PETER LANGSTON SIX NINES

“Six Nines,” a book of poems by Tamworth writer Peter Langston ,is out by Kardoorair Press of Armidale.

A story teller in verse, Peter’s is a new and authentic voice in Australian poetry. Former lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at UNE, Barry Richardson said:

Authentically new voices in poetry are always rare but Peter Langston produces inspiring innovation: Peter’s is a poetic voice which is unique in the freshness of the language, the creativity of the imagery in which he comments, sometimes satirically but always incisively on the human condition at large.”

No lover of the esoteric language and images which often haunt poetry, Peter writes poems you will understand, know intimately and will have experienced. 

These poems are often your story too. They have an optimism worth washing in, where no spilled drops are wasted.

John Rummery, a retired lecturer in English at what was the Armidale CAE, a celebrated teacher and a man with a well developed taste for poetry says of Peter’s poems:

Good poems, like all good art, are inexhaustible: always new despite many readings; always able to surprise, delight and satisfy. No common experience is ordinary when transmuted through Peter’s imaginative insight and then refined by surprisingly inventive language and inescapable imagery and metaphor.”

Poet and publisher Tony Bennett launches “Six Nines” at Narnia Bookshop in Peel St, Tamworth, on Saturday, 12th December from 10:00am, where Peter will sign copies. Light refreshments and live music to enjoy.

Peter will also attend a book signing at Angus & Robertson in Armidale, on Thursday 10th December from 6:00pm.

About Peter Langston

Born in Cronulla, ten years into the post WWII baby boom, he spent twenty years growing in the clean air and sterilised politics of an optimistic middle Australia so prevalent in the new suburbs of the Sutherland Shire. He played sport with passion but limited ability and despite representing The Shire at cricket, his goal of a Baggy Green is a dream which he, as yet, refuses to have analysed.

After a series of jobs which taught him much about people but little about himself, he moved to Armidale to nearly die twice in car accidents, learn about learning, fall in love and graduate in drinking. Only one of these was fatal. In Armidale, he began to write.

Peter began teaching at Nowendoc in 1981 … and a family in a nearby farmhouse, the same year. Son Chris and daughter Sarah were born after he moved to Baan Baa as Teacher in Charge. At 27 he was a father of two, a lover of one, the star of the local cricket team and a pretty hopeless teacher. He still wrote.

It was back in Armidale at Ben Venue School that he became a teacher, thanks to his supervisor who took an eraser to the bad and a polishing cloth to the good. He played cricket on Saturdays and ran it the rest of the week for Waratahs CC– his only passionate affair outside of marriage. Son Sam was born. Peter presented radio shows and wrote for local papers, notably as the satirical “Slasher”, written with a sarcastic blowtorch rather than a typewriter.

The next ten years were lost as a Principal of small schools at Wongwibinda and Tambar Springs and whilst this second half of his career was unquestionably his best teaching (including major teaching awards), the effort demanded of him in giving his charges aspirations beyond a 50km radius gradually leeched his soul. His writing was full of desperation and so was family life.

In 2000, his robust world collapsed when he got tired and stopped holding it up. Full scale breakdown followed:, suicide attempts, a year of friendly faces looming from the darkness to offer assurance and lots of wrong diagnoses about his mental state. After 14 months of grim existence, he self diagnosed bipolar disorder, doctors and psychiatrists had consecutive “ahah” moments and the right medication and excellent therapy somehow managed to put Humpty back together  – but he has since avoided the wall.

Peter  writes or edits his way through most weeks, preferring to see himself as a story teller than a poet. Some stories are personal, some observational and some are as old as man’s existence and woman’s discontent. A few are his stories but most are ours, just retold through his vision.

This is his first book of poetry. Individual poems have previously been published in newspapers and anthologies such as “Semaphore Dancing” – Poets At The Pub (2009) and on the websites of the ABC, The Black Dog Institute and ABContribute. He also contributed an essay to “Journeys With The Black Dog” (Allen & Unwin 2007) and has written feature articles for the Northern Daily Leader, The Armidale Express, The Weekly (Mudgee) and the Daily Examiner (Grafton) He no longer plays cricket but still hits a ball on a string and sends his hat size and phone number to Cricket Australia every September, just in case.

Such optimism is evident in the forty two stories told through poems in “Six Nines”.