The Abbotsford Mysteries by Patricia Sykes (EPUB)
As if we fit together like old shards
orphan, unfortunate, drunk, prostitute
in a neat history of broken glass
The Abbotsford Convent becomes more than the setting, the grey mince-meat walls, of this collection. It emerges as presence, intimate and familiar as well as constraining and forbidding. But it is childhood itself which becomes the subterranean geography and pulse. Subject to an overworld of lay and religious adults, the razor of power having such adult force, the voices in these poems create multiple pathways through memory and time as they map and navigate the many-stranded mysteries of their institutionalised lives.
The Abbotsford Mysteries incorporates a medley of voices and experiences, drawn from official histories and other archives: the memories of Patricia and her sisters, and the oral memoirs of over seventy women, interviewed by Patricia during 2003-04. All had been resident at the Good Shepherd Convent at some stage during 1927-74.
Voice is central to the work: the persona speaking the poems does so on behalf of all the voices who contributed their memoirs. Often their words are woven verbatim into the poems, giving a particular and poetic resonance to a significant aspect of Melbourne and Australia’s institutional, religious, social, and architectural history.