We began this week’s session by looking at some of the amazing poetry and prose contributions that were made for the Clemente Anthology- Shifting Perspectives. Here are a few of these entries, introduced by the wonderful painting The Last Cuppa which we used on the front cover of the publication. The artist, Chris Barwick, a Mission Australia artist allowed us to use this painting which captures one of the most important regular events at mission (one I am sure you will all recognize!):
Here is the first poem we explored together -this one by John McDonnell who is featured at the very centre of Chris Barwick’s painting- (listen to our discussion on this with the audio recording below):
Then there was Daniel Smith’s wonderfully explosive and redemptive poem: 
We finished this showcase of the anthology with a wonderful piece of prose by Coralie Hinckley. I had not expected Coralie to be there, because she is not in the class for this semester, but she is a great enthusiast for literature and all the creative arts and she really wanted to be part of the class.
Coralie is an amazing person (as you will hear in the recording below). She was a staff member, teaching dance, at Australian Catholic University, when I first joined there in the late 1970s. She excited me then with her creative capacity. Now, she is in her 90s, down on her luck, but not down on her creative enthusiasm and capacity. She is a model for us all: if we can maintain, retain our creative spirit, despite all the setbacks, in the way she has, then we will be fulfilling our human purpose on earth. Thank you Coralie! for being who you are and for still pushing your way into our class! Beautiful!
We then moved to have a look at two poems by highly succesful American poets, the first, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”. This produced much discussion (again listen below for all the ideas that this poem evoked):
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Here are some of the white board images that blew into the classroom:
And finally we looked at this amazing poem by Galway Kinnell- a poem as much about poetry as about the wonder of eating such luscious prickly fruit as BLACKBERRIES:
Here is the recording for this day’s lecture/ seminar: thank you all for your wonderfully creative participation!
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Summer 2023 
