Claire G. Coleman on What Dorothy Porter’s Writing Means to Her

The following poem was written in response to Dorothy Porter’s 1994 novel-in-verse, The Monkey’s Mask, as part of a Melbourne City of Literature series.

*

Dorothy’s Mask

I.

Words can be incandescent

You taught me

Heat, light and heat

I let them warm me;

Like an antique bulb in a flammable, dangerous

Tangle of wires

So mis-wired, my home condemned

I am always prepared for flame

You taught me; what words can do; what poetry

Is; can be.

The mask burned away my insulation

I was inflammable; left stripped

And vulnerable

Yet

I might not have become the writer I am

The me I am

Without the Monkey’s Mask

And I can no longer breathe without words

I can never again close my eyes.

II.

On the train home the Monkey’s Mask

Would not allow me rest;

Overwhelming, penetrating my senses

Until the mask was the face.

I was in words

I could not imagine wanting to escape

At Rushall Station; I sat as train

After train passed until

The last page had been consumed by my eyes

Was being digested by my mind

I thought I had possessed it, but

My mind was taken

III.

How could such a thing happen

Poem-bound sex and violence

Murder; mystery

In the insular world of verse

In verse itself.

Carrying the story like a virus

If it kills me I deserve it

IV.

What does it say about me that I turn

To your discomforting, excoriating words for comfort?

That I find hope in the

Cold fire tail of a comet

That I am saved by words

That bleed me like razors

I would rather be flayed by your words than be comfortable.

The Monkey’s Mask hit

Like an oncoming train.

I was some

Sacrifice, dying to live

Reborn in time; my

Face behind a mask

Of my face.