A Poem by Janet Frame

The other day I found in a bookshelf a collection of poetry by Janet Frame, The Goose Bath. For some reason I had never read it before but have decided recently to work my way through it. They are wonderful poems. Although Frame loved reading and writing poetry, she is today generally remembered for her novels and her three-part autobiography. She never published any of her poetry while she was alive; The Goose Bath was published posthumously. One story I've heard is that Frame didn't want her poetry published but I bet she knew that her verses would somehow make their way out into the wider world after her death. What I would like to do here is transcribe a poem that made an impression on me.

I'M INVISIBLE

I'm invisible.

I've always been invisible

like poverty in a rich county,

like the rich in the secretive rooms of their many-roomed houses,

like fleas, like lice, like growth beneath the earth,

worlds beyond the sky, the wind, time, ideas –

the catalogue of invisibility is endless,

and, they say, does not make good poetry.

Like decisions.

Like elsewhere.

Like institutions far from the road labelled Scenic Drive.

No more similes. I'm invisible.

In a people-world of binocular vision I'm in the majority after all

as you and I walk with our tiny crescent moon of sight in our personal darkness

through a world where decisions of being and not-being

are controlled by light

helped by tears and the sleep of inattention or death.

I'm invisible.

The lovers reach through my life to touch each other,

the rain falling through me courses like blood upon the earth.

I am carried in no-one's head as knowledge.

I give freedom to the dancers,

to the speaking of truth.

It is this way. There's no-one here to eavesdrop or observe,

and then I learn more than I am entitled to know.

Janet Frame died in 2004. I am not going to interpret this poem here. Although I think there is value in interpretation I don't want to interpret this one. I shall make just two comments about it. Frame references a road called Scenic Drive. There is probably more than one Scenic Drive in New Zealand but the Scenic Drive I know of is in Titirangi, in West Auckland, very near where the highly up-market Respite facility that both Jess and I spent time at although on separate occasions once existed. Mind Matters closed down at the end of 2009 or beginning of 2010. Perhaps Frame had heard about it before she died and saw in it a positive direction for the future of the Mental Health Service; she may not have known that the whole purpose of Mind Matters, it felt to me at the time when I was there, was to eavesdrop and observe. My second comment is that the mention of dancers makes me think of modern pop stars; there is probably an upmarket kind of Respite facility in Malibu that both Miley Cyrus and Kurt Cobain went to, perhaps because of addiction or perhaps because of mental distress resulting from the enormous pressures celebrities deal with. The meaning I find in this poem may be different to the meaning you find in it but hopefully we can agree it is a beautiful poem. Perhaps Frame did know more than she was entitled to know.