Small Town Kid
By Frank Prem
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About this ebook
Did you grow up in the 1960s and 70s? Know someone who did? This book is for you.
Small Town Kid is a poetry anthology that illuminates the experience of regional life as a child, in an insular town during the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, remote from the more worldly places where life really happens, in a time before the internet and the online existence of social media.
It is a time when a small town boy can walk a mile to school and back every day, and hunt rabbits with his dog in the hours of freedom before sundown. He can hoard crackers for bonfire night and blow up the deputy school master’s mailbox in an act of joyous rebellion.
It is a time when a small town teenager will ride fourteen miles on a bicycle for his first experience of girls, and of love. A time when migrating from a foreign country to a small town means his family will always feel that they are strangers, while visitors to the town are treated like an invading host.
It is also the remembrance of tragedy for inexperienced friends driving on narrow country roads.
This collection of poems and stories shares the type of childhood that has mostly disappeared in contemporary times. Come and revisit it here, in the pages of a Small Town Kid.
Frank Prem
Frank Prem has been a storytelling poet for forty years. When not writing or reading his poetry to an audience, he fills his time by working as a psychiatric nurse.He has been published in magazines, e-zines and anthologies, in Australia and in a number of other countries, and has both performed and recorded his work as ‘spoken word’.Frank has published several collections of free verse poetry – Small Town Kid (2018), Devil In The Wind (2019), and The New Asylum (2019). and A Love Poetry Trilogy (Walk Away Silver Heart; A Kiss for the Worthy; and Rescue and Redemption) in 2020, as well as a two part picture book – A Beechworth Bakery Bears e-Book and A Beechworth Bakery Bears e-Book (too).He and his wife live in the beautiful township of Beechworth in northeast Victoria (Australia).
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Book preview
Small Town Kid - Frank Prem
I can hardly wait to show you
july is finally gone and I am breathing
in the air of august
a taste of weather
that teases promise of days
when the sun is warm again
and the shivers worn since may
can be packed away for another season
I can hardly wait to take you
to the places where my spirit lies
along singing waters and scrubby creeks
the green and granite-bouldered hills
that never stop calling
and won’t let me deny them
I want to show you where I grew
and what I saw when I was small
if something still remains of those things
so clearly drawn as pictures in my mind
of a small boy and his curious dog
with a long way to travel from breakfast
to the distant darkness of evening
on so many shining days
will you walk with me on a balmy afternoon
in the mayday hills and the woolshed valley
along the silver creek and past apple orchards
to the places where rabbits went to ground
at the sound of approaching adventurers
crossing old scars left by miners seeking gold dust
where I also found small treasures once
take my hand in the main street
of this town hewn from honey granite
I will tell you what once stood here and there
and you might help me rediscover what I knew
when I was in the springtime of my life
before an autumn season comes
to settle on my shoulders
I can hardly wait to show you
Contents
I can hardly wait to show you
oma rocks the cradle
working for a generation
poppy cakes
frenki boy
the exuberance of my aunt
you know mum’s cooking
loss of faith
picnic story
from inside the outhouse
nightman
half-moon at the trapdoor
the dawn of civilisation
butcher’s paper
rabbit-o
the hallways of st joseph’s
pine-needle tea and stabbing trees
spe-lli-ng b-y nu-mbe-rs
fast track perambulation
pumpkin rock terrorists
despatching tiny rubbish (and things like that)
facade catches
sunsets are . . .
discovering tv
finch street elms
fires of autumn
at easter
a tricky place (the annual fete)
crackers
state of the art
relentless
holes in pockets
yonnie power
fight
hating whitey
mcalpine’s cherries
sweet maureen
in the rooms
football and law
growing pains
swimming on the royal reserve
distance across ford street
on a new year’s eve
libby’s puzzle
finishing school and wedding maths
#1 finishing school
#2 wedding maths
not the mandalay
memorial park
a cocky’s morning
between sink and stove
from the sticks
role to play
vale
palmer’s not
small-town kids
broken english
circular square town
Author Information
About Frank Prem
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What Readers Say
oma rocks the cradle
while mama works
oma rocks the cradle
lulling the child
into slumber
the rhythm
soothes and settles
peace in the house
the afternoon passes
calm
~
in the early hours
fretful waking
dragging darkness
broken sleep
a weary journeying
to work
in the thinness
of morning
why will the child
not sleep
every blessed night
what is wrong with him
~