Small Town Kid

By Frank Prem

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Prem
• Release date: Jul 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9780975144244

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).

Book preview

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

Connect with Frank

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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

~

while