Allan and Kevin. Photo courtesy Age newspaper.
In 2006 SBS television produced a documentary series based on the Age newspaper’s ‘Two of Us’ column. I was very flattered that my contribution, below, was the only Melbourne story to be filmed.
Interviews by Simon Sellars
‘The Two of Us: Kevin Brophy and Allan Martin’. Originally published in the Age newspaper’s Good Weekend magazine supplement in September, 2005.
Kevin Brophy is a Melbourne poet and academic and the co-founder of literary magazine Going Down Swinging. In 1981 he taught writing skills to inmates at Pentridge prison, including Allan Martin. Allan is now a published poet and a volunteer worker at Ozanam Community Centre; his writing has appeared in Going Down Swinging and Overland, among other publications, and Abalone Press published a collection of his poetry, Spitting Out Sixpenny, in 1984.
KEVIN: When I became involved with the writing workshop, I was ready for anything. I grew up in Coburg, around Pentridge, so it seemed the right thing to do. I made contact with the prison and was told, ‘Yeah, there’s a couple of blokes here who write. You can go and talk with them’. They were in Jika Jika: the maximum-security division. Jika was fi lled with violent inmates and warders who looked equally capable of violence. The warders wouldn’t have known what to make of me – I was a hippy and looked it. I ended up working with Allan, who was in prison for armed bank robbery; later, he escaped from Pentridge and robbed more banks.
Allan spent 20 years in prison, but I assumed from the start he wanted to be as professional a poet as possible. When he first showed me his poetry, I was inspired by the way he held together the intensity, intelligence and balance of a poem. He was already an exciting and interesting poet, but he was also extremely intense, and I never would have guessed that 20 years later we’d be long-term friends. He’s not what he seems. He’s worth getting to know, but you have to watch out because he’ll work you out quicker than you can him. He’ll be the one deciding whether you have anything more to do with him.
Allan can inspire terror in someone three times his size; I’ve seen half-a-dozen people stand at a safe distance while he made some very forceful points. But he’s mellowed dramatically since he’s been at the Community Centre. Allan works with homeless people, making the centre more human, more creative, more efficient: establishing a clothing exchange, setting up a garden, making documentaries, encouraging people to play music, perform plays, read poetry. He just loves to be with people who are real characters.
I admire Allan for what he’s achieved, despite what he’s done and what’s been done to him. He has a big heart for other people. He’s like a community elder. Our friendship encountered difficulties when Allan was released from prison. He was institutionalised, demoralised and confused and it was easier for him to ask me for money, or whatever he needed, than to build his life up again. Later, he found work and always managed to make a success of it, but for a while, when others didn’t work as hard as he did or couldn’t see that his way was the best way, his anger and frustration would become too explosive.
I felt great compassion for him, but I became afraid I was going to be a target. One night Allan arrived at my door to tell me he had a gun in the car, and to tell me what some other people had done to upset him. I assumed he was going to use the gun on them, though it’s more likely he was thinking of robbing another bank, or maybe he had no clear ideas. I was badly shaken and told him I’d have to ring the police. I thought I had come to the end of our relationship and I was worried I’d put the people around me in danger. The next time I saw him, he said the gun was in Port Philip Bay… I came to understand that this anger was part of Allan’s personality – that it came and went, and that it wasn’t a reason to end the relationship because there was always another Allan waiting to emerge.
That’s what happens with long-term friendships: you come to understand the different phases, the different rhythms of the other person’s life. Allan hasn’t written much recently due to some severe physical problems – he has damage to his eyes after some violent incidents in jail, and he’s recovering from an operation to fix a pinched nerve in his neck that was gradually deadening his right arm. He still has the fire to write, but something else weighing him down is the massive impact of twenty years in prison. Each time he sits down to write, there’s this question at the back of his mind: ‘Well, what do I do with that?’ It’s the stuff of nightmares. And who would want to revisit that?
ALLAN: Jika wasn’t traditional jail – it was the world’s first computerised prison system. There was always bullet-proof glass between the screws and us, and the entire place was climate controlled: no fresh air anywhere. It was very oppressive, a bloodbath from Day One. Sometimes screws would push the wrong button and the wrong door would fl y open and maniacs would run around and literally chop people’s heads off. I had to lock into something and writing gave me detachment. But in jail everyone always says, ‘Oh, what a great work of art!’ No one criticises because they’re afraid of what you might do to them.
Kevin was never patronising. I was doing a lot of experimental writing, stumbling around in the dark, and he gave me direction and structure. He taught me how to remove myself from the subject and just observe. That helped my self-esteem – it made me more able to articulate my thoughts. I was scared for Kevin in prison because you look at him and you know he’s not a fist fighter, even though he’s been a fi ghter all his life in other ways. He wanted to extend the writing program to other prisoners, and I don’t think he quite understood he’d be dealing with mass murderers and people going off their heads every second day. I think he finally realised when the yoga group, with all these gurus brought in from outside, was attacked by some lunatic with a pillowcase full of soap.
But Kevin was very anti-establishment; he had disrespect for all the screws and he never exhibited any fear. Kevin’s always been a hippy. Back then he never had money for a cup of coffee and he was always on his pushbike; he’s still got the long hair today. He once came to see me at Jika wearing a belt with his bike tools around his waist. Alarms and metal detectors went off and screws were running around everywhere. But the typewriter incident tops that. When I was transferred from Jika to the Metropolitan division, Kevin turned up with a typewriter. But he forgot he’d put some grass under the cover to dry. They searched the typewriter, found the dope, and accused Kevin of trying to smuggle drugs in for me.
I never thought for one moment that Kevin’s arrest would land him in prison. I told the court that even though I’d been guilty of absolutely everything else, at that stage I’d never used drugs in my life so how could Kevin be guilty? He had a squeaky-clean police record beforehand so he was entitled to make one mistake in life without it leading to a prison term. My concern was that Kevin would be banned from visiting me in prison – he was barred for 12 months.
The plea in court was that he’d forgotten about the dope because he was absent-minded, self-absorbed, but I’ve never really found that to be the case. He’s just very focused. Very direct. I can ask him anything and get a straight answer. And he’s never judged me, unlike the rest of society. Kevin’s poetry isn’t judgmental, either. Like him, it’s subtle and has great warmth. Writing is Kevin’s lifeblood and without it he’d be lost, so it’s been really pleasing to see him achieve the recognition he enjoys now.
True friendship takes a long, long time to develop, and ours has been through many tests, but it’s still here. I didn’t consider myself a violent man. It wasn’t until later that I understood that, yes, sticking a gun in someone’s face is considered an extremely threatening act. So when Kevin admitted to me recently that he’d been afraid of me at different times, that shocked me immensely, because I had absolutely no comprehension that he would be scared of me. I didn’t think I radiated anything like that.
I haven’t written for a few years, and some writers break their connection with you when they hear that, because that’s all the friendship’s based on – writing. But my friendship with Kevin hasn’t diminished in any way. We both like helping people, and we just enjoy each other’s company.
I’ve been watching his steady progress: he’s made that transition from being the hippy on the bike to the man he is today. I lost a lot of years, but even so I still feel that compared to what he’s achieved, my output has been so minor. In prison, Kevin gave me a voice. He humbles me.