'The poems within marionette: notes toward the life of miss marion davies are drawn from my longer poetic biography of the early cinema actress, who was the long-time lover of millionaire media tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Marion's silencing by the early cinema screen provides a powerful metaphor for her subsequent ‘silencing’ by Hearst, who largely controlled her career and—as much as he could—her actions in public. Marion’s story is marked by whispers, gossip, rumors, lies, and plot holes. marionette is an attempt to enact and recover Marion’s playful voice and spirit.' (Publication summary)
Marionette : A Biography of Miss Marion Davies
Simon Charles
(composer),
Victoria
:
Sibercha Records
,
2018
16606520
2018
selected work
poetry
'“Marion Davies is perhaps best known for her 30-year affair with media mogul William Randolph Hearst, whose influence was instrumental in shaping her public image as an early cinema actress. The millionaire tycoon largely controlled her career and—as much as he could—her actions in public. Whilst there are countless biographies on William Randolph Hearst, there are very few texts written specifically on Marion Davies. The closest we can get to her story is an autobiography, The Times We Had: Life with William Randolph Hearst, cobbled together from a series of taped interviews, in which Marion often conceals the truth to protect her lover and friends.
'Jessica L. Wilkinson’s original text marionette: a biography of miss marion davies (published by Vagabond in 2012) draws attention to the gaps and inconsistencies in her story, whilst also attempting—playfully—to locate the voice and spirit of a woman whose story can never be fully told.
'This album release documents the creative partnership between Simon Charles and Jessica Wilkinson, which brings Wilkinson’s text into a CD format. Read by Wilkinson herself, the text is accompanied by a collage of instrumental and electro-acoustic performances. The album explores the fragmentation and disintegration of text, manipulation of vocal utterance, and a construction of Davies’ image through peripheral threads of narrative and sound.”"' (Production abstract)
'T he act of reading for appraisal rather than pleasure is a privilege that brings me to a deepened understanding of the contemporary in Australian poetry, the way the past is being framed, its traditions, celebrities and enigmas washed up in new and hybrid appearances or redressed in more conventional, sometimes nimbus forms. Judith Wright wrote that the ‘place to find clues is not in the present, it lies in the past: a shallow past, as all immigrants to Australia know, and all of us are immigrants.’ The discipline of reading to filter such a range of voices underlines my foreignness, making reading akin to translation, whilst reciprocally inviting the reader of this essay to become a foreigner to my assumptions and conclusions.' (Introduction)
'T he act of reading for appraisal rather than pleasure is a privilege that brings me to a deepened understanding of the contemporary in Australian poetry, the way the past is being framed, its traditions, celebrities and enigmas washed up in new and hybrid appearances or redressed in more conventional, sometimes nimbus forms. Judith Wright wrote that the ‘place to find clues is not in the present, it lies in the past: a shallow past, as all immigrants to Australia know, and all of us are immigrants.’ The discipline of reading to filter such a range of voices underlines my foreignness, making reading akin to translation, whilst reciprocally inviting the reader of this essay to become a foreigner to my assumptions and conclusions.' (Introduction)
