It's well known that Elvis never toured internationally because his Dutch-born manager, "Colonel" Tom Parker, believed that if he (Parker) ever left the United States he would not be allowed back in. This did nothing to lessen Elvis’ appeal around the world, and Australia was no exception, where a healthy fascination with the King still very much exists. Every year on Elvis’ birthday, around 30,000 Australian Elvis impersonators descend upon the small rural town of Parkes for the Parkes Elvis Festival. Now in its 28th year, the festival holds over 200 events across five days.
The Parkes Elvis Festival
Sadly, not all Australians’ passion for Elvis translates into such joyous events. After holding out for as long as possible, fearing the worst, I recently saw Elvis, the biopic by Australian director Baz Luhrmann, for which I feel it is my patriotic duty to apologize for.
As an olive branch I offer “The Biography of Elvis” by Claire Nashar, a Sydney-born poet who completed her Ph.D. at the University of Buffalo, and has two collections of poetry to her name: Lake (2016) and Handmade (2015). Nashar’s poem adds sometimes absurd and fantastical, often intimate and quotidian details (all hearsay) to Elvis’ bloated legend. To me, these speculations, no louder than murmurs, seem far more worthy inclusions to Elvis’ story than Mr. Lurhmann’s overblown theatrics.
Biography of Elvis
(after Mark Leidner)
They say Elvis could shoot a hoop from twelve metres out.
They say it was because he was missing a tiny bone
in each of his wrists.
They say that when he sweated the inside of his clothes
became gilded, and if they happened to already be gilded, became
like rainbows or supernovae.
They say that Elvis had a way with birds.
They say that this explains the mob of ornithologists that tried
to kill him in Georgia.
They say that once, after observing the flight of a group of grey
pigeons, Elvis predicted the rise and fall of the Spice Girls.
They say that if you listen to Blue Suede Shoes backwards, that’s
what it says.
They say that when Elvis was a child he often saw the ghost of a dog
that had been shot in the head.
They say that when he was older he drank dom peringon just to
forget it.
They say that he once lived in Alaska, in a spare log cabin with a
potbelly stove, and watched movies about pilgrims on
the television sets which he collected to people his
home with presidents and game show hosts.
They say that he once visited Sydney, Australia, but I’m not sure
I believe that one.
They say that Elvis never told a lie.
They say that he married for love.
They say that when his heart broke for the first time he created a dance move
so sad that it would break all other hearts forever, but that it made
him so afraid that he died without ever showing it to anyone.
They say that Elvis was a born a Leo, but that in end
it didn’t matter.
They say that if he had been born an insect he
would have made a great bumble bee.
They say that if Elvis had been born a fruit-bearing tree
he would have been a Santa Rosa plum.
They say that if Elvis had never been born at all, Michael Jackson
would have been forced to invent him out of plasticine
and chux wipes and to breathe the breath of life
into his puny open mouth.
All in all, they say that Elvis was sometimes a very sad man.
They say that after Michael Jackson brought him to life
Elvis cried and cried and cried.
They say that to this day, he has not moved in a very
long time.
They say he had a twin brother who died at birth
in a shack in Mississippi, about that one
the biographers tend to agree.
They say that whenever he checked out of a hotel
he would write the cleaners of that hotel a heartfelt
message on the special hotel stationary and sign it
with a flourish of the special hotel pen, which afterwards
he would sometimes, but always absentmindedly,
put in his pocket.
Comments