Original Clichés
By Rob Walker
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About this ebook
‘If Cliché is a democratically elected form of truth, then Rob Walker is sitting as an Independent and disrupting proceedings from the cross-benches. He’s been warned by the Speaker.’ – Mike Ladd (poet, founding presenter/producer of ABC RN’s Poetica)
‘Rob Walker’s O
Rob Walker
About the AuthorRob Walker is an Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher at the 500-hour level with the Yoga Alliance. He has studied yoga in India on three occasions and holds a fourth level of certification in Iyengar Yoga, a style he no longer subscribes to. Rob had a long and successful career in journalism in London and Canada before turning a passion for yoga into teaching twenty years ago. In 2001 he switched from writing on health care to owning yoga studios. His current focus and passion is training yoga teachers at his yoga college, helping them understand the principles and benefits of The New Yoga.
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Original Clichés - Rob Walker
Original Clichés
Rob Walker
Ginninderra PressContents
Copyright
Dedication
Dedication
Epigraph
Original Clichés
Notes
Acknowledgements
Original Clichés
ISBN 978 1 6041 128 2
Copyright © text Rob Walker 2016
Cover: Grandma Lyn and Rainbow by Amelia Walker
All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.
First published 2016 by
Ginninderra Press
PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015 Australia
www.ginninderrapress.com.au
For all the dedicated English teachers of
Cowandilla Primary (1958–65)
and Plympton High (1966–70).
No doubt they are all dead.
May they rest in peace during their
Eternal Long Service Leave.
Thanks to journalist Chris Pash, who triggered the idea for this collection with his regular blog Cliché of the Week, which ran from 2010 to 2013.
‘Let’s have some new clichés.’
Samuel Goldwyn
‘Only in art were there clichés; never in nature. There were no ordinary human beings. Everybody was born with surprise inside.’
Jincy Willett, The Writing Class
‘The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.’
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
‘It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.’
Stephen Fry
Clichés can be quite fun. That’s how they got to be clichés.’
Alan Bennett, The History Boys
Original Clichés
An accident waiting to happen
purposeless and alienated, a coexisting anomie and ennui
a concatenation of the unrelated I lurk on street corners
planning the intersection of vehicles.
delayed by traffic light whim or
leaving home moments earlier you leave yourself
vulnerable to my coordinate points.
I am the hay bale awaiting synchronicity
of temperature and humidity
to interrupt a firefighter’s dinner.
I am the thrown match which may peter out
or destroy the entire national park,
the oily rag in the shed.
I am the outdated nuclear reactor
behind the low seawall
waiting for the plates to move.
I am the occasional freight train,
the unsignalled crossing,
the sleepy motorist.
I am the barely submerged snag in the murky river,
the sharemarket software trigger
programmed to sell sell sell.
I am the scissors in the hand of the running child
the gun in the glovebox,
gathering ions in cumulonimbus
above the golfer on the fairway,
the jet engine’s