Roseanne Bartley: Love Letters and Other Correspondences (2024)
(November 14, 2024) [with Bronwyn Lloyd] “U.” Love Letters and Other Correspondences: An Artist Curated Book by Roseanne Bartley. ISBN 978-0-646-89402-7. Melbourne: Press Print, 2024: 61.
U
Until recently, I was unaware that my husband Jack had been sampling from our conversations over a period of 101 days. These samplings were part of a low-stakes exercise designed to unblock his creative writing practice through the simple task of committing to writing one poem a day.
Jack presented me with the drafts of the 25 poems from the group that featured things I'd said or done, and reading them, I was struck by the "un"ness of some of my exchanges with him.
The unromantic way I threatened (in jest) to 'put him out to grass' if he continued to forget things, The unkindness of a remark (in jest) that I'd had enough of his shit and was leaving him. But the "un" that surprised me most related to several poems where I made comments about his softness, his unmanliness, culminating in the poem BECN about a gift I bought Jack last year:
BECN
Bronwyn gave me a necklace made by Renee Bevan for my birthday or perhaps a necklet If you think it’s unmanly you can wear it under your shirt I thought it’d be bigger somehow like dog-tags a small lozenge made of silver on the front it says BE on the back CN be seen? beacon? it seems to be saying something about not hiding your light under a bushel quite fitting from the creator of wearing the world like a pearl I wear it with pride
(9/12/22-5/7/23)
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You see, Jack's "unmanliness" is the thing I love about him the mmost, from the moment I first saw him cross the floor of the wharenui at Te Rau Aroha Marae wearing his striped winceyette pyjamas, buttoned to the throat.
May his unmanliness continue to shine like beacon our whole lives through.
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