Rural Rhythm

By age 13, Muz was at Barker College in Sydney where rugby league gave way to rugby union but where he floundered with the written word. “Though I was in the top 10% for English in the year 10 certificate, I found the senior curriculum left little room for creativity and I lost interest,” he says. “I actually failed English in the HSC. I only got 48%.” Post-school, he began – and dropped out of – a business degree because his communications lecture clashed with rugby training. It was hardly an auspicious start for a professional poet.

But words die hard, and in quiet moments Muz turned again to their rhythm. He penned a tribute to the high-country cattlemen in Rural Facts and, having moved to Tamworth as a sales manager for Caltex several years earlier, bowled up to the inaugural Tamworth Poetry Competition in 1987. He won his heat, partied all night, woke at midday, finished a new piece about a gunfight between a koala and a possum and headed off to the final at 4pm clad in thongs, t-shirt and a Panama hat. He came second. But then, in his own Steven Bradbury moment, the winner was disqualified and Murray Hartin, the poet, was born.

One poetry win, however, was not going to pay the bills and Muz was back to working a variety of jobs from salesman to assistant electrician to school handyman. But he says Ann Newling, editor of Tamworth’s Northern Daily Leader, “had heard about this footy player who had won a poetry competition and offered me a job on the sport’s desk”. Murray Hartin, the journalist, was born.

Muz worked across regional newspapers including the Newcastle Herald and the Moree Champion often in humorous columns, which allowed him to comment on events of the day, ramble off on tangents and “get to the point, just as soon as I remember what it is”. 

Muz returned to the Tamworth Country Music Festival and the poetry competition each year where, in 1990, a bloke called Marco Gliori was “winning everything”, Muz remembers. The 2 became instant friends.

“I met Muz because he was drinking with the same characters as I was,” Marco says. “But performing was never about the trophies; it was about telling stories about the people who inspire us, so we said let’s get away from this competition and start doing shows.” Joining the pair were Shirley Friend, Ray Essery, Bobby Miller and musician Pat Drummond and for the next 13 years the group, known as The Naked Poets, entertained across the country with a collection of poetry, comic sketches and music. They were popular and accoladed: The Naked Poets won the Bush Laureate Awards’ top album twice while Muz won the year’s best book twice, best poem 3 times and graduated from amateur to professional poet.

“Muz has slept on more couches across Australia than anyone else I know,” Marco says. “This may be why he has so many poems and stories in his repertoire that appeal to audiences of all ages, and he’s every kid’s favourite adopted uncle. Kids love Muz ’cause Muz loves stirring.”

In the midst of The Naked Poets mayhem in 1998, Muz found himself outside Alice Springs at Ooraminna Bush Camp in the company of station owner Billy Hayes. It is easy to imagine the 2 yarning around a camp fire deep into the night, swapping tall tales about jumping bulls over fences or racing a colt up Uluru. “Billy was a great bloke,” Muz says solemnly. “He was the inspiration for Turbulence and when he died in 2011, they read the poem in the NT Parliament in his honour.”

Muz wrote Turbulence at Ooraminna in a couple of hours, performed it the next day on The John Laws Show and in 1999 took it to Tamworth “where it went kaboom”, making it to number 16 on the country music charts. It was named Poem of the Year in 2000 and was the making of Muz as a professional poet.

Not to be overshadowed, Marco was quick to roast his mate, penning the spoof Blurbulence about Muz’s less than glorious, and probably fictitious, escapades on a plane. “It’s one of my favourite poems and I didn’t even write it,” Muz says.

Among the high jinks and the comic poems about hog whisperers and Mrs Johnston’s chooks, Muz channels his serious side in poems such as Spirit – his ode to Australia – and Slouch Hat. “There’s a line in Slouch Hat about the heat of Vietnam, which I wrote to have 2 meanings reflecting the heat soldiers received in action and at home. It is one phrase a lot of vets relate to. I didn’t know it could be that powerful.” As he tells the story his eyes water and his gaze finds far horizons.

For the rural population, it is Rain from Nowhere that produces tears and sombre silences. Like Turbulence, it was written in several hours of enlightened creativity after a discussion Muz had with The Salvation Army on rural depression and suicide. With lines such as “with depression now his master, he abandoned what was right, there’s no place in life for failure, he’d end it all tonight” Rain addresses the white elephant in many rural rooms.

“I’ve seen very tough people tear up,” Muz says of Rain’s impact. “During the break in one show a lanky figure came up to me, shook my hand and said, ‘Thanks mate. You saved me and my dog. I was planning to do us both in and then I heard your poem.’ I asked him how he was doing now, and he smiled and said, ‘Yeah mate, I’m good – and the dog’s fine’.”

Rain has become a beacon for those struggling and a focal point when drought is discussed. It has been quoted in Time magazine and recited in NSW and Federal parliaments. “The poem is about a farmer and his dad but it’s accidentally about every relationship; everyone gets it,” Muz reflects. “You know, when I wrote it I knew I had something good. I ran it past Shirley [from Naked Poets] and her response was it would make my poems a whole lot funnier – and she was right. Whatever I say after Rain always gets a good laugh because it is a release.

It’s not so different to Muz himself: a quick wit and a snappy joke, a quiet moment of introspection and then a big grin and a hearty laugh.

These days Muz is back where it all began in Moree, living on his late father’s block a few clicks out of town. As it was for all performing artists, Muz found COVID tough though he adapted by working on the harvest, serving behind the golf club bar and taking up politics as a local councillor. But with live shows picking up, he is back on the road and once more taking audiences on an emotional ride. “I’m a performance poet,” he says. “My words are meant to be seen and heard rather than read. It’s a visual experience.” 

“Muz’s poetic talents make other poets envious,” Marco says. “I can’t name a poem as popular as either Turbulence or Rain from Nowhere in the past 50 years and his poems, the songs without the music, will live on in the hearts and minds of generations to come. Muz is Muz. Whether he is performing for 10 people at a mental health wellbeing workshop, a group of miners underground in central Queensland, on board a luxury yacht owned by one of the wealthiest identities in Australia or on stage at the Longyard Hotel, what you see is what you get – an authentic, proud Australian.”