I recently made my public slam poetry debut at the Men of Letters event in Brisbane in the salubrious surrounds of one of Australia’s most iconic live music venues, the Zoo, in Fortitude Valley. Men of Letters is a spin off of the hugely successful Women of Letters events, in which female writers are invited to write a letter on a particular theme and read it in front of a live audience.
For the Men of Letters events, male writers are invited to pen a letter to a woman who changed their life. It was an eclectic group of men I found myself among – comedian Paul Livingston (AKA Flacco of Doug Anthony All-stars fame), journalist Andrew Stafford, actor Victor Parascos, playwright David Burton, poet Sachem Parkin-Owens, musician and teacher Eddie Ayres, academic Andrew Bartlett. How a lowly surf writer got lumped in with this illustrious lot remains a mystery but it was a pleasure to meet and mix with such a diverse and intriguing crew back stage, in a green room that’s been inhabited by many of Australia’s great bands, with a couple of bottles of wine and a cheese platter. Their offerings were all heart-felt, personal, eloquent and revealing and it gave me heart to think a new manhood is emerging that allows for emotional candour and self-awareness.
I’d decided to deliver my letter to our daughter Vivi in the form of slam poetry, in honour of her own extraordinary command of the medium. Proud dad moment warning – Vivi recently won the Queensland poetry slam and travelled to Sydney for the national final at the Opera House. Her work was a passionate and angry protest about violence against women, inspired by a quote she’d read from Edgar Allen-Poe: “The death of a beautiful woman is the most romantic topic in the world.” She’d told me, “It made me really angry so I wrote a poem about it.”
Her performance of it is extraordinary and it is surreal watching your teenage daughter in such command on stage at the Opera House. For me, as a career writer, it was an interesting experience to attempt a whole new medium and feel like a complete novice, mentored by my 15-year-old. I’d recently returned from a work trip to Europe and, wide awake at three am with jet lag, I decided to get up and attempt to pen something worthy of the occasion. In the end it spilled out of me almost without my involvement – delving into her conception and birth, our initial bonding, how much she has taught and inspired me.
It was inspired in part by the outcry over the recent Hollywood sex scandals the #metoo and #howIwillchange social media campaigns, and the suggestion that men shouldn’t be bragging about having daughters as some kind of badge of honour that inoculates them against any accusations of misogyny. While I understand this point, I think it is a shame if men are discouraged from discussing the experience of being fathers of daughters and how it has changed them, that this is a conversation worth having, and that if we want men to be engaged on gender issues perhaps acceptable public discourse shouldn’t be too prescriptive.
Vivi critiqued the work for me thoughtfully. “It’s a bit TMI,” she told me. TMI? “Too much information.” Then she grew more analytical. “It’s good, but some of it is more like prose than poetry. You might need to edit it a bit to get a consistent rhythm throughout,” she suggested. Did she want to come and watch me perform it? “Asking a teenage girl to sit through her father reading a poem about her conception and birth is a bit of a stretch, dad,” she explained gently.
I was as shaky as a new-born foal before I got up to make my slam poetry debut, but the atmosphere created at these events is so warm and accepting I soon felt at my ease. I’d asked Viv for any final words of advice before I drove up to Brisbane. “Own it, Dad” she coached keenly. With those words still ringing in my ears, I did my best to conjure the confident, emphatic delivery of the slam poet. The reception was enthusiastic and I sat down buzzing with adrenalin, with a new understanding of why my daughter is so swept up by the medium. Slam poetry is all about the delivery but a few friends have asked to read the work so here it is, for better or worse.
SLAM POETRY DAD
Dearest Vivi,
I keep reading lately
that it’s not okay
for dads to say
how having daughters changed their lives
I hear the cries
That it shouldn’t take the birth of a child to realise
Half the world’s population are people too
What about your wives?
So, let me be clear, your mother changed me too
Profoundly, irretrievably, infinitely for the good
She may have loosened me
But you
Came along and finished the job comprehensively
And so, when I read the heart-breaking hashtags #metoo
The shameful parade of how men have hurt women
Again and again, in a sad brutal conga line of betrayal
And men are encouraged to declare
#howIwillchange
I’m all aboard.
These inhuman crimes by so-called lovers, fathers, bosses, brothers,
Can’t be ignored
But somewhere amid the roar
I wish to implore
Some of us may have already begun to change
And if that change is inspired by the arrival of our female offspring
Is that such a bad thing?
And honestly how could I not be changed
From the moment your conception rearranged
Our world
And every stage along the way brought yet more change
Now I know this may be too much information
But I swear I felt the moment of your conception
In the glow of a Tuscan afternoon
After three weeks’ separation
From your mother
In the euphoria of reunion
I felt another coming through
From some great beyond I could not comprehend
To the moment at the kitchen table
Your mother’s exquisite belly swollen with your new life
Wide-eyed, surprised, a squeal of … what? Delight?
As a puddle of brine gathered at her feet
We locked eyes and realised
Shit just got real
The happy dance of choosing baby clothes and basinets
Car seats, prams, nappies (cloth or disposable?)
All narrowed to a point of shocking clarity
You were coming whether or not we were ready
I remember crouching in the hall
Supporting your mother in a determined squat
As she gave a guttural animal roar
Lunged forward
Pinned me to the floor
With her arms and knees
A force of nature far more powerful than me
A harbinger of the energy
About to be released
And you’ve heard this one before I know
But with my dying breath I want the record to show
That you slept on my chest the night you were born
All through that twilight morn
Sucking furiously on my little finger
Like a surrogate nipple that could never deliver
The nourishment you sought
And I awoke with a blister on my finger
That had nothing to do with playing guitar
Feeling like a little boy
Who’d smuggled a puppy into bed, safe and warm
As your mother lay beside us spent and exhausted
From the miracle she’d performed
They say skin to skin contact is essential
For the bond of the child and mother
But I was blessed with a mega-dose of this potent elixir
From which I have never fully recovered
And now you are this magnificent young woman
A social justice warrior
Of the highest order
A feminist, a poet,
And I’m sorry if this offends but I want the whole damn world to know it
You are the girl who transformed my world
I need to be a better man I’m happy to admit
Simply to be worthy of being in your orbit
To see you on stage
Delivering your inspired rhymes
Laying waste to one privileged old white dude at a time
I’m proud to have been the first privileged old white dude in that line
And so, to my sisters I say
I’ll join in the struggle
Link arms, call out misogyny,
Ruthlessly examine all the ways I might still unwittingly
Prop up the patriarchy
But please
Allow me
To joyfully proclaim
Again and again
All the ways my daughter
(Hashtag optional)
Helped me change