Ginsberg misses out. My mum's chocolate slice recipe

If you've been to one of my poetry workshops you'll know that everyone becomes much more creative after a serve of decadent northern European home baking, preferably involving chocolate. By popular demand, here's the recipe for my mum's chocolate slice.

Allen Ginsberg, who died before I got around to inviting him, wrote a satirical poem entitled 'Cmon pigs of Western civilisation, eat more grease'. Hmm. Well, if it worries you, substitute a politically-correct binding ingredient for the melted butter.

Ginsberg might have called this a brownie, but my mum is English. When I was a kid we had slices and biscuits, not brownies and cookies. Cookies existed only on Sesame Street.

Jackson's mum's chocolate slice

Slice

• 125g butter
• 1 cup self-raising flour (I use half wholemeal, half white)
• 1 cup desiccated coconut
• 1/2 cup sugar (use less or more as you prefer. I use brown sugar)
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder (find a nice dark organic one)
• 1 egg

Icing

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• Hot water to mix until runny

Topping

• About a tablespoon of dessicated coconut

Method  

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
• Line a slice tray with non-stick baking paper. Let the paper extend a little beyond the tray.

• Melt the butter.
• In a large bowl, mix flour, coconut, sugar and cocoa.
• In a small bowl, beat the egg.
• Add the egg and melted butter to the large bowl and mix well.
• Tip into the tray and press down firmly. (Make a fist and press using the flat surface formed by the middles of your fingers -- or if your hands never worked a day and can't take the heat, use the back of a spoon.)
• Bake for 20 minutes.

It has to be cut while hot and still soft, and iced immediately so that the icing melts in. Otherwise it's dry, biscuity and not half as yummy.

• While the slice bakes, sift the icing sugar and cocoa into a bowl, and boil the kettle.

• Use a sharp knife to divide the baked slice into squares or rectangles.
• Gradually mix hot water into the icing mix, a teaspoonful at a time, until it's runny.
• Quickly distribute the icing over the slice and spread it with the back of a spoon. There's an art to doing this quickly and evenly so it melts in nicely and doesn't pool in the gaps between the cut squares. (Oh, and you have to spread it right to the edges of the tray. I insist! My mum used to be lazy about that. I considered it grossly unfair when I got a half-dry edge piece and my little brother got a choc-soaked middle piece.)
• Sprinkle it with coconut.
• Leave to set. Put it in the fridge or freezer to speed this up.
• Once it's set you can grasp the edges of the baking paper and lift the slice in one piece from the tray onto a cutting board. Use a large sharp knife to separate the squares.
• Hide it well if you want it to last.

This freezes really well and tastes great straight from the freezer.

It occurs to me now that it might be even better with rice bubbles added to the mix. Or chopped hazelnuts, perhaps.

Best served with excellent coffee, although children might prefer a glass of milk.

Toilet cleaners are my heroes: musings on a better society

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I've been thinking about what kind of society we might have in the future, what kind of society I'd like to see develop, if humanity survives the current scary but rather exciting period of turmoil and change. And I've written some of it down.
I'm nervous about posting these thoughts. I'm nervous that what I'm about to say has already been said -- or debunked! -- more coherently by someone much more distinguished than me. And there's not one 'ism' in it, except right at the end. But what the heck.

What would it mean to have a good society, a just, harmonious, peaceful society?

My current answer is that in an ideal society, everyone's needs would be met, at all the levels of Maslow's hierarchy (see my previous comments on this). Physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs. For everyone in the world, young or old, male or female or in-between, able-bodied or not, able-minded or not. (Human, animal or vegetable? Hmm. Maybe.)

For 100% of needs to be met 100% of the time for 100% of the people is maybe impossible -- a theoretical outer limit, like absolute zero or infinity -- but I see no reason why we can't move closer and closer to it. When I look at history -- especially as a woman! -- it looks like we are moving closer to it. As transport and communication improve, and as psychology and neurology develop and start to merge with the ancient Eastern study of mind and body, we are gradually becoming more conscious of one another's needs, less inclined to violent conflict, and more gentlewith our children.

So what would it take to have a society where everyone gets their needs met and nobody gets left out? And where nobody is abused, violated, coerced or neglected -- where no-one has that much power over others?

A workable society would have decision-making carried out at the appropriate... level isn't the word, too loaded... size is more what I'm after. Or sphere. Decisions affecting a household made by the household; decisions affecting a village, by the village; a city, by the city; and so on, all the way to the world: decisions affecting the whole world made by the whole world. Decisions made by the group they affect, rather than being imposed from the next level 'up', or imposed by a leader who is supposedly at the same 'level' but isn't really.

Being a leader in a hierarchical system is pretty uncomfortable. You're not really a member of the group you're leading, you stand outside it. Leadership can be very lonely. And there's always going to be someone who hates you! In a non-hierarchical setup there might be no leader, or there might be temporary leaders depending on the situation. A trusted person might take responsibility for coordinating the group. They might be chosen by the group or they might be someone who comes forward to serve (not boss!) the group. But nobody will be able to coerce anyone else to obey them. There'll be guidelines for behaviour and activity, but people would follow them because they buy into them -- because they are involved in the making of the guidelines. Decisions would be made using methods that are okay with everyone. It might be consensus, it might be a vote, it might be letting a trusted leader decide, or it might be some combination. If we're steering a boat through a patch of icebergs we might not want the whole crew at the wheel! but if we're deciding where to build a tramline, a consensus solution reached at a community meeting might be more appropriate and would allow for brainstorming, for new ideas and innovative concepts to be discussed.

In spheres where it is not practical for everyone to meet, even electronically, decisions would be made by working groups. What sort of decisions? For example, at the city size, there'd be decisions about providing services like sewage, transport and health care that need large numbers of people to cooperate... industrialised production, perhaps... library and information services... communications services, without which none of this could work in the first place. Why working groups? Because you wouldn't want to have a city-wide referendum on every little thing. I think it would be better to have groups made up of people who are interested in contributing in this way and who are trained to be experts in their field, trained by the working groups and perhaps also by training groups.

But the actual structure isn't the point, here. I can imagine all kinds of workable possibilities, and the groups and boundaries and guidelines would be fluid, dynamic, always changing.

Getting rid of the coercion, the physical and economic threat that pervades current society in all spheres from the domestic to the international, is what will make it work. For this to happen, would you have to do away with money, exchange? I suspect so -- but perhaps not. Private property? perhaps not completely... but it would help a lot if people could stop comparing themselves to others, measuring status, by how much people have. I'm not keen on status at all, deep in my heart I believe status is bullshit, really... but I'm aware that not everyone feels this way. Status measured by how much people contribute, that might be okay: a person who gives a great deal would have a higher status than a person who behaves lazily and selfishly. At the moment rich people have high status just because they have a lot, and it's this mindset that needs to change. If you could change this mindset you could still have exchange and private property but it would have a different meaning.

People's various needs would be met by the various groups they belonged to, and the provision of needs would not be linked to contribution. Everything would be voluntary. No coercion. A person who is too lazy to contribute would... well now, what would happen? Well, if they were denied their basic needs they would probably turn to crime, so it would be better to just give them their needs anyway and just factor that in. However, if we go a bit deeper here and look at why they are not contributing, perhaps it's just that they haven't found the work that is right for them and could use some help to find it. Perhaps our system needs to be adjusted to accommodate them. Perhaps we need to adjust our way of doing things so that the person becomes engaged and wants to join in.

All kinds of contributions would be valued and recognised, from public-toilet cleaning to neurosurgery. (Toilet cleaners are my heroes. There's no point having your brain in tiptop order if you can't relieve yourself without risking infection.) People could do what they enjoy, what they excel at, and also feel good about taking a turn at the less pleasant tasks like nursing the terminally ill and dealing with the sewage.

You would still have miners, perhaps large mining organisations. It's difficult to imagine any sort of human civilisation without metals. Even if we didn't have money. Gold and diamonds have a lot of industrial uses.

You would still have farming. We've got too many people to live by hunting and gathering. There would be large and small farms and gardens run by people who are good at organising or who particularly enjoy farming and gardening. Lots of people would help with this, I think -- they'd get a lot of satisfaction from doing their bit to help grow the plants and animals that provide their food, textiles and other raw materials.

You would still have factories to make stuff (unless we want to go back to the pre-industrial age, and I don't! No phones? No cochlear implants? No precisely machined mechanical parts? No bicycles? No solar panels? No thanks.) but if people were show up for work without economic coercion, what would have to change? 

I'll let you think about that.

In the society I'm trying to imagine, a lot of current tasks would be unnecessary. For a start, I don't think you'd have police or lawyers. If money was still used, you might have bankers, but it's really starting to look like the whole borrowing and lending thing was a bad idea (as Jesus, or whoever wrote that stuff, tried to point out). One of my hopeful predictions is that people will gradually lose faith in privately-owned banks and desert them in favour of community-based financial organisations.

What about conflict? What about violent crime? What would happen to a person who hurt another person? Or where people aren't getting on, are finding it impossible to live harmoniously? This would be dealt with by the group of which both persons are a member, which might be family or household but might also be city or even world if a person hurt some random they met on the street. At the city level we might have a working group of people, call them counsellors, who are trained, train each other, to help those who get into this situation. To help them and perhaps their families talk together and understand what happened and grow and become greater people as a result of the experience. Each group could perhaps have its counsellors, people who are especially interested in helping others... but I hope that in an ideal world, everyone would be interested in that! A small family or neighbourhood group might not have any counsellors, but if they are having trouble sorting out a conflict they could ask for help from a neighbouring family or neighbourhood.

When I say families, I don't necessarily mean blood families. I also mean people who have chosen to bond and perhaps live and work together in some way and who feel a sense of responsibility for each other, who love one another in a personal way.

A person could be a member of several families.

What if two groups have a conflict? For example, a conflict over who gets to use a patch of land. Or about how to use some external resource, how to treat some animal species, whether to log some patch of forest or mine some mountain. Whether to do some big concerted action like maybe sending people to Mars. Rather than having a fight they would talk and try to find a way through the difficulty.

There would have to be an acceptance that conflict is normal, that it is okay to be in conflict, that it is not a disorder, but that violence, especially group violence, is not an effective way to solve conflict.

It would help if people were not so attached to their outcome being correct. In the case of the patch of land, if everyone feels safe that their needs will be met, if people aren't in fear of insecurity and hunger, then there wouldn't have to be a war. The groups would either decide to share, or a second patch will be found, or perhaps they might just choose at random and the 'losing' group look for another patch... or perhaps the whole project might be abandoned and the interested parties would find some other way of doing things.

The groups might use a ritualised conflict to decide... throw a dice or have a game of football perhaps. This sounds silly, but chance is how lotteries are run and how cricketers decide who is going to bat first, and people are quite content to lose those contests, because they're not personally attached to the outcome.

Aggression and violent feelings would be channelled into ritualised conflict such as sports.

If babies were raised in complete love and security there would be a lot less aggressive violent feelings anyway.

Perhaps if two people (two 'men', let's say) really did want to have a physical fight to sort out a disagreement, it would be arranged by the group? No, that makes it a spectacle, glorifies it. Two men might have a physical fight now and again, to express their aggression and let go of it. If that didn't work they could get help from other men in their group, and perhaps also from women, to sort it out. Perhaps they could be helped to find other more useful ways to channel their aggression and passion.

This kind of society does seem to be what we are gradually fumbling towards. There's a long way to go, though, and we can't get there overnight.

Perhaps the current totalitarian trend isn't entirely bad. For those of us who didn't grow up with all these cameras and rules it's pretty uncomfortable, and the possibilities for abuse of power are terrifying, but I can't help seeing a positive side: raising awareness that society as a whole is not okay, anymore, with people fighting, spitting, verbally and physically abusing their kids and spouses, driving dangerously, and generally not giving a damn about others. I suspect most grown-up people would support the police in enforcing the laws against violence, discrimination and the neglect of children. Perhaps a bit of coercion is okay, for now, if it helps people break the cycle of abuse that leads to rage and violence. Maybe. I'm not sure whether it's worth the risk.

Coercion is so often used to protect money, to guard the greed of individuals and of amoral, inhuman corporations. Where it's used for that, it's a scourge. And where it's arbitrary and unjust. And where the power of the state-sanctioned weapon-carrying agent is abused, not used to serve. Where the agent uses their weapon and position to express their own rage instead of to protect.

Anyway, that's enough  -- for now! -- of the sociopolitical musings of a middle-aged poet, parent, and occasional reluctant community leader. I don't have a recipe for any of it, other than gradual change, gradual raising of awareness.

Robert Fuller has a pretty good suggestion though. He suggests we abandon rankism, which, as I understand it, means 'us-and-them' thinking. On his site Breaking Ranks, he says:

RANKISM: The Common Thread
Rankism is the exploitation or humiliation of those with less power or lower status. Simply put, rankism occurs when the somebodies of the world use the power of their rank to take advantage over those they see as nobodies. Rankism is the root cause of a wide variety of dominating behaviors.
...
DIGNITY: The Cure For Rankism
How do you change something that’s so pervasive and that has for so long gone unnamed? With dignity, Fuller says. Treating people with dignity, no matter where they fall on the corporate, social, familial, or political ladder is the key to overcoming rankism in all its manifestations. In rankist environments, creativity is stifled, students can’t learn, workers are disloyal, health is compromised, families suffer dysfunction, and victims want revenge. Dignity is the antidote.

I couldn't agree more.

Some advice for would-be poets: Judge's Report, Glen Phillips Poetry Prize 2012

When the Peter Cowan Writers Centre asked me to be the judge for their recent poetry competition, I was pleased, but a bit hesitant. I don't often enter poetry competitions because choosing one poem as the 'best' from a whole field of entries seems kind of arbitrary. But I'm always up for a new experience, and they wanted me to commend twelve poems altogether, so I agreed. Besides, getting paid to read poems and write about them was too good to pass up. On Sunday I made my way through the rain to Joondalup to present my report and announce the winners. Thanks to Sue, Susan and Pedro of Peter Cowan Writers Centre for a nice lunch and a very enjoyable afternoon.

I believe the poems are to be published in the next few issues of the Centre's members' e-newsletter.

§

If my count is correct there were 348 entries. Reading them all was fun, like exploring a new English-speaking city: at first it seems familiar but it soon reveals quite a few surprises.

Several times I recognised a poem from a reading or workshop, but rarely did I remember who'd written it. When I did, it was difficult to be objective and judge the poem without thinking about the poet, but I did my best.

126 of the entries went into the reject pile on the first reading. I wanted to tell these writers, you are not Keats. Be yourself! Stop trying to be 'poetic': it isn't working. Listen to your own 21st-century voice and write down its words. In many cases I wanted to shout, for heaven's sake, drop the rhyme! It's crippling you! Rhyme can be entertaining; rhyme can increase the impact of a poem by highlighting and unifying ideas. But it must be done skilfully or it's a fast-track to dreadfulness. If your idea of a poem is a string of clichés with lame or painful rhymes at the line-ends, you'd be better off to spend your entry-fee money on...

...poetry books! If you want to be taken seriously as a poet, read widely. Familiarise yourself with all the ways in which poetry has been written during the past 50 years or so, and let this cornucopia of styles influence you. Perhaps start with a recent anthology aimed at students. A 'poet' who doesn't read new poetry is like a 'painter' who never goes near a gallery.

118 entries went into the 'meh' pile. These poems were reasonably well-written and often expressed worthwhile ideas, but lacked the 'X-factor', the 'grab', the originality or depth to draw me back for a second and third reading.

52 entries went into the 'frustrating' pile -- poems that contained some original ideas or language but were not well-written enough to shortlist. I felt like writing to each of these poets individually to say, you've got something! Keep writing! Keep reading! Go to workshops!

52 poems were interesting enough for a second look. At this stage my left brain wanted to help with the judging, so I made a spreadsheet. I gave each poem points for six aspects of specialness -- impact, appropriate tone, aesthetic quality, originality, economy of language, depth -- and deducted points for weak spots. A numeric sort floated up most of the poems my right brain had already picked. After that it was fairly easy to choose the winners and highly commendeds, but I agonised over the commendeds and the encouragement award. There were about ten more poems I would have liked to commend or encourage! Choosing the overall winner was difficult, too, like looking at the fruit-bowl just before shopping day: there's one apple, one orange, and a weird tropical thing that no-one's dared to try. Which has the best flavour? It depends who's tasting.

Encouragement Award: 'Poems are gifts' by Nicholas Langton

The title and first few words of this seem bland, and I find the ending weak, but I really like the imagery and the unforced tone. Poems about writing usually leave me cold but the humour and insight in this one made it stand out. I particularly like 'languages stumbled across / going round corners' and 'pain pinned down / so it cannot spread'. Judging from this small sample, this poet has a good ear: a sensitive mastery of rhythm and linebreak.

Commended

'Days' by Keren Gila Raiter

This poem has a hypnotic combination of striking imagery ('the world is the chain come off my bicycle... hands covered in cuts and black grease', 'a big black bear looming over a beetle') and meditative philosophical exploration; its concerns are both personal and political; and its tone is finely balanced between conversation and cadence.

'For Jean' by Jerry Dolan

I like this poem for its effectiveness - it does a great job of showing us, using a natural tone, how it might feel to have Alzheimer's. It's refreshing to have a poem on this topic that just describes what's happening and doesn't descend into lamentations. The poem is economically written and well-structured, with each stanza exploring one image. I particularly like the sustained metaphor of the birds and mayflies in the first stanza.

'The Fall' by Carmel Summers

This poem captures the shock and strangeness of tripping and landing flat, and in doing so asks deep questions about the meaning and nature of aging and death. The voice is authentic and human ('mid-sentence it happened', 'lying there / your foot caught / in an awkward hole', 'oomph').

'Under the Jacaranda' by C Millner

This poem is questioning, paradoxical, Zen-like, speaking of both naming and unnaming, of both the individual and her or his human and ecological context. I enjoyed the recalcitrance -- the grumpiness! -- of part II, where the speaker complains, 'But I'm down the garden' and 'Besides, I'm not finished'. This recalcitrant voice contrasts nicely with the meditative voice of parts I and III.

Highly Commended

'An ugly convalescence' by Rafael Scomazzon Ward

This is one of those poems that make you go 'ewww'! But life can be 'ewww', especially for carers, and this poem uses plain-spoken description to make us see, smell and feel the squalor and desperation of not quite coping. The present tense is well-chosen here, evoking a sense of endlessness. This is a really good example of how to 'show, don't tell'. Poetic devices are used sparsely but effectively. (By the way, you clean handkerchiefs by soaking them in salty water before you wash them.)

'Passing Through' by Giancarla Curtis

I think a poem is a text whose form is at least as important as its content. As the only shaped poem that was submitted, and one of the very few that departed from traditional sentence structure, this poem states that boldly. Like its shape on the page, like the conversation it narrates, this poem is so deceptively simple that it's difficult to talk about. I read it aloud several times, enjoying the economy of the parataxis, which creates a space, a silence, into which the flower names cascade, and in which the dialogue arises comfortably and naturally.

'sonnet breathing' by Kevin Gillam

Reading this poem is like visiting a small gallery of colourful, playful paintings. 'The shag-piled silence.' 'Gills of dawn.' The rhyme is subtle ('allemanded... sarabanded') and the rhythm and patterning are masterful, as they should be in a poem that is about rhythm and pattern. Are we breathing, swimming, dancing, playing the accordion, writing a sonnet, or just coming home, going to bed, getting up and going out?... Yes.

'They came' by Rachel Freebury

This poem is an example of how traditional metre can be used effectively and appropriately. The tone is plain and dignified: there is no florid language or thunderous rhyme, no ranting or emoting. The relentless rhythm evokes the driving assault of the colonisers, as does the repetition of 'They came'. The linebreaks after each 'They came' slow down the poem so that it doesn't become singsong, and, if you read slowly enough, they create a menacing quality.

Third: 'On Final Things' by Christopher Race

I love the way this says so much without appearing to say anything at all. One of the poet's jobs is to record the here-and-now and show us the way our ordinary dailiness connects and contrasts with our wider context, and this poem does that extremely well. The speaker reads the paper and goes out to look at the world, with all its creation and destruction, but is perhaps more concerned about his or her own body and mortality, just as the kookaburra is hunting for its own 'hot lunch'. Appropriately, this poem's speaker, even when talking about a 'they', is full of 'I'.

Second: 'Tenebrae' by Alison Flett

I thought this was the most beautiful poem that was submitted, and also one of the deepest and most poignant. 'Tenebrae' means 'shadows' or 'darkness'. It also refers to a Catholic ritual in which candles were successively extinguished, and I suspect the poet knew that when she chose it as the title of a poem inspired by the rituals of a household at the gradual coming of dusk. The shadows slowly blot out the natural world until we close the curtains on it, leaving us with only the lights and noises of our machines... until we remember and -- in a while! not just yet! -- part the curtains. At the point of remembering, the poem, appropriately, abandons its tidy mechanical layout to jump around and crisscross the page like the tracks of the nocturnal animals. This poem has a striking precision of imagery -- 'the plain / and purl of their trunks, ribbing the dark', 'wi-fi rustling in the folds of our brain', 'the spindled / pinpoints / of their insect / legs' -- but the overall tone is restrained and dignified, as befits a poem centred on ritual.

First: 'Domesticity' by Jim Murphy

This might be a controversial choice, but I couldn't resist giving it first prize. It so perfectly renders the flat voice of a long-married and probably retired man^* who seems to have forgotten how to feel. He speaks of the dog or cat as if it's a machine. Its death is merely an inconvenience. He doesn't care that his book and TV program are mediocre -- they're less of a challenge than talking to his wife. The one-word rhymes thud each stanza closed like a fridge door. The rhymes, and the description of the pet ('leaking -- at both ends!') add a touch of levity: we suspect the character is quietly having a laugh at himself. The title, 'Domesticity', seems to imply that the character thinks this state of affairs is inevitable. The only glimmer of hope comes at the end when he hears his wife saying she has no-one to talk to. We are left to wonder what he -- or she! -- will do next. The poem is stylishly and economically written: there is nothing missing and nothing superfluous. To put it another way: there's no bullshit.

*OK, this poem could be about a lesbian couple. But I suspect not.