ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Well I suppose that is what makes us different and I change my lorry and audiences with the times, but still have that poem requested regularly. Some people WANT our audiences to change, some of us take ourselves to new places and new audiences. Times are a changin' and so are a lot of us.

Yeah, I've heard a fair bit of muttering about 'The Gay Farmhand' at the NFF over the years.

Yes in in here lies the danger of poor performers 'borrowing' material they do not know how to handle. The message of the Gay Farmhand is in fact pro gay and not anti. If people stop to read the poem before rushing onto perform it just because they see me entertain crowds of one or two thousand with it, then they may well interpret it better. I performed it at the NFF a few years back and ran out of CDs. But non writing performers can destroy a poem for the writer which brings up a whole new topic which is not really fitting in with Neville's original entertaining thread about early Australian poetry but is instead, somehow, turning into a cheap shot at my poetry.

Interesting tangent this . . I think that any genre that uses comedy walks a fine line at times. Any of us that have performed our 'humourous' poems to an audience know that whilst one face may look unimpressed or even offended, one behind it or right next to it is having a giggling fit.
It's all a matter of taste.
I am well aware that I find some things riotously amusing that would disturb others, so poems of Neil's like The Gay Farmhand or My First Funeral I think are hilarious, but can understand that not everybody does.

But . . . and I think more importantly . . . is the point that someone else has got an audience off-side with a piece of poetry that is not their own. I can handle the fact not everyone has the same warped sense of humour as me - but I would be uncomfortable and unhappy with someone else offending an audience with my work.

Marty

If you do not do it at Bundy Neil I'm just gonna have to buy a bloody cd.


Bob

I liked the pommie stuff better than the American.
Especially the humour.

And Vic, I think it was Hancock's Half hour - with Tony Hancock, not Hitchcock, not that it matters so much. By whatever name it was good fun.

Joe

But Dave Allen ruled, Frank. !

Dave Allen was tops!

Recently read his biography. No one knows how he lost his finger because he had given so many versions - all probably untrue! Enigma to the end...

Heather

G'day Frank, you are completely right I did mean Tony Hancock and not Hitchcock. I think his skit about becoming a blood donor is still one of the funniest things I have seen.
Peter Sellers must also rate up there with the best. Tommy Cooper a bloke we never saw much of out here was also wonderful and was one of the few performers to actually die on stage.

G'day Vic. I think the classic Hancock is a show called " The Poetry Society " , I have it on CD and it was one of the few radio half hour shows that was redone for TV.
It is about Tony Hancock trying to join a group of hippie abstract poetry writers and Bill Kerr becomes President of the poetry group after producing an ourageously pretentious and totally absurd free verse piece.
It's hilarious and I think you would certainly appreciate it.
Interestingly , Warren Mitchell ( alias Alf Garnett, Till Death Us do Part ) plays the part of the chief hippie free verser.