{"id":5759,"date":"2023-07-06T18:04:02","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T07:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=5759"},"modified":"2023-07-07T10:39:58","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T00:09:58","slug":"poetry-spotlight-after-pentridge-by-jenny-boult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2023\/07\/poetry-spotlight-after-pentridge-by-jenny-boult\/","title":{"rendered":"POETRY SPOTLIGHT: ‘After Pentridge’ by Jenny Boult"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n

This week’s poetry spotlight shines on ‘After Pentridge’ by Jenny Boult, from the collection Tuesday Night Live: Fifteen years of Friendly Street<\/em>.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Post written by Polly Grant Butler<\/pre>\n
I lived in Coburg (the Melbourne suburb, not the German town) for a decade, but I only knew Pentridge as a block of apartments built on the bones of an ex-prison. My best friend lived there, before we met, and she would tell me about how nice it was to live in a little community, with neighbours playing soccer at dusk on the shared lawn. But she also told me about the ghosts, the eerie feeling that floated between the thick walls. In recent years they\u2019ve tried to jazz it up, creating a sort of ‘hub’. There’s a wine bar and craft-beer brewery, and a hotel described as an \u2018urban retreat\u2019. Looking at the website earlier, I saw the tagline \u2018Experience. Eat. Drink. Stay\u2019, and I felt a bit sick.<\/p>\n
Pentridge the prison closed in 1997. Tuesday Night Live: Fifteen Years of Friendly Street<\/em><\/a>, edited by Jeri Kroll and Barry Westburg, was published in 1993. It’s an incredibly diverse anthology, split into different topics: ‘Love’s Body’, ‘Sexual Politics’, ‘The Body Politic’, ‘Mapping the Landscape’, ‘Urban Voices’, ‘Generations’, and ‘God, the Universe, and Everything’. Jenny Boult’s poem ‘After Pentridge’ sits in the last section.<\/p>\n
The Pentridge that is evoked in this poem bears no resemblance to the gentrified images displayed on its current website: ‘for fourteen hours a day \/ they live in tiny rooms \/ painted black with despair’. The language is necessarily simple, using lowercase to help convey the smallness of the speaker in relation to a thing that is so big, so horrific. The repetition of the ampersand reminds you of the endlessness of the industrial prison complex, yet the poem is full of restraint. The subtle rhymes and stripped-back language allow you to feel the weight of the tragedy that is incarceration. I was left with an intense feeling of sadness for these ‘ordinary blokes’ \u2013 the ghosts that now haunt Pentridge’s sleek interior, inside its historic bluestone walls.<\/p>\n
After Pentridge<\/h1>\n
    \n
  1. i waited outside the gate
    apprehensive & you were late
    on the day we went into the prison
    as poets.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    trembling, i let the officer
    run his metal detector over me
    & his hands thru my bag.<\/p>\n
    you smiled, asked me
    if i was scared, i nodded &
    asked for coffee, but the staff room
    had run out, i made do with water.<\/p>\n
      \n
    1. the man with the popeye forearms
      & wrap around shades
      laughed nervously & talked too much,<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      the boy with bloodshot eyes
      read a poem about solitary & talked
      kurosawa & beckett & artaud, he said
      being stoned on coffee\u2019s like
      the tail end of a speed jag<\/p>\n
      & the man in screws boots
      was tender & soft voiced
      when he spoke about his wife
      after a contact visit.<\/p>\n
      we observed a patchy protocol
      never quite sure. said, see you later
      when we all knew how unlikely that was.<\/p>\n
        \n
      1. it was no shock that they were
        ordinary young blokes
        down on their luck<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        but i felt like i\u2019d been jogging
        in a mine field in the dark
        & scraped thru the barbed wire fence
        on the other side.<\/p>\n
          \n
        1. for fourteen hours a day
          they live in tiny rooms
          painted black with despair.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
          the education centre smelled
          of cabbage & old smoke, when
          i opened the window
          they looked out anxiously
          afraid of being overheard.<\/p>\n
            \n
          1. when I left with my words
            & the gate\u2019s numb thud
            sounded like a sentence
            in an empty court<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
            i couldn\u2019t forget
            red eyes that looked like crying
            & dark uniforms that proved
            that their wearers were real men
            on the right side of the law.<\/p>\n\n\n
            Support Wakefield Press by buying our beautiful books!  Visit our website<\/a> or contact us on 08 8352 4455 for more information, or to purchase a book (or three!). We can post your purchase to your doorstep!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
            This week’s poetry spotlight shines on ‘After Pentridge’ by Jenny Boult, from the collection Tuesday Night Live: Fifteen years of Friendly Street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[792,80,315,855,8],"tags":[864,856,46,862,858],"class_list":["post-5759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australian","category-for-fun","category-poetry-2","category-poetry-spotlight","category-we-love-books","tag-australian-poetry","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-spotlight","tag-poets"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-1uT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5759"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5772,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5759\/revisions\/5772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}