PROSE – diaries (autobiographical and travel), essays, sketches, short stories and links.
Prose is a genre to which I have not given the attention due, poetry having been my principal concern. My prose style – such as it is – has developed in fits and starts, shall we say erratically, and my output has been meagre. It may be possible to attribute this to my long standing preference for verse, which permits (but does not always demand or receive) a high degree of linguistic concision, and favours synthesis of thoughts as opposed to their more gradual development in detail. But it may be possible equally, and paradoxically, to attribute it to comments made by a teacher at Ampleforth in the ’50s or one at La Trobe University in the ’70s, which were to the effect that my prose style was too ornate, ‘baroque’, and needed pruning. I felt discouraged.
What follows, opens with material from my time at Ampleforth College, York (U.K. 1952-7) and closes with material from my retirement in Cadiz (2000 – ). These periods and places mark the general boundaries. Within them I may be including material from my time at Salamanca University (Spain 1957-8), Pembroke College, Oxford (1958-61), La Trobe University (Australia 1969-80), and the Octagon Bookshop, Omeo (Australia 1986-97). I can offer only fragments to pre-date my time at Ampleforth or correspond to my years at Aquinas College, Perth (Australia), Auckland University (N.Z.), or my time in Foster (Australia). They are periods when other things were happening, other things seemed to matter more. But you never know. I, for one, am for ever forgetting … and remembering … and forgetting. The trick is to catch a memory between one lapse and the next. We shall see.
My prose selection opens with excerpts from the four diaries which go to make up My Ampleforth Years, with an emphasis on travel in ‘Spanish Impressions’ and ‘Germany’ (My Ampleforth Years I & IV). The selection closes with jottings under the makeshift titles ‘Notes for an autobiography’ and the corresponding ‘Interludes’. These notes dwell on all manner of situations from earliest childhood to the present, and may do something to fill the gaps left by the uneven spread of the principal materials. Apart from these pieces there are a couple of short stories, sketches and essays.