Small Town Kid

by Frank Prem

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780975144237
Publisher:	Wild Arancini Press
Publication date:	11/22/2018
Series:	Poetry Memoir , #1
Pages:	104
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.22(d)

About the Author

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, zines and anthologies, in Australia and in a number of other countries, and has both performed and recorded his work as 'spoken word'. . He lives with his wife, musician and artist Leanne Murphy, in the beautiful township of Beechworth in northeast Victoria (Australia). . Franks web page is located at: www.frankprem.com.

Table of Contents

Contents

I can hardly wait to show you....................... iv

oma rocks the cradle............................ 1

working for a generation.......................... 2

poppy cakes.................................... 4

frenki boy....................................... 5

the exuberance of my aunt....................... 7

you know mum’s cooking....................... 10

loss of faith................................... 11

picnic story................................... 13

from inside the outhouse....................... 17

nightman...................................... 19

half moon at the trapdoor...................... 21

the dawn of civilisation.......................... 22

butcher’s paper.................................. 24

rabbit-o.................................... 26

the hallways of st joseph’s....................... 27

pine-needle tea and stabbing trees............... 28

spe-lli-ng b-y nu-mbe-rs............................ 30

fast-track perambulation......................... 31

pumpkin-rock terrorists.......................... 33

despatching tiny rubbish (and things like that)..... 35

facade catches............................... 37

sunsets are…................................. 39

discovering tv................................ 40

finch street elms................................ 41

fires of autumn.................................. 43

at easter................................... 44

a tricky place (the annual fete)..................... 46

crackers.................................... 50

state of the art.............................. 56

relentlessness................................ 58

holes in pockets................................. 60

yonnie power................................ 61

fight ........................................ 63

hating whitey................................ 66

mcalpine’s cherries............................ 67

sweet maureen.............................. 69

in the rooms................................. 70

football and law................................. 72

growing pains................................ 73

swimming on the royal reserve.................... 74

distance across ford street....................... 75

on a new year’s eve............................ 76

libby’s puzzle................................. 77

finishing school and wedding maths................ 79

#1 finishing school............................. 79

#2 wedding maths.......................... 80

not the mandalay................................ 81

memorial park.............................. 82

a cockys morning............................... 84

between sink and stove........................... 85

from the sticks.............................. 87

role to play.................................... 88

vale.......................................... 89

palmer’s not.................................. 91

small-town kids.................................. 92

broken english.............................. 93

circular square town.......................... 94

Other Works................................... 95