THERE were 110 people that attended the bush poets breakfast held at Terrace Gardens on Thursday morning.
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Proud Cloncurry man Keith Douglas was the MC, and he was keen to claim any poetry speaker’s ‘Curry’ links, which did include Isabella Bakhash. At last year’s breakfast mayor Joyce McCulloch was going to read a poem but encouraged Ms Bakhash to do so instead – who returned to the Terrace Gardens’ microphone a year later.
Mr Douglas called out the mayor’s name along with Cr George Fortune to read a poem this year, but Cr McCulloch seems to prefer listening to poetry at the breakfasts than reciting it. Cr Fortune was the solo act, although recited a poem written by McKinlay mayor Belinda Murphy about the Combo waterhole, said to be the scene of Waltzing Matilda.
Long-term resident of the north west, Pat Fennell, returned from Bundaberg where she and husband Mark moved to last year. She read a poem called Death of the Brumbies – based off a sad even in the 1970s.
Mr Douglas recalled an event three years ago when he competed at the Queensland Slam Poetry competition in Brisbane – having qualified in the Cloncurry heat.
Slam poetry does not require words to rhythm in the traditional sense, which Mr Douglas seemed baffled about. He then recited a bush poem while replacing expected rhyming words, which engaged the crowd and supplied much comic relief.
“It’s great to see we kept the dream alive," Mr Douglas said, referring to traditional bush poetry.
“My grand father at the stations...at night time they used to talk about sitting down and share poetry, because they had nothing else.”