Dorothy Featherstone Porter

Dorothy Featherstone Porter Poems

Dorothy Featherstone Porter Biography

Dorothy Featherstone Porter (26 March 1954 – 10 December 2008) was an Australian poet. Porter was born in Sydney. Her father was barrister Chester Porter and her mother, Jean, was a high school chemistry teacher. Porter attended the Queenwood School for Girls. She graduated from the University of Sydney in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English and History. Porter had been suffering from breast cancer for four years before her death, but "many thought she was winning the battle," according to journalist Matt Buchanan. In the last three weeks of her life she became very sick and was admitted to hospital, where she was in intensive care for the final 10 days. She died aged 54 on 10 December 2008. On 21 February 2010, actress Cate Blanchett read excerpts from Porter's posthumously published short work on literary criticism and emotions in literature, On Passion, at the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne.)

The Best Poem Of Dorothy Featherstone Porter

The Hampstead Heath Toad

It was one of those
beautiful
English summer nights
when levitating
on the moonshine
of a moonlit world
was your entranced lucky
fate.

The lilac shimmer of silent
lakes.
The whisper of ghost fox
through your heartbeat.

But the toad in the hand
stank real.

Stank through his palpitating
skin.
Stank of fear.


Is the fabled hallucinogenic
touch of toads
just as Macbeth
witnessed
a hypnotising snare
of toxic apparition?

What thrilling doors of perception
open
to the musky ooze
of panting paralysed
terror?

Of course
on that silky intoxicating
night
you wanted
and will always want
the toad
to calm down
smell sweet
and give up his phantasmagorical
secrets
generously.

But the toad in the hand
protected himself.

The toad in the hand
stank real.

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