Newcastle Poetry Prize 2021 – five flying islanders shortlisted, two on the prize list
Newcastle Poetry Prize 2021 – five flying islanders shortlisted, two on the prize list Read More »
Poems
Common or Garden Poets – Post #2 – Jean Kent inviting Gail Hennessy
In my Mother’s Garden
for Gail Hennessy
first thing from the veranda
an orchestra tuning
instruments of bright …
Kit Kelen, ‘secret no one can keep’
For an hour before dawn a secret bird
practises its song. Nine notes,
a melody neat
as an artlessly tied silk scarf,
too quicky looped &
flung around the neck of the garden
for its labour to linger in my ear.
In this drowsing twilight my dream –
harrowing empty corridors,
seeding departed rooms
with small hopes of finding my mother—
ends with a bunch of hospital flowers,
a bought garden bright in my hands
but no dented metal dipper like hers
offering a rainwater bath before a vase.
Spangled with spiderwebs her garden
makes mazes now—
narrow pathways with more room
for plants than people.
Under the curtaining wisteria
who will take banana peel
to the orchids? Who will shiver the dew
over the freesias and the thryptomene?
Who will follow her,
snipping and sniffing and accepting
the riddles of sleeping under earth
and waking seasons later
as if the secret we forget could never be
that we’re just flutter-byes,
brief flittery visitors
to these springs, premature
or predictably passing
in a wink?
Remembering our hydrangeas of childhood,
how patiently they waited for summer
to fill heads with sky-blue
I think of the man in Japan
drowned in tears after the 2011 tsunami,
searching for his family in the Fukushima ruins
until, at last, he planted canola,
a maze of rising sunshine,
a place to be happily lost.
Though it will not last forever,
the light is longer there.
It opens the faces of visitors like secrets
everyone is happy to share.
For this season of flowering, at least,
we all know
if we save the garden, the garden may save us.
JEAN KENT
Common or Garden Poets – Post #2 – Jean Kent inviting Gail Hennessy Read More »
Common or Garden Poets – Post #1 – Kit Kelen inviting Jean Kent
secret no one can keep
for Jean Kent
and now everyone knows
it’s the longer light
the mud to life
(a theory once)
how dare
and flirt
first thing from the veranda
an orchestra tuning
instruments of bright
nor anything regular intended
feathers carry word (which isn’t)
insects cone up, gyre like motes
can’t help the odd paint splash now
flowers all put on a show
a riddle in the turning
how we could come to here
woody thickets of delve
where nectar
parrots in mandarin
brazen sneak
glimpse them wing it too
a rite?
commence thirst
near the zenith
throw cloud by shade
we seek
and shield the eyes from glare
later in the day
burn off last winter piles
a season as ever
never before!
limber and spit
get your hands on it
try a little nakedness now
dance breeze
dusk dew welcome
it is a week premature perhaps
sprightly and soon sprawl
the secret is out
now it’s Spring!
kk
Common or Garden Poets – Post #1 – Kit Kelen inviting Jean Kent Read More »
Oh Terrific
So now they tell me business is business, sometimes up sometimes down that’s the breaks, it’s just how it crumbles so many sayings, turnoff tropes to suppress the outrage to discount further cheap antics, the raw peeling of layer under layer of ripoff, of ruin: “Not to worry she’s dancing in heaven” we look down at this morning’s leftovers while upstairs, hammers clunk clumsily on a project going 7 years, maybe 9. Now they tell me.
The Unlearner
How many times has it looked like the end…no way around or across? Three thousand and a half weeks Navigating sundowns, we’re still crossing over from morning wondering what the hell to learn, and how much was forgotten- Or bloody well should have been
Alloy, Usually Hardened response to “How Would You Like…”)
Alloy, Usually Hardened
(response to “How Would You Like…”)
This is what you call joy
created through an amalgam
of death and rhythm
an admixture of metals
in a city nothing more
than concrete and dreams
built from frozen seconds.
Kodak Instamatic, a birthday gift
which only captured black and white.
I could tell from your face
radiant
in a way I would not see again
even on the third, fourth, fifth marriage
your finger heavy with the weight of
so many rings
that I was dancing
twirling like a clumsy ballerina
just outside the boundary of the frame.
I’m still dancing
no more graceful than I was then
caught in the suede fringe of your
famous jacket.
Just behind you, behind him
is a couple kissing
against a winter tree
no leaves, just a ghost of a tree
a ghost of love.
Alloy, Usually Hardened response to “How Would You Like…”) Read More »
How Would You Like…
Everyone’s a transplant and an amalgam– Alloy, usually hardened. Yet getting pliable and vulnerable is suggested – recommended. We know better than to require the exigent. Rebellious help is not help: just ask my friend the restauranteur. The food is fusion but the help is fission. Our way of getting through all this mixing and unmatching– is in our way.
How Would You Like… Read More »
what shall we do nest year?
what shall we do nest year?
for Sarah St Vincent Welch
when every month’s of Sundays
and all the moons are blue
a peach blossom wild creek
tangle with ferns
we will live in a typographical error
and go to press that way
chorus of twig and leaf to prove
the birds beginning Spring
what shall we do nest year? Read More »
Lockdown blog
Stuck in Sydney in the family home, I’ve begun a daily blog inspired by my daily walks through the nearby Dame Eadith Walker Estate. Here’s a sample.
Preface
The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne by Gilbert White (1720-1793) has provided both an inspiration and a template for this lockdown blog. The following has been lifted directly from this text:
The author of the following letters takes the liberty, with all proper deference, of laying before the public his idea of parochial history, which, he thinks, ought to consist of natural productions and occurrences as well as antiquities. He is also of the opinion that if stationary men and women would pay some attention to the districts in which they reside, and would publish their thoughts respecting the objects around them, from such materials might be drawn the most complete county-histories.
Day I – Saturday the 24th of July, 2021 AD
Dear Sir
The Dame Eadith Walker Estate is within half a mile of my current accommodation. Lockdown has provided myself with the opportunity to walk the grounds of this fine estate on a daily basis. In the following days I will provide you with a description of my observations on a daily basis.
Today, a stiff breeze from the north-west at around 20mph (ref. BOM) has discouraged most birds from feeding in the open grass field on the north side. They have mostly retreated to the trees or to the southern fields on the lee side. Welcome swallows (more details to follow) and magpies are the most obvious.
Yours etc.
Sunday the 25th of July 2021 AD
Dear Sir,
The Dame Eadith Walker Estate, also known as Yaralla Estate, and now home to the Dame Eadith Walker Hospital, lies in the suburb of Concord West, in the city of Canada Bay, formerly the municipality of Concord, in the Parish of Concord, in the County of Cumberland, in the state electorate of Drummoyne, in the federal division of Reid, formerly the division of Lowe, located on a promontory on the Parramatta River between Majors Bay to the east and Yaralla Bay to the west, approximately half-way between the centres of the cities of Sydney and of Parramatta, in latitude 33.847 south and 151.087 east.
The Estate is bordered on it’s west side by Nullawarra Avenue. The avenue is lined with what I think are maple trees. At this time of year, they are totally bereft of leaves, but the branches are still holding a fair number of seed pods. There are hundreds of these pods on the ground under each of these trees. The pods are hard, sharp, dry and brown. They are a serious trip hazard and must be responsible for many sprained ankles. They’re aesthetically unpleasant and do not look appetising at all. However I’ve witnessed rainbow lorikeets tucking into them. They must have been hungry.
Yours etc.
killing my commas softly (Sarah St Vincent Welch)
killing my commas softly (Sarah St Vincent Welch)
enamoured of the pause
the dawdling the adding on
the lists, the enjambent
forced, I admit
less in love
with the arguments the rules
the haughtiness of editors
(not poetry editors, mind you)
my prosey report editing colleagues
holding up a falling edifice
by themselves the masses
revolting
the commas in their iron hearts
the comma the most weaponised
of all punctuation
aimed across desks as ninja stars
commas the shape of tears
raining from above
I prefer to massage a sentence
break it up gently with a timely, small
restructure to avoid the stabs
I avoid pain
in poetry my commas are shedding
like autumn falls
like rubbed eyelashes
crescents
scales
a sweep of black kohl wiped off with oil
even the ninja stars yes
the shurikens spinning
lodged in the walls
I leap to the ceiling and cling
uncut
my aspiration is to let
you find your own breath
within my lines my marks
rarely ask for you to hold
for over long
to tease you to a pant
on occasion
then rest in a space
an absence
a rythmic
letting go
killing my commas softly (Sarah St Vincent Welch) Read More »