Melinda Smith

[Heather]

Were you the egg Neville?

Pewter is expensive, that'd be an upmarket kind of trophy wouldn't it Neville? (Unlike the Kardboard Koala which is clearly cheap and nasty).

Heather

[Neville Briggs]

No, not the egg, I was the Vicar. My mother made a clerical collar for me to wear in the part.

By the way, Melinda Smith's poetry is regularly published in the literary section of an Australian magazine and has demonstrated so many times that she is more than capable of producing the supposed real thing of rhyme and metre.
Whether she is a "nice" lady or not is irrelevant to the consideration of her work, she is a talented poet and her prize in the Prime Ministers comp was no Kardboard Koala. It was The Big Cash.

[Gary Harding]

Thanks Bob, excellent... that is just so true!!
I had a huge laugh !! Great thing for a Friday arvo.

You must have met some of the same "nice" young ladies I did in my youth? gorgeous but... Enough said.

IMO "Nice" people do not write about examining their underwear at 40 weeks gestation looking for a discharge etc... and nor do they discuss the size of their ex's sexual appendage. I think it is called decorum? But then that is free verse and anything that is free has questionable value anyway.

That kinda stuff is a long way from Banjo and Henry and O'Brien and Harrington... so it is a long way from me too. I cannot cosy up to it at all, or the writers of it..

I don't know about this popular and over-used term "Award Winning" though. It really seems to awe and impress some people. Same as "judges".
I look at a poem on its merits as I personally see it, not as someone else tells me I should assess it. Judges are Guides, not Gods, after all?

Decent family-valued politicians, and PM's Literary Award "judges" with any real sense of culture, literacy and decency do not reward such vulgarity with $80,000 tax free, unless of course they were sampling some of that marijuana I found in Toolangi State Forest... which is not impossible.

Nice people write nice poems. Vulgar people write vulgar poems. Regardless of style.

You are what you write and what you endorse surely? Even if you have a cute smile.... and I know a few lady-poets with VERY cute smiles... who shall remain nameless of course.

[Neville Briggs]

Of course there is also the celebrated Mud-Brick Magpie. This trophy is awarded for the most melodic poetry performer in spoken word.
The inaugural contest was won by " Gummy " Bloggs, a retired district dag inspector from Wilcannia Heights.

Gummy thrilled the crowd by sucking a freshly cooked rasher of crispy bacon while reciting in perfectly precise and consistent melodic metre " I am a Pleasant Peasant Pheasant Plucker ".

Gummy would have liked to have gone the whole hog, so to speak, by chewing the rasher but unfortunately his new dentures were still on lay-by.

Nevertheless, goodonya and , well done Gummy.

[Shelley Hansen]

It might be a bit "off topic" - but I was also born in 1955. Stephen, me and the Golden Goose ... what a year

Cheers, Shelley

[Gary Harding]

Yer, Matt.. I reckon I could convert her no probs ... back on the straight and narrow.... put on a few R&R records, show her the Bush Poetry library and she would be putty in my hands.

[Heather]

So glad you got a speaking part Neville.

I'm surprised that in this day and age, there are still men who think they can mould women to be what they want them to be. I'll just get back to the kitchen shall I - and smile.

Just for the record, I wasn't born in 1955.

Heather

[Stephen Whiteside]

A good year, Shelley. Melbourne won the premiership, too!

[Neville Briggs]

55 wasn't a good year for the Hunter Valley. Singleton and Maitland were overtaken by a devastating flood. I remember the teacher at school explaining to us how the army was using amphibious vehicles called "ducks" for flood rescue.

[Heather]

I'm feeling really left out because I don't know any 1955 facts.....