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 Rachel Cook looks at the life and legacy of poet Dorothy Porter.
Within hours of the news that poet Dorothy Porter had died, The Australian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC had all run stories on the tragic loss. For the passing of an Australian writer to make page three is an unusual feat; for a poet to make page one tells you all you need to know about Dorothy Porter’s status in this country.
Five days after her death, I was on the hunt for a copy of her 2002 verse novel, Wild Surmise. As all major bookstores were waiting on deliveries, it took visits to three second-hand bookstores before I found what was their last copy; during my search all three shop owners told me they couldn’t keep up with the demand for Porter’s works. It is no exaggeration to say that all three were also undeniably solemn. When the papers said the literary world was in mourning, did they realise this also included people who trade in dusty book jackets and pennies for paperbacks?
One store had the article from The Sydney Morning Herald blu-tacked to the shelves behind the counter, the accompanying image of a powerful-looking woman sheathed in darkness with a rather intense stare – commanding every customer glance up at her as they entered – proved that even in newsprint Porter is magnetic. The caption below simply read, Dorothy Porter… seducer.
My first introduction to Porter was when I was studying for my Year 11 literature exam at Victoria’s State Library. I think I typed in the words ‘lesbian’ and ‘poet’, a move surely replicated by hundreds, if not thousands of teenage girls on their way out of the closet and imagining a poet’s life for themselves. The computer obligingly responded with ‘Dorothy Porter (1954 - )’. For several minutes I just stared at the name in thrilled disbelief – here was confirmation that not only was there such a thing as a living lesbian poet, but that she was Australian.
Born and bred in Sydney, Dorothy Porter, moved to Melbourne in 1993 “for love”, she was often quoted as saying. That love was Andrea Goldsmith, author and academic, who in 2003 was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin for her novel The Prosperous Thief, alongside Porter for Wild Surmise. Hearing the news of their nominations, Porter said she was “amazed and gobsmacked”, while Goldsmith said being shortlisted with Porter gave her "double the pleasure". The Prosperous Thief is dedicated to “Dot”, while Wild Surmise is dedicated to “Andy”.
Long-time friend and agent Jenny Darling told Cherrie that Porter was a “born writer”.
“She was always writing, always scribbling, it was just a part of her life. She loves words, loved language.”
Darling and Porter met in 1992, when Darling was one of the organisers of the Victorian Writers Train.
“These trains are something writers have done for a long time,” Darling says. “The writers visit schools, hospitals and old people’s homes and they give readings of their work. That’s where I met Dot, and soon after that I started to represent her.
“What I always found was that she was very straight forward. She would ring me and say ‘Jen, it’s Dot, we’re doing this’ and then off we’d go. What she was, was passionate. She was just so passionate about the things that she loved and that came across always at the forefront of her conversations and her dealings.”
 Porter’s first book of poetry was published when she was just 21. The Little Hoodlum established her as an exciting young talent. Her verse novel, The Monkey's Mask, the book that well and truly cemented her status as a lesbian icon, was published in 1994 and won the Age Poetry Book of the Year and the National Book Council's Turnbull Fox Phillips Poetry Prize (the Banjo). The London Times named it one of its books of the year. It was adapted for the stage as a multimedia one-woman show, and as a radio play for the ABC. In 2001 it was made into a film.
A prolific writer, Porter also produced Driving too Fast (1989), Akhenaten (1992), Crete (1996), What a Piece of Work (1999), Other Worlds: Poems 1997-2001 (2001), Poems January-August 2004 (2004) and El Dorado (2007). She wrote two librettos for chamber opera: The Ghost Wife (1996) premiered at the 1999 Melbourne International Arts Festival, opened the Sydney Festival in 2001 and played at the Barbican in London in 2002; while The Eternity Man, based on the life of Arthur Stace, who for some 40 years roamed the streets of Sydney writing ‘Eternity’ on the footpaths, premiered in London in 2003. It was one of three winners of the inaugural Genesis Foundation Opera Award and was adapted into a film, which premiered with a special Opera House screening at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2001 and will be shown on the ABC this month. At the time of her death, Porter was working on a rock musical with Tim Finn.
It may amaze those writers who need silent surrounds in which to work that Porter often wrote with rock music blaring around her. “She did write to music,” Darling confirms, “and she used music to inspire her. She used music a lot, whether it be The Rolling Stones, or Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix.”
Porter herself said in an interview with Sydney’s Time Out: “I wanted to tap into that dark potency of rock and roll... It puts me into a kind of trance, which helps me get those hallucinatory images.” Those hallucinatory images came in the form of giant squid, alien life forms and ancient civilisations.
Jenny Darling remembers: “She was passionate about birds and nature and the bush and animals and other forms of life, whether it was crustaceans under the ocean or the Minoans in ancient Crete or whether there was life on other planets – these things were amongst her concerns.
“Her heart was just so big. She had an incredible impact on people she met. People felt at one with her.”
Darling said a walk down the street with Porter was like stepping out with a celebrity. “People would know it was Dorothy Porter, she just had this amazing heart and she responded to people so generously as well. She loved the fact that people responded to her work.”
Just over four years ago Porter was diagnosed with breast cancer. Its return in recent months was news to many of her friends who believed she had beat the disease. In her eternal courage and optimism, she still believed she could.
At her funeral, her mother, Jean, told of the bold ten year old who challenged a group of louts throwing stones at ducks in a pond. Porter confronted the group, saying: “Before you throw another stone, you will have to kill me.”
Andrea Goldsmith recited to the gathering of some three hundred mourners Porter’s final poem, View from 417. The last lines read:
Something in me
despite everything
can't believe my luck.
Giant Squid
I dreamt last night
that I lay naked
at the bottom
of a soft black sea
in the many loving arms
of a giant squid
our strange
mutually enraptured
breathing
in perfect unison
as we nibbled on
each other’s preciously
alien faces.
At the back of my purring mind
was an itch for a camera,
to show the world
my lover, my monster mollusc,
truly existed.
But in my dream
I didn’t move.
There was a terrific tranquility
in just lying still
and not proving anything.
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