Yes, you have got it in one David. Well done! I see signs that you are learning and improving!
Go to the top of the ABPA class.
You have obviously taken my rigorous approach to Bush Poetry to heart as it has stuck with you apparently.
When it comes to Bush Poetry I am totally uncompromising. No secret there.
I have my own standards and approach, just as other people have theirs too I expect. We are all entitled to that ... and if it does not match your own.. well ... there ya go.
I said that from day one... where I also said I had a problem with bad language in poetry... which is one lesson you forgot about David, so go and sit in the corner for forgetting.
Melinda Smith can write whatever she wants. We all can. Nice try attempting to present it as Gary Harding versus Melinda Smith. It won't work. My problem is the Principle that MY money, taxpayer money is rewarding "disgusting lines", whoever wrote them is incidental. My issue is solely with those who handed over the $80k of my money, not posters on this forum, or particular people. Let us be very, very clear on that.
Let me quote from an email (one of many btw).. that I have received this morning from a wonderful lady friend. She refers to her 80yo Mother.... from a cane farm most of her life.... a delightful and sharp lady.
"She phoned me this evening with her comments about “that” poem in particular (the gestation one I’m referring to). She could not contain her disgust about it – the very worst, most distasteful thing she has ever seen written in a “poem”, much less to think it was part of a group of works that has won such an award. She was completely taken back by it all, as I was, for it was in the worst possible taste in her opinion. She is, of course, simply an “average” type of person and not someone who is trying to be trendy or leans towards something considered “cool”. She likes the traditional works because they are works of quality, and one never gets tired of reading quality writing; neither does it ever go completely out of fashion."
I have other emails.. one refers to lowering morality, but I tend to think it is standards more than morality at issue.
And don't you dare lay into that 80yo lady now David, or you will be expelled.
So I am quite relaxed about it all. The ABPA initial comments had me floored at the start.. Was I swimming upstream? Definitely not.
It is those in the ABPA that applaud and endorse disgusting material that need to go back to school, pick up a book by Henry Lawson, and get back to basics.
OK David, you can come out of the corner now.... but lets see you sharpen up a bit in future!