eight – writing stories and making little books. It wasn’t really until the age of about sixteen that I began to see myself as a poet. I came to poetry via music, particularly the rock music of the late sixties, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, the late Beatles. It was an extraordinary time, a ferment…” The full interview was originally published in Cordite #3 (1998). Issues #1 through to #5 are available for download as PDFs.
Search the Cordite site for more articles about Dorothy Porter.
Works and awards
Porter’s first book of poetry The Little Hoodlum was published when she was 21. It established her as an exciting young talent. Her verse novel, The Monkey’s Mask, the book that well and truly cemented her status as a lesbian icon, was published in 1994 and won the Age Poetry Book of the Year and the National Book Council’s Turnbull Fox Phillips Poetry Prize (the Banjo). The London Times named it one of its books of the year. It was adapted for the stage as a multimedia one-woman show, and as a radio play for the ABC. In 2000, the film The Monkey’s Mask was made.
A prolific writer, Porter also produced Driving too Fast (1989), Akhenaten (1992), Crete (1996), What a Piece of Work (1999), Other Worlds: Poems 1997-2001 (2001), Poems January-August 2004 (2004) and El Dorado (2007). She wrote two librettos for chamber opera: The Ghost Wife (1996) premiered at the 1999 Melbourne International Arts Festival, opened the Sydney Festival in 2001 and played at the Barbican in London in 2002; while The Eternity Man, based on the life of Arthur Stace, who for some 40 years roamed the streets of Sydney writing ‘Eternity’ on the footpaths, premiered in London in 2003. In 2005 her libretto, The Eternity Man, co-written with composer Jonathan Mills, was performed at the Sydney Festival. Source: Rachel Cook (Cherrie. Jan 2009, p.17) and Wikipedia
Porter’s awards include The Age Book of the Year for poetry, the National Book Council Award for The Monkey’s Mask and the FAW Christopher Brennan Award for poetry. Two of her verse novels were shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award: What a Piece of Work in 2000 and Wild Surmise in 2003. Eternity was one of three winners of the inaugural Genesis Foundation Opera Award and was adapted into a film, which premiered with a special Opera House screening at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2001 and was shown on the ABC 18 Jan 2009. Porter’s most recent publication, her fifth verse novel, was El Dorado, about a serial child killer. The book was nominated for several awards including the inaugural Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2007 and for Best Fiction in the Ned Kelly Awards. Source: Wikipedia
Personal life
Ms Porter lived with her partner and fellow writer, Andrea Goldsmith in Melbourne. “Born and bred in Sydney, Dorothy Porter, moved to Melbourne in 1993 “for love”, she was often quoted as saying. That love was Andrea Goldsmith, author and academic, who in 2003 was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin for her novel The Prosperous Thief, alongside Porter for Wild Surmise. Hearing the news of their nominations, Porter said she was “amazed and gobsmacked”, while Goldsmith said being shortlisted with Porter gave her “double the pleasure”. The Prosperous Thief is dedicated to “Dot”, while Wild Surmise is dedicated to “Andy”. ” Cook p.17
Death
Ms Porter had been suffering from breast cancer for four years before her death. She died aged 54 on 10 December 2008. At the time of her death Porter was working on a rock opera called January with Tim Finn.
Photo: Steve Baccon
Bibliography
Poetry collections
- Little Hoodlum (1975)
- Bison (1979)
- The Night Parrot (1984)
- Driving too Fast (1989)
- Crete (1996)
- Other Worlds: Poems 1997–2001 (2001)
Verse novels
- Akhenaten (1991)
- The Monkey’s Mask (1994)
- What a Piece of Work (1999)
- Wild Surmise (2002)
- El Dorado (2007)
Fiction for young adults
Lyrics
References:
-
Monkey’s Mask – a novel in verse (Film, 2001)
- Music that inspired Ms Porter Janis Joplin – Piece of My Heart
- Listen to Radio National -Airplay’s celebration of the late Dorothy Porter’s work, The Monkey’s Mask - a radio adaptation in two parts along with shorter works including ‘Mrs Fern Smith’ and ‘If the Phone Rings’
Jill Fitzpatrick is a tough streetwise private investigator on the trail of a missing person. Along the way she encounters cars going out of control on mountain roads, murder, deception and an unforgettable femme fatale.
Written by: Dorothy Porter
Cast: Deborah Kennedy, Jeanette Cronin, Jessica Napier, Kelly Butler, Neil Fitzpatrick, Nicholas Eadie and Steve Vidler.
Adapted for radio by: Alana Valentine
Music by: Lesley Sly
Sound engineer: Steven Tilley
Producer/director: Libby Douglas
The Monkey’s Mask has been described by reviewers as ‘A tour de force that manages to be a complex thriller, a state-of-the-gender sexual novel and a convincingly lyrical on-rush of poetry’. Source: Radio National
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