How did these poems come into being?
To quote Lee's own words:
"I was talking with some primary school children about writing poetry. I
wanted them to find some of the poems they had inside themselves. Everyone
has at least a poem or two there. Of their very own. So of course they
wanted to know what my very own poems were .... when I was their age!
Trust them! I didn't write poems when I was nine so I thought about some
of the things that were different then. I wrote and took to the class:
Little Cleopatra 1941
I don't remember
Miss Allardice
only her name
and that she gave the strap
to all the class
for every spelling mistake
when I was nine.
Over in Egypt
bombs were dropping
on Bob
my sister's boyfriend
and he couldn't spell.
He wrote us letters
from At the Front.
I corrected
his spelling mistakes
with a fountain pen
full of red ink
and I hoped he could hide
in a pyramid.
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War efforts 1944
Mrs Moriarty
went to the Red Cross
on Wednesday afternoons
to knit balaclavas
and peggy squares
for The Boys
in Italy
Little Moriartys
raced home from school
on Wednesday afternoons
on a secret mission
with a reason
that was sweet
rationed butter
rationed sugar
made the fastest toffee team
Little angels
doing homework
when their mother
came home
Mrs Moriarty
sniffed the halos
in the air.
Little devils.
|
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Lee at the age she writes
about in Little Cleopatra
Photo source Lee Dowrick
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"It was a big hit with the class, and the School Journal published it. I
wrote a couple more about my mother thinking my room was like a bombsite
and putting ink into the boys' inkwells before an arithmetic test. My own
poetry workshop of grownups liked them too. They wanted more. So I found
one of my old school photos, had it blown up to A4 and put it beside my
desk. All those little kids looked so real. They hopped out of the photo
and started to chat. Lots of the things we remembered turned into poems
and soon there was a small book 'That was Then 1935-45'. It's fun. I
wrote of ANZAC functions where the child's perspective adds some touches of
humour. They're NZ history. They spark off other people's memories."
That was Then was published in 1998. Unfortunately there are no
copies of that book available in the shops now - which is not surprising
as they portray such a vivid picture of life for children in New Zealand
during World War 2. The longing for sweets during the wartime rationing
led to secret toffee making sessions while their mother was at Red Cross.
That is the inspiration for:
Life away from home in the big city
Lee Dowrick moved from Waipukurau to Auckland in the 1950s so she has
firsthand impressions of a young country woman experiencing life in a
bedsit in the big city, savouring her freedom and coping with the
difficulties.
I run in my stilettos 2001
Lee brings us to the heart of life in the 1950s with her most recent
collection of poems, "I run in my stilettos". It's an evocative title,
especially for those who experienced the strong memories that stilettos
evoke - a sense of wearing high fashion and painful toes at the end of the
day - and a distressing legacy of damage to beautiful floors.
The cover is eye-catching and immediately conveys the period of the poems,
with a black and white photo of the author as a young woman imposed upon a
black and white aerial photo of Queen Street in the '50s. Lee is looking
around with a sense of wonder at the scene before her. The first poem in
the book, "before the stilettos", describes a newcomer's awed exploration
of Auckland city, map in hand, wearing "country flats", and refers to "the
scare of city trams".
In the Queen Street photo on the cover there are several of the electric
trams which feature in a number of the poems.
I run in my stilettos
to the tram stop on the corner
from my bedsit
and my gas-ring
and a bath two nights a week
jumping on the seven ten
to meet my friend
from her bedsit
with her gas-ring
and her bath two nights a week ....
from Saturday night hop
|
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Lee at the Arts Ball in the 1950s
Photo source Lee Dowrick
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Trams feature too in after the dance is over where the partner
from the dance has to cut short his goodnight kiss because he has to hurry
to catch the last tram.
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Lee dressed to go dancing
Photo source Lee Dowrick
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As I read I delighted in the number of evocative images that recalled life
in the '50s - a postie blowing a whistle and putting letters through the
brass flap in the front door, a lumpy kapok mattress on ancient woven
wiring, the butcher's sawdust floor and large chopping block (part of "an
ancient tree"), outside washhouses with copper and tubs, Lamson tubes
taking change across the ceiling of the drapery shop, petticoats of taffeta rustling, swirling skirts,
bony strapless bras and stockings with seams needing constant
straightening.
Enormous enthusiasm for life
Yet these poems are not just a collection of images of mid twentieth
century life. They voice enormous enthusiasm for life, and the widely
varied images are skilfully woven in and bonded with the dominant image of
the stilettos. They stand for an emancipated life, independent adventures
and appear in varied contexts - dancing at the weekend hops, watching the
rugby and dancing at the after-match dances, working in a restaurant, being
caught by the street photographer, shopping at George Courts for new
stilettos, travelling on a train, "drowning underneath my bed" when the
roof leaks. Cuban heels worn by a country friend who came to stay are the
antithesis of high fashion and city living.
Deeper themes
There are deeper themes underlying the buoyancy of the poems. Life in
the bedsit on a small wage had its problems. This is the period when away
from the inner city doors were left unlocked and children could play safely
on the streets, but the other side of the picture is seen in a hot
night in summer 1952 where two girls read Oscar Wilde to each other to
stay awake because the glow of a prowler's cigarette is seen in the garden
and in the morning they find that their washing has been taken from the
line. With an interesting juxtaposition of contrasted lives Lee comments
that at the same time as the girls in the bedsits were keeping themselves
awake the Queen was awake by the deathbed of King George VI.
In the inside people there is serious comment on the thwarted
lives of women of an older generation conforming to society's expectations
with their dreams mothballed in the linen drawer.
There is also awareness of change. The girls hear that the trams are to be
replaced by buses. The streets where bedsits abounded are changed and the
draughty shabby houses are pulled down. On a train journey to the
Wairarapa things are not as they were remembered. happily never
after... portrays in a few lines how the giddy freedom of the single
life is ended for some by stressful Catholic/Protestant weddings, and in
when you lift up the lid of the Glory Box out fly the Birds and the
Bees the single life is ended by engagement, marriage and life in a
bungalow in a new subdivision.
As in all the poems Lee's economical use of words and the choice of telling
images create arrestingly vivid pictures.
Sharing her enthusiasm for poetry
Lee continues to be very keen for children to experience the joy of writing
their own verse and when she finds time she runs children's poetry-writing
workshops for them in a local school and in the holidays.
I run in my stilettos was first published in New Zealand in 2001
by Bookcaster Press Limited, PO Box 3765, Auckland.
