satire
14 Feb 2012
A Guide To Doggerel For Billionaires
Gina Rinehart has got a stonking fortune, a stake in half the country's media and bucketloads of knockabout charm. But can she write poetry? Alas, no. Luckily, Ben Pobjie is here to help
If there is one thing that the Australian people love, it is a secretive multi-billionaire.
And if that secretive multi-billionaire writes poetry, that’s just gravy — a recipe for the utter adoration of the Australian public. So it’s no wonder that the people of this wide metallic land have taken ultra-wealthy dead-father-owner Gina Rinehart to their larrikinish bosoms, blessed as she is by those twin virtues of unfathomably whopping dollops of cash and a sensitive literary temperament. She’s like Rupert Murdoch crossed with Peter Carey — the ultimate patriot.
I was unaware that Gina Rinehart’s talent for being born into a family that owned mines was combined with a talent for heart-rendingly beautiful verse until recently, when I read this story about a boulder that has been installed in Perth (West Australians are not ones for pussyfooting about with arty farty sculpture — when they want a monument, they just slap up a boulder) which bears upon it the now-seminal poem "Our Future", written by Ms Rinehart herself.
"Our Future" is a poem about our future, and how it depends on letting miners get on with things without being bothered by governments or taxes or magic wands, and how we can’t let our future be stymied by people who hate immigrants and want people in the third world to have no steel.
Now, this is a very important message, and the start of a very important movement in the world of poetry. Finally we who care about the future of poetry can sweep aside the hidebound attitudes of those fusty old men sitting in their leather armchairs smoking cognac and masturbating over Kenneth Slessor.
The Romantics, the classicists, the modernists and postmodernists have all had their time: it is time for lovers of poetry everywhere to embrace Ms Rinehart’s new poetic paradigm: Magnate Verse. A mode of poetry for a new millennium, that celebrates wealth and resource exploitation, and dismisses woolly headed notions of social justice or romantic love in favour of a strong, muscularly unambiguous message: GIVE US ALL YOUR MONEY NOW YOU LAZY BITCHES OR … sorry, I didn’t mean to lapse into blank verse myself. My point is, Gina’s style of poetry is the future, if the poem industry is to regain its former glory.
But yes, there is a problem, and no doubt you have already identified it: Gina’s poetry is terrible. It’s really, really terrible. It’s like the poetry you were forced to study in school, except it’s much much worse. It’s like the poetic equivalent of botulism.
In writing this poem, Gina Rinehart has performed an act akin to giving birth to Satan. It’s so bad that if you read it out loud to children, they will cry, and possibly burst into flame. Over 60 per cent of people who have read Gina Rinehart’s poem developed advanced tumours within a week.
So what can we do, faced with a vital artistic message yearning for freedom while its sole current practitioner possesses less artistic talent than a headless lobster? Luckily, just like when Matthew Newton was looking for a way back into our hearts, I am here to help.
I happen to be an accomplished and critically acclaimed poet myself. As a former finalist in Poetry Idol, and a man whose work was described by none other than Oodgeroo Noonuccal as "What?" I feel that I am well qualified to take on a sort of mentor role to Gina and help her add the polish that will make her poetry soar.
First of all, she has to stop rhyming. Rhyming is terribly old-fashioned and frowned upon by all today’s respected poets and others who wear op-shop clothes. When you write a poem that rhymes, you might as well be stapling a big sign to your face saying, "I AM A MOUTH-BREATHING HILLBILLY". You will never be invited to elite poetry readings in smelly little bars in front of four people with that sort of guff. Not rhyming shows that you are on a higher plan of literary function. For example, instead of writing:
"The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
And billions now are pleading to enjoy a better life"
Gina could have written:
"The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
Like the silent cry of my heart, the day I woke with your scent on my skin and the bitter memory lying, comatose, in the body-groove you left in my sheets
Like the dying gasp of the lonely mule of heaven"
That sort of thing would have garnered much greater plaudits, and possibly an Australia Council grant. Not that Gina technically needs an Australia Council grant; but you’re nobody in poetry until you have one, and I know that Gina craves the sort of professional cachet it would bestow.
Next, she’s got to be a bit less blunt. I mean, yes, we all love the free market, we’re all in favour of special economic zones, and we all sympathise with the billions whose hope lies with resources deep within the earth — it keeps me up long into the night. But if you want to be a real Pam Ayres-level wordsmith, you can’t just blurt it out like an emu regurgitating a lizard. You need to use subtlety, metaphor, and symbolism to make your message resonate. So instead of writing:
"Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores
To benefit from the export of our minerals and ores"
She could have written:
"Build high those towers of Mammon, O great flamingo of death
As Osiris creeps closer, the rumble of his bowels shaking this paper earth
The seas call out for love, for mercy, and plead without cessation
Bring us close, keep us safe in the galley of this diamond sloop"
And so you see how a simplistic plea for governments to stop being mean to heiresses becomes a darkly magical piece of incomprehensible poetic art. We are so busy wondering at the majesty of the verse’s construction, we don’t even realise our views are imperceptibly shifting in the mining industry’s favour. By the time we’ve realised, it’s too late: poetry has won the day and Wayne Swan is doomed.
But look, I’m not trying to write the poem for Gina. These are just examples of how she could improve things. There are loads of other techniques: oblique references to Wuthering Heights; gratuitous bits about genitals; when reading aloud, saying the word "fuck" slightly louder than the rest of the sentence; but they all have to be bent to the service of Gina’s vision, and the Gina’s unique style.
I don’t want to crush Gina’s style, I want to enhance it, and I think if she gives me the chance, I can. I can turn her doggerel into the inspirational call to arms that it should be. So consider this an offer, a request, and a job application: Gina, let me help you. Let me help you free us from the yoke of socialism and transform our economy through the awesome power of poetry.
Let me turn your "Hey dickheads, giz some money for these here rocks" into an elegant "The musk of hypocrisy floated in the air like the fog on the dawn streets of Chicago/the last time I saw my Esmerelda turn her back/on the sanctuary of love". Let’s get this message across, and let’s get it across right.
With a bit of conscientiousness and determination, we can turn iron ore and iambic pentameter into the unstoppable two-headed juggernaut it was always meant to be. Dip your quills, miners of Australia — let’s make history.
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Posted Tuesday, 14 February 12 at 12:17PM
Ben Pobjie is such a mighty man
Satire’s noblest sage and sometimes ham.
With Gina he will scale the heights,
She with money, he containing deep insights
About a better world for us all.
* *** * ***
Love might blossom twixt them both
The billionaire and Shakespeare’s troth
She with money and fulsome girth
Helped by Ben’s words which provide such mirth.
But saying Rinehardt-Pobjie is an order tall.
* *** * ***
P.S. Great article, Ben. :)
Posted Tuesday, 14 February 12 at 1:43PM
“like an emu regurgitating a lizard” - love it! But she’s more like a wombat with mange isn’t she?
I think that when one views the “Mining Australia” adverts on TV with the happy, wholesome white woman, riding her horses amongst the dust clouded outback and virile beef cattle all a scatter…we can witness their talent at fiction quite well though, don’t you think?
I’m sure they think “Let’s throw in a bit of Australiana…that always sucks ‘em in!”
David G - is that the Valentines Day theme coming in, you old romantic you!!
Posted Tuesday, 14 February 12 at 2:16PM
Gina Rinehart has got about as much knockabout charm as a tiger snake, here is someone that wants to do a Murdoch job and control the media to suit herself.
As for her poetry, hang on a minute be back shortly, have to go and spew.
Posted Tuesday, 14 February 12 at 2:45PM
Is that really a picture of her? Where are the flying monkeys?
The other question is, can she be dissuaded from writing any more Vogon poetry?
Posted Tuesday, 14 February 12 at 5:11PM
“Vogon poetry” -nailed it!!!!
Posted Tuesday, 14 February 12 at 9:57PM
Perhaps this can reintroduce the traditions of Court Fools, Bards etc.
As they’re so busy counting their money etc it could be a nice income dashing off words in the name of the Client Billionaire?
Posted Wednesday, 15 February 12 at 12:35PM
Is there a typo in the first quote from the poem? Surely
“The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
And billions now are pleading to enjoy a better life”
should be
“The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
And billionaires now are pleading to enjoy a better life”
Posted Wednesday, 15 February 12 at 3:41PM
Hey Ben, stop ripping on the heir to William McGonagle.
Posted Wednesday, 15 February 12 at 4:07PM
It actually puts one in mind of Ewan McTeagle.
Can I have fifty pounds to mend the shed?
I’m right on my uppers.
I can pay you back
When this postal order comes from Australia.
Honestly.
Hope the bladder trouble’s getting better.
Love, Ewan
Posted Thursday, 16 February 12 at 8:13AM
Outrider
I presumed that the basis for the article is fiction. But Gina is so delusional that it could be real. If so, let us have the lot and reference.
Posted Thursday, 16 February 12 at 3:00PM
Meski- They’re demolishing our 1 speed economy to build a space highway thru our mineral deposits. Damn dirty Vogons!
Posted Tuesday, 21 February 12 at 12:46PM
Well, I say good on her, she gave it a go and made a success while everyone else has been sucked in by the politically correct attitude that failure and loss are the true moral virtues we should all embrace.
Posted Saturday, 17 March 12 at 10:43AM
Like a Rhinehart cowboy, I think Katter could have found his match.
Muses worthy of a greeting card verse at the very least.
Isn’t it grate 2B a strine?
Posted Tuesday, 29 May 12 at 3:42PM
Venise Alstergren: I can’t believe I missed this gem before this. I lurve it so and well done Ben.
However, I do have one question…..HOW WOULD A LIMERICK FIT WITH THE REINHART PERSONNA? I’m not going to venture into this-I’ll only get struck off the register. Feel free to indulge. Hehehehe