Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Alan Wearne, Giramondo Publishing, $24.00.
Described as Australia’s finest verse satirist, Alan Wearne specialises in monologues and verse narratives.
Wearne’s extravaganzas and remnants tug at the heartstring on the realities of life.
A young widow in post-war Melbourne fends off the approaches of her best friend’s husband; a retired democrat recalls her lovelorn Maoist youth; a heroin addict is haunted by his dealer’s murder of a youth; a single mother falls into an abusive relationship with a drifting musician;
‘The Sarsaparilla Writer’s Centre’, is also included: a collection of satires on music, football, religion, politics and poets.
It’s been rightly said:
“Wearne’s epics and fragments are like the traces of a ruined culture, in which everybody got to star in their own domestic drama or screwball romance. Until you realise that it’s happening, here and now: you are being waltzed around the living room of middle-class folklore.”
