Poetry

Words & Classes on Having Words

by Roger McDonald •

September 1978, no. 4

Words & Classes on Having Words by Chris Mann

Outback Press, 1978

Poetry

Words & Classes on Having Words

by Roger McDonald •

September 1978, no. 4

At a lucid moment in this otherwise obscure document the author writes: ‘It strikes me that each piece is more or less obvious and I hope I’m not writing in code – suppose there’s no way to tell.’ Never has the shotgun theory had such a devout adherent. If the author can’t tell, what hope has the reader? The best one can wish for Words and Classes is that it is a deliberately nonsensical fraud, concocted by part-time schizophrenics at Outback Press. Here are the opening three lines: ‘an opportunist on crossing out the case: mind the spelling/ on trying to sell credit to he who has none: if I had the time, I’d ask you / to commit your sums you need take your fingers out of your mouth’.

Roger McDonald

Roger McDonald was born at Young, NSW, and educated at country schools and in Sydney. For many years he has lived on farms (no farm animals except poultry and a corrugated iron sheep these days) in southern NSW, with intervals spent in Sydney and New Zealand.

His first novel was 1915, winner of the Age Book of the Year, and made into an eight-part ABC-TV series. His account of travelling the outback with a team of New Zealand shearers, Shearers' Motel, won the National Book Council Banjo Award for non-fiction. His internationally bestselling novel Mr Darwin's Shooter, was awarded the New South Wales, Victorian, and South Australian Premiers' Literary Awards. The Ballad of Desmond Kale won the 2006 Miles Franklin Award and South Australian Festival Prize for Fiction. A long story that became part of When Colts Ran was awarded the O. Henry Prize (USA) in 2008. A companion novel, The Following (2013) attracted readers as a eulogy to country life at the close of a hard era. His other novels are Slipstream, Rough Wallaby, Water Man, and The Slap. His most recent novel is A Sea-Chase (2017).