Kai Cowcher Tennis
Edilma Howard
Some days, when I\\u2019m stuck for ideas, I read a poem or two to get me going. Billy Collins, Auden, Larkin, Ada Limon. This morning I took a collection of Les Murray\\u2019s poems off a high shelf at home. Dog Fox Field is its title. I blew the dust off it and opened it and found I\\u2019d once cut a letter from The Age and stuck it on the title page. The letter must have been published at least 30 years ago.
It reads: \\u201CPerhaps it is just me because I am old, but it seems female tennis players nowadays have thicker necks and are far more menacing than in the days when we chaps sighed at the grace of Miss Goolagong as she bounded effortlessly about the court and Dan Maskell cried, \\u2018Oh, I say\\u2019.\\u201D John Dorman, Carnegie.
Thicker necks. Indeed. The man makes his point. Late last century when women began turning up to play tennis with their necks thickened only a dimwit couldn\\u2019t see the sinister arc of the future. But anyone who feels it necessary to write to a newspaper about the looming menace of bull-necked Navratilovas must surely have written thousands of letters, so I guess this John Dorman was what the letters sections call \\u201Ca bombardier\\u201D, and that his missives rained in like catcalls on a lisping soprano. Why would I cut such a letter from a newspaper? I don\\u2019t cut anything from newspapers. Why was I pasting it in a book? And why choose Les Murray?
I suppose I was amused by the Wodehousian \\u201Cchap\\u201D sighing at the grace of Miss Goolagong while a tennis commentator cries, \\u201COh, I say\\u201D. In hindsight I\\u2019ve decided John Dorman was a Wodehouse himself, a humorist rather than a wistful soul without a day job. A satirist who played an epistolary Sandy Stone.
I can see him deep in his armchair in Carnegie, his typewriter in his lap and a whisky at his elbow, giggling to himself as he types out, \\u201COh, I say\\u201D while in the sunroom his wife frowns at the sound of her husband\\u2019s autogenic hilarity, knowing he\\u2019ll have penned some wily bombast to provoke the sensitive Age readers to return fire.
I like the thought of John \\u2013 slippered provocateur in a Carnegie cul de sac. But forget his letter now - the letter is a distraction. It\\u2019s poetry we\\u2019re addressing here. Ask yourself what the hell I\\u2019m doing reading poems. Good question. Well, it\\u2019s because poets offer a weird brilliance, they think up gorgeously skew-whiff ideas, make unlikely connections, brew salty metaphors, and find different ways to see and think of things.
I\\u2019ve just been reading a collection of poems called The Cyprian, by Amy Crutchfield. She\\u2019s good, sad, wise, surprising ... and a living Australian. But if she weren\\u2019t the friend of a friend I would never have found her. Because, I mean ... name a living poet.
Why would anyone become a poet these days? Or a carriage maker, or a switchboard operator for that matter? Why write in the doomed language of poetry? You may as well write in Latin. Writing poetry is as obstinate an act as releasing your music on vinyl. The punters don\\u2019t have anything to play it on, people who can read poetry are rarer than turntables.
Reading poetry takes practice, and slowness. It\\u2019s bird watching, not hiking. Often I don\\u2019t fully understand poems at first go. But even then I enjoy the mystery, challenge, and potential of the poem, remembering that beautiful songs often take many listenings to open to their full glory.
But I pity the poet, once literature\\u2019s highest practitioner, now its mothballed oddball. Years ago I was whining to the Australian poet Jennifer Strauss about being a living novelist and how tough it is to be squeezed onto a bookshop shelf alongside Dickens and Dostoevsky. She was aghast. Try being a poet, she said. You\\u2019ll find your anthology in the gloom down the back of the bookshop where nobody but gravy-stained oddities and supercilious undergrads destined to be gravy-stained oddities ever go. Or words to that effect.
David Lloyd Basildon held the popular spring tournament, during the February half term week, with a slightly increased entry this year. Essex players had a brilliant week, taking home the trophies in all but 2 of the events.
The boys 12 and under event saw some excellent tennis, with both semi-finals being won in 3rd seed tie breaks. Ben Rowe (Redbridge), No 1 seed used all his experience to beat Samuel Constantinou (Connaught) and Ben Stanford, (The Riverside Northwood), No 2 seed beat Joshua Nelson (Redbridge). Ben Rowe then went on to beat Ben Stanford in the final.
In the 14 and under boys singles, Matthew Doe (Mountnessing), the number No 1 seed, who last year won the 12 and under singles, played well all week to win this event, beating Johnathan Price (Grove (Chelmsford)) in an exciting final.
The standard of the boys 16 and under event, was superb, with No 1 seed, Edward Pudney (Ipswich) just beating Gabe Nelson (Redbridge) in the 1st round. He then went on to reach the final with comfortable wins. In the bottom half of the draw, No 2 seed, James Benbrook (Hills Road) lost a tight match in the semi-finals to Alex Curaba (Harlow). Alex went on to lose to Edward in a tough match.
Darien Lamb (Westcliff Hardcourt), No 1 seed, came through to the finals without dropping a set. In the bottom half of the draw, David Mould (Deanes), No 2 seed, lost in the semi-final to John Taylor (Gransdens). John then lost a close match to Darien in the 3rd seed tight break.
Pride of place in the girls events must go Evie Smart (Billericay), (pictured above) who retained the 12 and under girls event, without losing a set. She beat Lucy Dawson (Connaught), who had beaten the No 2 seed in a close semi-final. Abigail Michelow (Clearview), (below) the No 3 seed, beat Nyah Kauders (Hockley), who had put out the No 1 seed in the first round, in a very close match. Abigail then went to beat Charlotte Imbert (Sevenoaks), No 2 seed in the final. Zuzanna Glowacz (Westcliff Hardcourt) retained the 16 and under girls singles beating Rosie Pooley (East Anglia) in the final.
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