The Odd One Out - Primitive Poems from the Past

By Leonie van de Vorle

What was I to do, as a shy young girl, in the late 1960's with my thoughts and emotions? I had always felt at odds with the world, awkward and on the outside, and I didn't really understand why.

One day at high school I started doodling then writing about what was in my head. It was the era of the Vietnam War, Woodstock and Nuclear Bomb tests in the South Pacific. As I lived in New Zealand, the bomb tests were close to home.

After high school I travelled Europe in a combi-van and wrote about that too. Then my younger brother was tragically killed in a car crash and I returned to New Zealand. The poetry dried up.

But several years ago I re-discovered my poems in my "Big Red Poetry Book" and decided to publish them.

So what you have here then are writings both poetically incorrect and uncultured, the raw outpourings and protests of a young soul urged to express thoughts and feelings in the best way she could. Privately, on paper, hidden, for forty years, until she was braver and wiser. Mature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leonie van de Vorle
• Release date: Nov 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497731851

Leonie van de Vorle

Leonie van de Vorle was born in New Zealand in 1954 to Dutch immigrant parents. She was a teenager during the Vietnam War and Woodstock era and then travelled through Europe in a combi-van in her early twenties. Her experiences during those years influenced her first book "The Odd One Out, Primitive Poems from The Past", published in 2012. Leonie returned to New Zealand in 1976 when tragedy struck her family with the death of her younger brother, and only sibling, in a car accident. Remaining in New Zealand, Leonie attained a BSc, married and became a mother of three, but it would be twenty five years before she would write again. In 1990 Leonie moved to the east coast of Australia with her young family. There she became a Natural Therapies Practitioner, and more recently began tracing her family history. Her interests encouraged her to write again, including publishing her brother's poems "Salamanca Summer", in 2013. In October 2013 four short stories in the "Winnie and Hunny Speak" Series were published. They are the hilarious and fascinating accounts of Winnie and Hunny's lives, Leonie's two Labradoodles, and told by them. Leonie now writes full time. She is currently working on several new books including a series on her combi-van travels, and a memoir of breakdown and recovery.

Book preview

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE-END OF SCHOOL DAYS 1971-1972

First Ever Poem

Second Poem

Typical Poem

In Your Mind

Whimsy

Winter Anthem

To Olds

Percy

On Uniform

Seven Line Poem

Night Travelling

Loud Mouthed Neighbours

Tribute

Protest

Scraps

Facts of Random Thought

Sad Song

Boy Poem

Love Is...

Dream

Okay

Dreaming

Me and You

I Notice

PART TWO-TRAVELLING 1973-1976

The One and Only Place that I Love

Cosy Me

Memories of a Goodbye

But no Skating this Year

Remember

Travelling

A Short Description

Poem for Today 25th of November 1975

Short Pieces

PART THREE-BACK IN NEW ZEALAND LATE 1976

Empty

Life in a Prism

Dreams

New Life Starting

Part of a Feeling

Untitled

The Calm

Paper Thin

A Change of Heart

PART FOUR-AUSTRALIA 2003

Spanish Memory for Liz

PREFACE

I had always felt at odds with the world; I was awkward and introverted, never part of the popular crowd, yet forever wanting to be liked by all. Reading back over the poetry I wrote then it now seems very raw and uncultured, almost embarrassing, but essentially it was an outpouring of a lone soul with a confused heart, of a young person who didn’t fit in, who was the odd one out, but who didn’t want to be.

Some of that has changed in the almost forty years since these poems were written. Sure, I am older and wiser and more experienced in the ways of the world and its inter-relationships, but the different-ness I felt all those years ago and strove so desperately to understand has evolved now into an acceptance of, and joy in who I am – still the odd one out, but someone who relishes different-ness. I love being me.

In the intervening forty odd years I never wrote more poetry bar the one at the end. It was a commemorative fiftieth birthday piece for my way-back travelling ‘sista’ and still friend Liz.

And so, having finished writing them again, all the emotions came rushing back. At times it was overwhelming and I stopped for a time before going back and finishing them off. Interestingly, they have given me an opportunity to re-live, re-do and change parts of myself that I have