Steven Whiteside (C J Dennis) Jim Brown (A B ‘Banjo’ Paterson) and David Campbell (Henry Lawson) delivered a moving feast of Australian poetry.
By Kath Gannaway
THE ‘people’s poet’ and Toolangi’s favourite son, C. J. Dennis, was celebrated with more than 90 poems entered in the 2011 poetry competition named in his honour.
The C.J. Dennis Poetry Competition was held in conjunction with the Toolangi Festival in November.
Competition founder and organiser Jan Williams runs the Singing Gardens Tea Room at Arden, Dennis’s home until his death in 1938.
She said the 2011 competition was a great success with 33 more entries than last year.
Among the winning entries was local writer Gwen Pascoe’s Toolangiwantigongalope.
Ms Pascoe put a quirky, local spin on a favourite C. J. Dennis poem to take a first prize in the Adults Writing for Children section of the competition.
Her poem about a cousin of C. J. Dennis’s Triantiwontigongalope, is a poetic romp around some of Toolangi’s popular attractions – Wirrawilla Track, Mt St Leonard, cloud-wrapped tree ferns and Toolangi spuds and strawberries – which captures the wit and down-to-earth language of Dennis.
The poetry reading and prize presentations on Saturday 12 November, were followed on the Sunday with a moving theatre of poetry throughout the gardens in which C.J. Dennis wrote some of his most acclaimed work – including The Sentimental Bloke.
Mrs Williams scripted the performance of the work of four of Australia’s iconic poets – Dennis, A. J. ‘Banjo’ Patterson, Henry Lawson and Dorothea McKellar – read by Steven Whiteside, Jim Brown, David Campbell and Jenny McArdill.
“The performance started down by the river at the waterwheel, moved to the lawn overlooking the pond, to the Copper Beech, the house garden and on to the archway and into the gum garden where Dorothea popped her head in and did My Country,” Mrs Williams explained.
“It was lovely to hear people say it involved them in such a way they have never been involved in a poetry festival before,” she said.
She said one of the interstate poets described Toolangi as a ‘Mecca” for him and many other poets.
“To actually be on the ground where this man lived, worked, walked and wrote, is just something so unique.”
2011 winners were:
Adult Open – David Campbell, The C. J. Dennis So-ci-er-tee.
Song of Rain – Grahame Watt, The Promise
Adults Writing for Children, Gwen Pascoe, Toolangiwantigongalope
Adults Writing for Children, Judged by Children, Robyn Tilley, There’s a Frog in my Sock.
Poems by Children in Primary School, Sylvia Marshall, This is being Australian and, Most Humorous, Zac Brace, My Poor Dog Grover.
Poems by Children in Secondary School, Sarah Goldman, Spinifex Grass’s Rise to Fame.
