ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

There is an event starting this year that should appeal to poets, at least if I am right that poetry and art are companions.

The Australian War Museum has a large display featuring the machinery of war, but perhaps not so well publicised is that the AWM has one of the biggest and most valuable collection of art works in Australia. It features work by most celebrated artists in Australia's history, including the famous bush artists Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton.
I thought it might be of interest to poets as it shows in many ways, the human story of wartime experience, often in a reflective and intimate way.

The AWM is putting on an exhibition of its collected art to travel around Australia until 2017. It's called Reality in Flames, featuring 20th century artists response to WWII.

Until 13 April, the exhibition is on at the S H Ervin Gallery in Sydney. This gallery is on Observatory Hill near the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The website awm.gov.au , gives the other places where the exhibition will be on show.

If it comes up my way I wil certainly be going to see it.

Be it right or wrong we can put up with a bit of pomp and ceremony,
Better than doing nothing.

Quote
“I ask some youngsters whey they brave this cold wet
They answered as one “Mate It’s ‘Lest we Forget’”

Write the poem Marty, everbody has their own point of veiw
and thats how it should be.

Dave Smith

Dave I think we should keep everything in perspective and not get carried away with the "pomp and circumstance."
Perhaps the finest most moving Anzac Day Dawn Service I ever attended was also the smallest, simplest and most genuine.
It was in the village of Patonga, a very small fishing village on the shores of Broken Bay near Sydney,
with a population of about two hundred people. The service was organised by the local Progress Association and was conductd at the war monument that had been designed and built from the ground up by the villagers some years before.
Just about everyone in the village attended and the beautifully simple ceremony virtually reduced everyone to tears. I went home and wrote this poem which is probably the most accurate poem I have ever written:
ANZAC DAY AT PATONGA

There were no flash officials,
no pomp and circumstance,
no clash of drums and cymbals;
politicians to vainly prance.

There was just the villager’s
standing beneath the light,
shining from the monument
in the last hour of the night.

And as the sun arose from
the waters across the bay
a kookaburra chose to send
his greetings to the day.

As his song combined
with the sound of gentle waves
we quietly prayed for those
asleep in distant graves,

And in the glimmering dawn
in a true Australian way -
perhaps for the briefest moment -
we shared their Anzac Day.

Vic Jefferies (2000.)
(Copyright V.R. Jefferies.)

To true Vic, a few years ago we spent the Anzac weekend down the south coast camping and fishing
About a dozen of our extended family in a hollow in the sand dunes, we noticed our grandson he was 6 or 7 sitting on the beach making wreaths, this was the 24th the next morning he had us all up bright and early digging a hole for a post he had found in the bush and a flag he had made by drawing the southern cross on a piece of rag, with this attached to the post up it went we then had to spend 10 minutes or so sing the national anthem and waltzing matilda, he laid the wreaths he had made and then it was all over.
This was the shortest Anzac service I have been to but the one I remember most.

And he got the idea from school neat hey.

TTFN

That is how it should be Dave...from the heart!

Yes. I recall a special Anzac Day I spent abroad. Last century, when I was living and working in the Highlands of Scotland with a few other young Aussies, we drove up to the top of the Braeside in the pre-dawn light and sat in silence in the cold whipping wind overlooking the Lochs and Glens of Wester Ross. The only parallel we could draw was that we were mates together a long long way from home.

Whilst there are cruise ships full of ballot-winning pilgrims(?) jostling for position, amidst a ski boat race in the Dardanelles, and rock bands on the shore next April I'll hold that moment dear.

Marty

Good On You Marty! I think that Gallipoli on Anzac Day, let alone next year, would be the very last place I would ever want to be.