OBIT: Dorothy Hewett

Subject: Dorothy Hewett
From: Hrothgar
Date: 25 Aug 02 - 08:21 AM

Word has just come through on the ABC that Dorothy Hewett has died.

Born in 1923, Dorothy was a poet, playwright, novelist, and political activist. She is best known to folk music people for two of her poems that were set to music - "Where I Grew to be a Man" (usually called "Weevils in the Flour" or "Island in the River"), and "The Sailor Home from the Sea" (also known as "Cock of the North").

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dorothy Hewett
From: GUEST,Tony in Darwin
Date: 25 Aug 02 - 09:51 AM

One of Australia's great ratbags (and I mean that in the complimentary sense).
I saw Dorothy in full flight once, when she convened a workshop of political poetry at a Newcastle (NSW) folk festival in the 70s.

She was strong!!

BTW, Dorothy also wrote the poem "Norman Brown".

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dorothy Hewett
From: Stewie
Date: 25 Aug 02 - 07:02 PM

A sad loss - one of Australia's finest writers. As Tony indicated above, a lady who took no prisoners. She was a poet of the city, with deep roots in the Western Australian bush. Someone once described her writing as 'passionate, eloquent and, above all, wise'. Spot on! Although it is a few years old now, you can read an excellent interview with her here As Hrothgar says above, several of her poems were set to music and remain dear to us survivors of the so-called Australian folk revival.

I used to recite several of her poems. One of my favourites is 'Once I Rode With Clancy':

ONCE I RODE WITH CLANCY …

Once I rode with Clancy through the wet hills of Wickepin
By Kunjin and Corrigin with moonlight on the roofs
And the iron shone faint and ghostly on the lonely moonlit siding
And the salt earth rang like crystal underneath our flying hoofs

O once I rode with Clancy when my white flesh was tender
And my hair a golden cloud along the wind
Among the hills of Wickepin, the dry salt plains of Corrigin
Where all my Quaker forebears strove and sinned

Their black hats went bobbing through the Kunjin churchyard
With great rapacious noses, sombre-eyed
Ringbarked gums and planted pine trees, built a raw church
In a clearing, made it consecrated ground because they died

From this seed I spring – the dour and sardonic Quaker men
The women with hooked noses, baking bread
Breeding, hymning, sowing, fencing off the stony earth
That salts their bones for thanksgiving when they're dead

It's a country full of old men, with thumbscrews on their hunger
Their crosses leaning sideways in the scrub
My cousins spit to windward, great noses blue with moonlight
Their shoulders propping up the Kunjin pub

O once I rode with Clancy through the wet hills of Wickepin
By Kunjin and Corrigin with moonlight on the roofs
And the iron shone faint and ghostly on the lonely moonlit siding
And the salt earth rang like crystal underneath our flying hoofs

And the old men rose muttering and cursed us from the graveyard
When they saw our wild, white hoofs go flashing by
For I ride with landless Clancy and their prayers are at my back
They can shout out strings of curses to the sky

By Wickepin, by Corrigin, by Kunjin's flinty hills
On wild, white hoofs that kindle into flame
The river is my mirror, the wattle tree our roof
Adrift across our bed like golden rain

Let the old men clack and mutter, let their dead eyes run with rain
I hear the crack of doom across the scrub
For though I ride with Clancy, there's much of me remains
In that moonlit dust outside the Kunjin pub

My golden hair has faded, my tender flesh is dark
My voice has learned a wet and windy sigh
And I lean above the creekbed, catch my breath upon a ghost
With a great rapacious nose and sombre eye

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dorothy Hewett
From: rich-joy
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 06:27 AM

From one ex-Sandgroper to another : VALE, Dorothy.

R-J

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dorothy Hewett
From: Genie
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 11:38 PM

Wow, Stewie! What a gift she had. Thanks for posting that. So sad to hear of her passing.

Genie