Remembering Carol
I first met Carol in Sydney around 1974, probably at a poetry reading. Shortly after, I moved to a farmhouse near Bega on the Far South Coast of NSW where this photo was taken in 1976 by my former spouse, Kerry Elias-Moore. As you can see the photo is from another era and the ambiance is hippyish, ‘alternative’, drop-out rustication—naked flames, runic scribblings and bounteous hair (sigh). Carol had arrived from Sydney with her big squeeze, the Australian poet, John Jenkins, on left; I’m at the back, enjoying every moment; Carol in front looking unusually demure. Later, we got dressed up in drag (John’s eyes and fingernails painted with sacrificial patience) and went to a party at a nearby farmhouse where, along with other motley ex-city funsters we smoked in the new year with endless joints of locally grown marijuana … as you did in 1976. The following day we went to a friend’s naturist utopia, with a sign on the gate, DISROBE ON ENTRY, or something similar. Carol baulked, perhaps out of modesty, perhaps out of a thoughtful nonconformity, perhaps both. Cheerfully, she compromised—the only time I witnessed Carol in underwear. The 1970s were also serious, about social justice and making the personal political – a legacy Carol espoused both privately and professionally for the rest of her life.
New York 2000, snapped by me at ‘The Kettle of Fish’ bar, Greenwich Village, not far from where Carol lived on 13th Street. The occasion was a reading organized by Carol to present a program of Australian writing by Kirsten Tranter, Billy Marshall-Stoneking (who didn’t make it) and myself. Carol read from her own work as well as several poems by her longtime friend, Australian poet, Joanne Burns. Carol’s presentation was distinctive: as usual, her voice quavered and her hands trembled, although the ultimate effect was intimate and engaging. She loved to be with other writers and she was generous in her support of them – the impulse behind this event, small as it was. Later, her collaborative skills and dedication to artists of all kinds culminated in the creation of something much grander—the eclectic and enduring Mad Hatters’ Review.
Luxembourg Gardens, Paris 2002, snapped by a passerby soon after Carol had arrived to spend a week with me in Paris. It began badly when I missed connecting with her at the airport and when I did eventually meet her at a café and after gallantly offering to pull her suitcase through the cobblestone streets I discovered it had only one wheel. But she more than repaid the favour with her fluent French which made everything from dealing with waiters to catching a taxi more relaxed and enjoyable. She had three things on her mind. First, to get a chic haircut which she finally achieved after inspecting a number of hair salons. It looked great, as documented by this photo. Second, to research her ancestry at the Jewish Museum. I remember going to New York’s Ellis Island Immigration Museum with her two year’s earlier on a similar quest. As I recall, the visit to the Paris museum confirmed that she was an Ashkenazim. Third, a merry debacle as it turned out, was to find a restaurant that served bouillabaisse. We learned that bouillabaisse is everywhere in Marseille, but rarely seen on the menus of Paris. After a tip-off and after many kilometers by metro and taxi we arrived at a cosy, hidden restaurant—where exactly, I do not remember, but the bouillabaisse was very good, and so Carol had achieved her hat-trick.
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I wrote and dedicated this poem to Carol many years ago. I’d almost forgotten about it, then in a folder of old manuscripts I found it, a kind of revenant, now an abiding memento of how fortunate I was to have known her.
scent
our lady’s best perfume is in a black bottle
to the finger the nape then an invitation
to follow through a door down the hall
past a piano she will auction soon
i have seen her dress in black all day
though her lips blazed red indoors and out
catching the sense of a calamitous sun
that burns those men who will not look away
i have seen a pile of wine bottles gleam
in a back garden with a garbage tin full
of fresh flowers discarded by her romantic
intuition for the new promise of empty vases
i have seen the moon on her hands
as she held a bottle of liquid roses
to her palm touching at herself a secret thorn
of want for love to come to her always
—for Carol (1975)
Denis Gallagher is the author of four collections of poetry and a contributor to Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian and Gay Lesbian Poets, edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones (2009). He is an award-winning photographer whose subjects include many poets and painters. He lives in the Blue Mountains town of Blackheath, NSW.
