States of Poetry - Poems

States of Poetry 2016 - TAS | 'For Bill Harwood' by Graeme Hetherington

States of Poetry - Poems

States of Poetry 2016 - TAS | 'For Bill Harwood' by Graeme Hetherington

For Bill Harwood

A theorist of the purest kind,
Your lectures had no human warmth
And faded like a day-time moon.
The crueller said 'cloud-cuckoo land'

And loudly tapped their hollow heads.
Some thought you clinically disposed,
Contemptuous of eveything
Except the symbols on a page,

Myself included till you said
With gravy running down your chin:
'I love to lie curled up in bed
And listen to the pouring rain'.

Graeme Hetherington

Graeme Hetherington

Graeme Hetherington, born in 1937, grew up on the west coast of Tasmania before attending boarding school and the University of Tasmania in Hobart, where he became a lecturer in the Classics Department. Not finding any Hittites, Greeks or Romans in Australia, he went to Europe for a more substantial contact with them. Most of his adult life has been spent there, but he now lives back in Tasmania. He is the author of four books of poetry, and has another two coming out in 2017.

One of the themes of his work is disorientation à la Richard Mahoney!