The Dog Man is now ready to tackle the worlds of poetry and art.

The Dog Man is now ready to tackle the worlds of poetry and art.

Martin McKenna, The Dog Man, is retiring from the dog rescue world this year to pursue a career in art – and his new memoir shows why he may be an artist worth following.

Martin McKenna, known to million of Australians on radio as The Dog Man over the past 15 years, is now announcing his official retirement from the dog rescue world. To celebrate his life of helping strays in need, he’s written his memoir, The Boy Who Talked To Dogs about where his story began – as a boy growing up in Limerick, Ireland. Already the book is gaining international interest.

‘I learned about dogs in a very unusual way,’ he explains. ‘When I was 13, I was a troubled, rebellious kid. My father drank and was often violent. My teachers bullied me for being dyslexic and severely hyperactive. Some older neighborhood kids wouldn’t stop tormenting me – calling me one of ‘Hitler’s secret experiments’ because I was an identical triplet and my mother was a German immigrant. Finally, I decided I’d had enough of humans. One night I climbed out my bedroom window and ran away. I ended up living rough with six stray dogs for three years. We became a pack, though I preferred to call it a gang. These dogs became my best friends and family. They taught me so much – about the Dog World – but ultimately about myself.’

‘Living rough certainly isn’t romantic,’ he says bluntly. ‘I was often cold, wet and hungry. Sometimes it got extremely tough but I stayed on the streets because the dogs and I enjoyed such incredible freedom. In some ways it was the best time of my life – a huge adventure. However, without the dogs at my side, I would have been miserable – there’s no doubt about that.’

Now Martin is announcing his bold move into the art world as he explores a deeper, more personal side of himself. His unique artworks are a combination of poetry and art. ‘Paper installations, digital artworks, canvases – I do them all,’ he says. ‘It’s all my original poems painted on startling abstract colour. 

When asked to describe how he got interested in art, he smiles. ‘Like everything in my life, it’s pretty unusual. It started with poetry. In 2009, I still couldn’t read or write. As I show in my book – school was a nightmare for me. I had ADHD, otherwise known as severe hyperactivity and I was also dyslexic. Worse, I ended up with two real bullies of teachers who made my life complete hell, openly mocking me when I couldn’t learn anything. When I still couldn’t read and write my own name in sixth class, they started beating me and openly calling me ‘Stupid Boy’. School was such a nightmare experience, that I was adamant that I was never going to attempt reading and writing again.’

‘Then in 2009 everything changed and I had had a huge burst of creativity. All these poems started pouring into my head for the first time in my life. I have no idea why – maybe my ADHD was starting to finally slow down – but there the poems were – whirling around inside my head, impossible to ignore. My wife Lee is very cultured is constantly showing our family art and poetry, just as her mother did before her; so the seeds for creativity were already there. Maybe my subconscious just decided it was time to start inventing my own stuff because I was so bored by the famous poems Lee was reading out. I know I was supposed to be awed, but I couldn’t help yawning through a lot of them. I thought some poets desperately needed some heavy editing. Meanwhile, I was desperately trying to remember each of my own poems by memory – but there were soon too many – hundreds of them. It was very distracting so I finally agreed to bite the bullet and learn how to read and write. If I needed to write them down, then I was going to have to pick up a pen voluntarily for the first time in years.’

‘Lee is a truly gifted teacher. She’s even more stubborn than I am and wouldn’t let me give up. I can’t tell you how difficult it was for me struggling with the alphabet when I was in my late forties. I picked up reading pretty quickly but writing was a complete nightmare. My youngest daughter was six years old and gleefully out-reading and writing me. I was constantly asking her things like, “How do you do a capital G?” or “What’s that question mark thing again? Can you show me once more?” To be honest, the whole thing was a nightmare trip to hell, full of tantrums and moments of extreme frustration when pens and bits of paper went flying off the verandah – that’s where my writing table is. Some of these scraps ended up just messy, smudged scribbles – but slowly my writing and spelling improved until one day I realized – “OK – take a deep breath, I’ve got it – I’m actually writing.” This took me about sixth months of punishing hard work and pure stubborn grit. Now I have plastic bags full of these paper scraps covered in poems – and the pile just keeps growing. I still write my poems long hand, but now write them down in exercise books. I must have written over 3000 poems by now – and there’s more coming every day.’

I was so proud of my early poems, but the initial excitement soon wore off. Looking down at the small, crumpled pieces of paper, I felt they didn’t do justice to my words – so I decided to turn them into art works instead.

I wanted an art style that didn’t date and was fast to paint to suit my temperament – so I experimented with finger-painting. I covered A4 pieces of paper with bright, abstract color and once they were dry, wrote the poems on top with ink. Straight away, these small pieces of art looked spectacular because they really showed the ferocious energy I was trying to capture. Whenever I cover the interior walls of my house with these painted pieces of paper, it’s quite overwhelming – like being immersed in a universe of surging poetry and colour. I’m trying to show all the energy and imagination going on inside my mind.

I’ve had some of these A4 pieces of paper blown up into huge digital canvases, which look amazing – especially after I paint over the lettering again with thick gold paint. This really makes the poems jump out at you. My favorite is Socrates Sugar-Crashing.

However, now I prefer to paint my poems in acrylic on large canvases, using my whole hand to move the paints around freely. Bold colors on this large scale makes these canvases extremely powerful. The gold paint of the lettering painted over the top shimmers like Byzantine pieces. I haven’t had time to paint many canvases because I’ve been so busy writing and publicizing my memoir in America, Ireland, the UK and now Brazil, but I’ve sold all of the canvases I’ve made so far. All except the first painting I ever made – which I’ve decided to keep. I’ll never forget creating it – I felt such an incredibly potent feeling! In future, I plan to inscribe my poems on large, thin slabs of marble and hang them on walls. I’ll paint into the inscribed lettering with craggy, thick gold paint. These art works will allow my poems to be read for hundreds if not thousands of years.

I’m so excited about the future and can’t believe how much creativity is exploding out of me. I’m constantly coming up with new colour ideas and poetry obsesses me. It’s a big claim to make after only six years of creating art, but I want to be seen as the greatest poet-artist of the 21^st century. There aren’t many artists painting poems on canvases, but I feel mine are the boldest and most eye-catching at the moment. My poems are short, sharp and fresh. Perhaps because I wasn’t trained in traditional poetry forms and follow my own instincts, this makes me different from most other poets out there.

Who’s my competition? The most famous poet-artist in the world at the moment is Rene Ricard in New York who was part of Andy Warhol’s infamous inner circle of artists who frequented the 54 Club. I wasn’t aware of his existence until I read about him last year in an old Vanity Fair magazine. I actually got my original idea for painting poems on art works from my wife Lee. She painted scenes from her original poems for her HSC when she was in high school. I remember looking through her big book of illustrated poems, which were about 10 bicycle rides she made to Barrenjoey Lighthouse in Palm Beach, from her home in Avalon and thought – “Wow. Poetry is powerful on art. Now that really works.” 

I’m already part of an exciting gallery in Nimbin called The Brush Off Gallery. Rosyln Parry is the artist-owner and had a fascinating childhood growing up in Papua New Guinea. She’s exhibited at many prestigious art galleries in Sydney over the past 30 years.

I felt right at home the moment I stepped inside her gallery. It’s like something out of the back streets of Paris in the early 20^th century. It’s tiny and cramped; every wall is crammed with paintings, while others canvases are stacked against walls. The floors are covered in old dripped paint, while a street cat struts around, overseeing the place. Every day a surprising amount of curious, cultured young European, Asian and American tourists wander through, who are delighted, saying they haven’t been in an old-fashioned gallery like this for years. The poetry lovers amongst them see my art and immediately stop and stare. They haven’t seen anything like it and quickly start reading my poems to see if they’re any good – and so far, they’re impressed. Most are university students and are passionate about art and poetry, so conversations and debates can get very lively. It’s about as far away from your usual sterile city gallery as you can get and I love it. I think it’ll be a vitally important gallery in the stunning Nimbin area – especially in future decades.

Although I’m sad to leave behind the public side of helping rescue dogs after twenty years – I know I’m doing the right thing. I feel like I’ve finally repaid my debt of thanks to those amazing six stray dogs that helped me survive my time living rough around Garryowen in Limerick. My gut is telling me to follow this new creative side of me right now and take it as far as I can – and to do that properly, I need to throw myself headfirst into my poetry and art.

Am I crazy? I don’t think so. When I first started in the dog industry over twenty years ago, a lot of people laughed at me – but I just got on with it. Now I’m the best-known dog communicator in Australia and have been a guest on tv and many cultural radio shows such as Philip Adams on Late Night Live, Fran Kelly’s National Breakfast show and Margaret Throsby’s Classic FM Midday show.

Then there were the people who laughed when I said I was going to write a book. I couldn’t read and write much more than my own name in 2009 – yet here I am today with an international memoir and represented by the Writers House in New York, one of the most prestigious literary agencies in the world. I also wrote two books on dog language and culture here in Australia, one of which became an instant bestseller.

Now I want to be a great poet-artist – and I’ve already come up with a unique style and written thousands of poems that are ready to paint. History will tell if I’m good enough to be remembered – and that’s the only critic I’m bothering to listening to. That and my own gut instinct, which hasn’t let me down so far.

To be honest, I feel utterly fearless, like a warrior-bard who’s getting ready for battle. I sense the poetry and art worlds are ready for a bit of a shake up and believe my work has what it takes to have a big impact on both these quite conservative worlds. Whatever happens, I know I’ll have my family and a pack of staunch dogs watching my back, urging me on, pushing to discover how far I can go.

My memoir, The Boy Who Talked To Dogs will give you a great insight into the sort of person I am. Even when I was a rebellious boy of 13, I always chose to live life on the edge – so I’m certainly not going to walk away from taking a risk now. I’m just at the start of the second half of my life and I’m raring to get on with it. If there’s one thing the stray dogs of Garryowen taught me – it’s to look tomorrow straight in the eye with courage.