Danny Gardner and Maureen Ten launched Willem Tibben’s suburban veneer at the NSW Writers’ Centre on 22 April 2017

I first became aware of Bill Tibben as a man who seemed to have an inside track on Willy Shakespeare’s private life. This was after I read his poem ‘did Bill Shakespeare have to wash the dishes?’ in the first Live Poets’ Society anthology: ‘Litmus Suite’ in 1991. It’s rumoured that Bill and Will were born on the same day, that is, date- April 21^st.

Then one night I found myself going with my former partner Sue Hicks to a poetry reading in Parramatta of all places – that Bill and his friend Daryl Wayne Hall ran, called PIE – Poetry, Imagery and Expression. Reading at that meeting necessitated sending a poem for inclusion in the current PIE poetry book.

Meantime Bill had stopped being a regular at Live Poets Society in Neutral Bay but I had a feeling he would be back. He contributed some poems to the 2001 Tenth Anniversary anthology of LPS called ‘Becoming a Nomad’. Then he came to do a guest reading in 2005.

Much later in 2009, Bill, Maureen and myself decided we would perform as a poetry trio and called ourselves ‘Running Order’. Meantime I’d got to hear much more of Bill’s poetry and ended up performing one with Bill called ‘Showering on the Nullarbor’. It would take too long here to put the proper context on that intimate association.

I was by now particularly struck with the book ‘Showering’ came out of: Bill’s the fascination of what’s simple. I actually composed a poem trying to explain the Australian way of doing things that that book reflected on. Here are a few lines from that poem called ‘bill’s poems’.

The smells, the damp flesh / the sun-bleached art, the bones / the sheer expanse of our country / leaves us speechless; / mouthing gibberish and old rhymes as consolation. / There are only bits and pieces to see / until you pull away / like in the best abstracts – / and then there’s a quiet music playing, / just enough to make a pattern / we squirrel away / to form, roughen out, a code we can pass / on, avenue to our fellows.

By this stage too, Bill, Maureen and I had joined Auburn Poets & Writers Group and Bill started to call himself Willem because Bill sounded too Anglo and he wanted to reflect on his Dutch heritage. Bill and I shared many other things we discovered. Like a love of Charlie Parker and Tom Waits and a nice ale, and outback road trips – and having fathers who tried to make a go of farming. A poem about that last point is in this book and I’d like to read it. It’s called ‘Big Hill’ (p 29, suburban veneer).

Willem had become an indispensable help running ‘Live Poets @ Don Bank’ (yes, the Society had ‘morphed’) and we got up to some rare skits together as you do. Like a re-enactment of the Apollo Moon landing and being in a play about the Lapin Agile café in Montmartre, Paris in the early 1900s – where Willem played 2 famous cats: Guillaume Apollinaire and Aristide Bruant. We decided to make a video on Live Poets’ 20^th Anniversary. We also did a rendition of Melbourne rock/ blues group Chain’s epic song: ‘Black and Blue’.

This last trait seems to have migrated across to APWG too – just a couple of weeks ago at rehearsal for our 2017 Sydney Writers Festival show – Will playing bass and me playing saxophone in dumbshow as part of a band behind Maureen’s performance piece: ‘Grandaddy Jazz’.

I’d just like to add finally, in relation particularly to proofing Mr Tibben’s work: ‘he’s a guy who makes a space for poetry in his life.’

-Danny Gardner

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Danny Gardner is a poet, novelist and freelance journalist. He has published several books of poetry. His most recent, Before I Press the Trigger, was published by Ginninderra Press in 2009. He has also published a book of non-fiction, Brains in My Feet – Encounters While Travelling, which was launched in 2014. He has been convening Live Poets @ Don Bank (North Sydney) since 2003. He first appeared with Auburn Poets & Writers Group at the Sydney Writers Festival 2008. He has been the group’s coordinator since 2014.

Danny Gardner and Maureen Ten co-launched Willem Tibben’s suburban veneer at the NSW Writers’ Centre on 22 April 2017:
Maureen Ten’s audience address

Poems from suburban veneer

Willem Tibben: Biographical note

suburban veneer is available from Belgrove Press. contact: saleswt@belgrovepress.com