Born in New York, he lived in many countries until Australia finally took him in. He was a Foreign Expert EFL teacher in China for many years. He now lives in Castlemaine, Vic. where he enjoys the blue skies, fresh air and the birds. There were some extreme sports once; now he plays (mostly) respectable chess and pool. A Moonbeam’s Metamorphosis/The Parachuting Man (with Nicholas Coleman) was published in 1979 by LEFTBANK PORTFOLIOS (Melbourne). He published two poetry collections in Shanghai: Snake Wine (2006) and Where Sound Goes When It’s Done (2010). A Chance of Seasons was published by Flying Island Books in 2017. More recently some of his poems have appeared in The Anthill, Oz Burp (Five) zine, Ariel Chart, The Blue Nib Magazine, Bluepepper, The Rye Whiskey Review, Pink Cover Zine, The Raw Art Review, OutlawPoetry, HUSK, the Sappho Lives! Anthology (2019, 2020), Taking Shape (Newcastle Poetry at the Pub Anthology, 2018, 2019, 2020), and the Messages From The Embers bushfire anthology (Black Quill Press, 2020). When he’s not writing, he likes taking photographs. He listens to the Grateful Dead. Some days he thinks there is nothing easy about the Tao.
Some recent poems…
SPOT ME
My strength ebbs away
like a grip on the tide
dangerous invitations
I counted most important
rucking forever, battling
sunrises and sunsets
past the moments
I might’ve stopped
working up the plate rack
what was I thinking
small animals press
a hundred times their weight
now watch me blow
ants have no problem
cats vault fences
I used to measure
now measure other things
TOMORROW
Some carry everything
even their survival
dragged till sundown
just imagine it
all the food in the world
and the pockets of nothing
eating bitterness
hold yours tight
never let me go
imagine the pillow
beneath your head
the limited supply
deal with it they said
can’t eat any more
have another bite
imagine Big Got
clean clothes well fed
his children wait
the pie in the sky
sits at the rainbow
gets on the next bus
CLEANING MY IGLOO
The violence of noise
music as a place to think
the wind is howling
call it peace
cleaning my igloo
the desperate times
that are returned to
their prepositions
or call it protest
against a war
I cannot fracture
however gently
revisiting the light
From “A Chance of Seasons” (Flying Island Books, 2017)
She Saved My Ass
During an altercation
in a bar one night
she saved my ass
my back was turned
he came up with a knife
she hit him with a bottle
she was from the mountains
they believe in hard things
it was then I fell in love
big arms and shoulders
every inch of her 6 foot tall
it was such a simple thing
when we were leaving
she stomped hard on his hand
after that the graceful years
Lord she was so tender
her feet were lovely &
she loved me very well.
A Soldier’s Cough
Head sounds like a drum when it’s scratched Left ear still sore after a blow 25 years ago A throat that lost its whisper song and shout A lonely whisker creeps to just below the eye The neck that shook the bridge for days is weak The old chest looks full but the heart is hollow Old comrades say that vitamins will put it right (A pity the right side doesn’t quite match the left) Broken leg the pelvis spine back my knees and feet Sore from a million steps in the wrong direction A cough that alerts the dog who begins to bark The doctors say there will be no more fighting I climb the stairs slowly to my small apartment Grateful that my eyes can still see you waving While you hang the wind in your white clothes.
Clark Gormley is a poet and singer-songwriter based in Newcastle, Australia. He has been involved in organising and promoting local poetry readings for over 20 years.He has been published in several anthologies including Visions From the Valley, A Slow Combusting Hymn and Brew 30 Years of Poetry at the Pub Newcastle. He has written and performed three nerd-themed one-man shows, and is working on a fourth. He’s also written a bunch of wordy songs, most of which he has sung in the duo Nerds & Music. Gormley pursues these creative endeavours in an effort to counterbalance the stodginess of a career in chemical engineering.
His flying islands book, Not What You Think, was published in 2019.
Much is on my website https://photovoltaicpoetry.com.au/, including a link to my new album based on my daily Pandemic journal, VIRUS 2020.
Poem
‘Take ekphrastic inspiration by responding to Olive Cotton’s The photographer’s shadow (1935).’
Here is my effort in any case, perhaps too prosaic, too much information, a tribute when I come to think of it, to a remarkable woman and artist. I wanted to celebrate a marvellous photograph, my favourite of hers.
‘A partial eclipse ~ Olive Cotton, The Photographer’s Shadow, 1935’
I sense her finger crouch, a waft of excitement, tempered
by darkroom apprehension. At first, you would prefer the heads
to align, but that would probably appear too contrived and lose
both Janus and that touch of Bresson’s decisive moment.
‘I don’t believe it’, shouts Max, hands on his head, or mimes
Munch’s Scream in a compact composition, flat origami,
lines and blocks in graded shades. Becoming familiar
with this chemical romance I’m sure this moment took time.
Her arms are sculptural, symmetrical, grounding the image
and they echo the relaxed arms of her model and lover,
her stand-over tactics prevent her nestling in his arms.
Max flops on his back, repetition with diverse consonants.
Thirties beauty was clean lines, fashion, stylish sunglasses
ignoring the beauty Polykleitos achieved using strict formulae
to chisel male nudes, stretching and relaxing athletic limbs
to embody erect perfection. After all, the gods take human form.
The gym body is now ideal but she muddies his torso,
doesn’t care to crop a swatch of swimming trunks
teasing an everyday aesthetic, ordinary glimpses
stretching time and place, if only we paid more attention.
Bush or beach are the Australian locations. Childhood friend
and later husband, Max Dupain, famously exploited the latter
(Sontag stressed, that’s what photographs do). Both children
played with Kodak Box Brownies, Olive’s ‘great awakening’.
The subjects are well known, well, hardly subjects, they float
through history, voiceless and paper dry in this brief eclipse
yet we share their vast circumstance of sky, heat and jaunty light,
the silver presence of the gulls, our noisy abrasive ocean.
One figure prone on earth grain, one ghost in negative radiance,
heads dead centre of the body, ephemeral . . . Have we become
too focused on images? Ekphrasis has been inverted.
100 million Instagram posts shared daily need more poetry.
Look between your legs. Go on, upside down, as blood rushes
to your visual cortex a giant locust hovers and a man vomits
an unkempt beard thirsty for play, surreal, artistic and ridiculous.
Have you decided? Scream or laughter? Rabbit or duck?
We can’t control what we see, mortality, scraps of beach-towel,
one vague nipple. Saccades give the game away. Men go for
the eyes then the erogenous zones, improvising love and eros.
They both loved shadows, increasingly rare phenomena.
~~
If you need a narrative this moment passed, their shadows stretched.
They left and went home for dinner. The country went to war.
Olive left Max for a new husband and his farm near Cowra, and
for children, isolation and poverty without electricity or water running.
I feel sad because the marvellous career of the photographer Olive Cotton
kind of stopped . . . she married another guy and moved to the country.
Shaune Lakin, curator
I was very happy, I loved the space and freedom. I never regretted coming here.
Olive Cotton
Myron Lysenko began writing haiku and senryu in the late 1990’s. He is the Victorian Representative for the Australian Haiku Society. He has published seven books of poetry, the most recent two consisting of haiku. His latest, published by Flying Islands was released in January 2021 and is titled a ghost gum leans over.
Myron has run almost 50 public and private ginko since 2008. A ginko is a haiku outing in a scenic spot where a group people gather to write haiku, then share, discuss and revise them.
His poems have appeared over 600 times in journals and anthologies around the world.Myron has been writing, performing, publishing, editing and conducting poetry workshops since 1980. He was a founding editor (with Kevin Brophy) of the lively independent literary magazineGoing Down Swinging from 1980 to 1994. They then passed the magazine on to new editors.
Myron is a poetry organiser; he was director of the Montsalvat National Poetry Festival, a convenor of La Mama Poetica, and currently runs the monthly reading in Woodend, Victoria Chamber Poets.
Myron teaches creative writing at the Woodend Neighbourhood House and is the leader of the poetry and music band Black Forest Smoke who have released a CD It’s Alright.
Books:
Coughing With Confidence Pets & Death & Indoor Plants I’m Ukrainian, Mate Winning and Losing Winning and Losing Again a rosebush grabs my sleeve a ghost gum leans over
You can see Myron reading his poetry or playing with his band here:
Here is the opening sequence from a ghost gum leans over:
sarcoma
(for Lucy Lysenko, diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma on Oct 2008)
winter chill
the GP can’t explain
the pain in her knee
compost heap –
she rings to say her knee
has been x-rayed
nectarine blossoms
the teenager diagnosed
with bone cancer
x-ray vision
a rare bone cancer
in her knee
Ewings Street
is just around the corner…
Ewings Sarcoma’s here
did the specialist say
she may not need surgery?
medical jargon
taxi to hospital
she tells me to stop
telling jokes
she sets up a tent
at the Falls Festival
new crutches
the surgeon
replaces her knee...
late summer heat
ambulance to Peter Mac
to begin chemotherapy --
perfect beach weather
Bloom Haibun
The pale and bloated teenage girl is lying in a hospital bed. There are cards lined up on a shelf above her head. The smell of dinner spreading through the wards is a warning that visiting time will soon be over. There are three elderly patients and four televisions in this ward but none of them are switched on. The girl’s father is at the foot of the bed with a cryptic crossword and her mother is standing with her arms crossed at the window. The oncologist is coming through the door.
rose petals
she begins to lose
her hair
leaves falling
in the moonlight
her nightmares
a blackbird
flies towards the moon
cancer ward
winter wind
she cries on her way
to more chemo
chemo no. 9
after her constipation
diarrhoea
she flies to Sydney
to see her favourite band
infected PICC line
her port
malfunctions…
chemo postponed
on crutches at a party
she falls onto her knee
Oxycontin tablets
low platelets
her immune system
is zero
closed pink coffin
her bald teen friends
cry together
black orchids
the pain in her knee
is still there
her kneecap rubs
against her inner thigh bone
nectarine buds
last rounds
of chemotherapy
empty bed
remission
she books her tickets
for a holiday in Europe
end of chemo party
I perform a song with a sing along
cancer chorus
six years cancer free a day full of rain
her positive results
on the ten-year check...
a new tattoo
Kerri Shying is a poet of Wiradjuri and Chinese family, publishing across many journals and anthologies.
She is the author of a bilingual pocketbook of poems “sing out when you want me”,2017, Flying Island Press, “Elevensies”, 2018 Puncher and Wattman and “Knitting Mangrove Roots”2019, Flying Island Press.
Kerri held the Varuna Dr Eric Dark Flagship Fellowship for 2019 for her current collection ‘Know Your Country” 2020, Puncher and Wattman, and was shortlisted in 2017 for both the Helen Ann Bell Prize and the Noel Rowe Award.
Kerri has been convenor of Write Up for 5 years, a free arts/writing group for people living with disability.
She lives with disability in Newcastle, NSW with her famous dog Max Spangly.
Kerri is a nominee in https://theaspireawards.com.au 2020, an activity of the Human Rights Commission, for disability activism in the arts.
Gumar
Speaking – Uncle Ray Kelly snr
what i’m doing today wishing i was
with the bronze winged pigeon cousin
she’d make me laugh the hairless cats
the dachshund made of ball bags pickled
grey pink asked her once if an animal with
hair arrived at their place would they shave it
she made that face that went back years
crossed the generations we are the arms
the legs the bodies mouths speaking gumar
spilling laughter hiding feathers
Emptying tea leaves in autumn
this half moon golden stuck
by mist along the nest side
of the yucca tree night
calls winter one quilt
nestling animals grown indoor
in weeks
books and porridge
talk to me from behind
say its time for fire
we’re waiting on
the other side
Nothing like Nimbin
suffering the climate doesn’t
lend itself to real hard scour
for the poor see the bastards
loll about in board shorts
growing veggies like the climate
eggs them on a failure
to participate is no great thing
the ferals like the old blokes say
some in every town back out where
the dairy farmers were before the soy
the nuts the milk that went the way
of lard
I’ve been running round all week
on the chase for how much heroin
it takes to kill a normal person
just try coming out with that and
they say decency
is dead
I wish it was you
before you get the wrong end
of the stick in my own defence
I have to say love is
consensual the underclass
could mind their business too
I’m knitting mangroves root by root surviving
night and day the inrush of the tides i’m
waterlogged I’m dry I’m all the decades of fringe sitting
knitting and unwinding telling keeping secrets
all the words destined to wash up this
kitchenette my laundry torn apart by crabs
sluiced to sea relying as I do on you the moon
aiding and abetting sun if they can prove it
so many other crimes I live between the heat the bats
this under over day and night the leaves the
tips the roots the air the water knitting all the time
parental advice
you can disguise the way
your past stinks
fake a shallow grave just
halve the normal depth so your decoy
fuckwittery can be inserted
as a gravel bed to divert a nose from
sin guilt shame
your belief that
others ought not look your
way
again
you
take the corpse of something small a
crime of less significance classic
is the body of a dog
to hide the remnants
of a man
let
the finding of the one account for the stench
of that it pains you to explain admit
account for nothing
Kerri Shying is a poet of Wiradjuri and Chinese family, publishing across many journals and anthologies.
She is the author of a bilingual pocketbook of poems “sing out when you want me”,2017, Flying Island Press, “Elevensies”, 2018 Puncher and Wattman and “Knitting Mangrove Roots”2019, Flying Island Press.
Kerri held the Varuna Dr Eric Dark Flagship Fellowship for 2019 for her current collection ‘Know Your Country” 2020, Puncher and Wattman, and was shortlisted in 2017 for both the Helen Ann Bell Prize and the Noel Rowe Award.
Kerri has been convenor of Write Up for 5 years, a free arts/writing group for people living with disability.
She lives with disability in Newcastle, NSW with her famous dog Max Spangly.
Kerri is a nominee in https://theaspireawards.com.au 2020, an activity of the Human Rights Commission, for disability activism in the arts.
Here’s some Elevensies from “Knitting Mangrove Roots”
saw his hands stimming over lies
and thought it’s good you’ll be gone
soon those buckled bulbs for
fingernails the giveaway of a heart
about to blow the eloquence of illness
far surpassed the itchy dogs that fell limping from his mouth
nothing he said worth a dollar on the
open market no exchange rate for
who’d pay some stories ought
to die those names for things rubbed out
in the sand the beginning it was the word
why can't you whisper it to me
has it got to be this shout from
one day to the next every sinew
pulled up hard each movement
effort to caress what ails the
buttress on a falling wall with sticks
is how i see my mind these days
one more pill in the phalanx that wheels
across the week this skirmish or another
there is no battle just a little less
nothing can be won
someone mentioned relativism
in a tv show and i thought that’s
about as café as the conversations
get if you aren’t working maybe
if you are pissed you get a chat to live
in the revolving door of commerce
the life social that’s the glitter the
edible gold in your champagne stand
here and watch the yearly immigration
like koels the cab doors slamming at
2am we raise them then they go
cream blossoms take a drench
beside the house the lotus pond
refills a season grows we have
no thought to name the fifth
among the too cold too warm
here where people of the just-enough-land
pride themselves on common
ground this anomaly unsettles
like the lady doctor speaking
in the house today answer best
to turn your back and go the other way
three o’ clock all i’ve had is one cup
of coffee soy milk i try to imagine
eating the fridge is full so full the door
fights back listen to my tongue stinging
a rebuke go on eat your tea
beside my heart i hear the acidness of hollow
space pause if i have grown to like the gnaw
my juice on flesh my spine a pinion to the bed
go now hear the lettuce see the ham all wrapped
in calico boil rice at least it’s the anxiety of pain
i tell myself you don’t have to make a meal of it
drought is in our faces now the sea
the blue distraction no help from
the dusted wind i hear the back door
slamming like a drummer why
not rub it in where did we think
the topsoil of the country would stay
not a drink to wet it down roots
so far forgotten they are frailer than a
thought death lasts longer the whole place
is on the move still we can’t modify
a thing until our nostrils cake
Some covid-19 poems; us lot had to isolate more and for longer but had more experience of isolation. Maybe we did better?
Mr Whitmont
jam your hands
in your pockets
of your suit
at the lights
I wanna see
your arse-peach
tight against
woollen superfine
business men
come back
with the right slits
shroud hips
zoom has let me down
I'm ready for the show
wakings
whether 8am or midnight lately
have been calling for attention where
none is due no bus to catch and still the
call to regimen a stump jump plough persistent
hooks the tender lobe skin skull bindings
lacking that flying buttress others
strain against demands that ping in on
the minute insistent spruikers
human potential what a movement
what a trip to nowhere sells you a police
hat and cuffs says here arrest yourself
emperor of nothin in the land of nowhere
quaking in our boots by the billboards
gather too much too late wickedness
and words that change directions like the
swallows of that facebook viral video
we all sought to marvel lost to hard work
holding out for images seated in the
deckchairs with one hand full of helium
balloons fantasy of forward
upward sky-high imaginings of riches
what's deserved is never what we get
yesterday I swapped a metal headband and
a floral garland for three large lemons at a
table up the street they were out of
lemonade I fresh out of coin the true
transaction that we met
GREETINGS FROM FRANCE…. Salut aux amis de la communauté FLYING ISLANDS !
BIO
Béatrice (Anne-Marie, Marie-Jeanne) Machet is a French born poet, living between France and the USA, whose dance lessons as a child influenced and still influence her writing. As a teen she learned a lot from the Native American point of view about Native American history and Native cultures, until she felt impregnated with them. After having been involved in the French science-fiction milieu, flirting with cartoons and magazines such as Actuel, Charlie Hebdo, Fluide Glacial, she met Jean-Hughes Malineau, a Gallimard editor, who encouraged her to begin a career as a poet. From this initial meeting, each published poetry book of hers will testify to an evolution in her writing practice. Since 2016, she is an active member of the sound poetry group Ecrits Studio (ecritsstudio.fr). At her credit some 15 books and 30 chapbooks of poetry (three of them in English) plus 7 Native American poets’ collections she translated into French, and four anthologies gathering 40 Native American contemporary poets whom works she translated into French.
She is used to collaborating with artists from all kinds of disciplines such as painters, sculptors, musicians, composers, video-makers, dancers and choreographers, and with whom she performs her poetry. She is on editorial boards of French poetry magazines such as Recours au poème, Sur le dos de la tortue, Les cahiers d’Eucharis.
She is regularly granted writer residences, is regularly invited in international poetry festivals in France and abroad. She leads creative writing workshops, is called for teaching and performing in schools and colleges. She gives lectures and conferences about contemporary Native American literature. She also launched and created Radio cultural programs, poetry oriented, from 1984 to 1986 and from 2018 to nowdays. She is responsible of and produces a monthly radio program (Radio Agora, Grasse) dedicated to contemporary poetry.
Partial Bibliography- poetry exclusively
– Dire, éditions Clapas, 1998, forewords by Patrick Joquel –Tunkashila unshimala yé ( imprégnation peau-rouge ) 1999, éditions Clapas (recorded and performed on an original music by composer Jacques Dudon) , – J …., éditions L’Amourier (poetry) 1999 – Eye-liner, 1999, éditions Clapas, with afterwords by Armand Olivennes – Dyptique, 2000, éditions Clapas with forwords by Alain Jégou – De quoi s’étonner encore de vivre, 2000, éditions Encres Vives – Aspects de la poésie contemporaine des Indiens d’Amérique du nord, 2001, L’Amourier 2001 – Dans l’atelier d’Henri Baviera, 2001, Le Garage (MDLC 2 place Auriol 83510 Lorgues.) – Dédicace, 2002, éditions La porte – Canku (the way in Lakota language) with painter Gérard Serée, 2002, atelier Gestes et Traces 2002 – Muer, 2003, poetry, éditions L’Amourier – Passage au méridien, 2003, éditions I.H.V – L’essor et l’écart,2004, atelier Tactiles with painter Corine Léridon – La sentinelle, 2004, atelier Tactiles with painter Corine Léridon – DVD- painter Violette Adjimanand poet Beatrice Machet, 2004, centre d’art SEBASTIEN (LB productions) – Tribus, 2005, Atelier Gestes et Traces with painter Gérard Serée – Retentir, 2006, with painter Youl – Lumières, 2007, with painter Youl – Le felo va parler, 2007, bilingual chapbook, Amastra-n-Gallar (Galicia España) – Lacérer, 2007, éditions La Porte – Der de Dre, 2008, éditions Voix – Possible, 2008, with painter Youl – Ouest-Nord-LAZA-Est-Sud, 2009, bilingual chapbook, Amastra-n-galar) – Une poire pour William, 2009, with painter Youl – Marge, 2009, éditions IHV – Melisma, 2010, éditions SD with painter Sylvie Deparis – Venus rising (poetry anthology 2009, The Bass Press, R and R editors,
– Hadziin, 2010 (The one Who Speaks in Apache Language), CD, poetry spoken words with composer Michel Chaupin – ACCOM(plissements), 2011, CD, poetry performance recorded while granted a writer residency at « la maison de la poésie transjurassienne ». – Le livre M, 2013, crafted book exhibited at la maison de l’artisanat d’art in Marseille and in la maison Carré in Nîmes.
– Macao, A Grey Epic (bilingual), 2014, ASM Press – Les Gens-pierre, 2014, with painter Henri Baviera – Les Lacets, 2014, atelier Gestes et Traces, with painter Gérard Serée – Rupture en quatre leçons, 2014, éditions Approches – For Unity (bilingual), 2015, Pocket Book, ASM Press – Salse sans pareille, 2016, éditions Le petit véhicule – Du dernier souffle, 2017, éditions du Frau – Les mots fendre, 2017, éditions Lieux Dits
– Der de Dre addendum, 2017, éditions Voix
–Jamais le dernier souffle, 2018, éditions Peycervier, with Painter Henri Baviera
– Tirage(s) de Tête(s), 2019, éditions les Lieux Dits
–After Gertrude Stein, coming out date April 2021, Dancing Girl Press
***************************************
NEW WORK – (in progress, just a beginning)
QUEST-ION(ing)S OF TIME
1 )
Was it a-
or b-
fore….
thus I hit the slopes of the alphabet
a true bare-footed race
with faux-pas on slippy pebbles
the very one I spitted
after having practised
tongue-twisters
and breathing exercises …
there followed a free ride
a screeching slalom
between letter-poles
a super-giant choreography
as if a baited tale was told
in the tracks of caged slides
as if a vision
could heal sounds and meanings
through a world record expression
2 )
« One exerts power
over time
when one masters distance »
very well then
deciding to keep its distances
staying away from ticking and stopwatch
my tongue exerts power.
But are words manageable
as for language
… when is it fully realized ?
when is it born
with its flow of blood and tears
from a womb called self ?
and how the speed factor
gives a voice its energy… ?
Relatively intruder enough
flesh
in the form of larynx and palate
is the poem made power
sung
and blown out like a mushroom cloud.
3 )
this is a tiny here
this is a vast now
on a crest of wavy time when
every second is sup-
posed to up-
sidedown your mind-will
which is swallow-
ed sliding and plunging in-
to an ocean of enzymes and acid
so that every protein of it is broken down
when your lop-
sided stomach is digesting prim-
al scream till it is dis-
mantled and pour-
ed down the guts
a creepy wreckage stuck
in what will be its last curly den
and then …
Magdalena Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer and interviewer, and is the Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader, a literary review site that has been running for some 23 years. Her interview podcast, Compulsive Reader Talks, has over 150 wonderful interviews with the likes of Maria Tumarkin, Ben Okri, and John Banville, to name just a few. She has been widely published in literary journals, anthologies, and online, and is the author of several published books of fiction and poetry. Her Flying Island book, High Wire Step, was published in 2018. Her most recent publication is Unreliable Narratives, published by Girls on Key Press in 2019. A new poetry book, Density of Compact Bone, is forthcoming from Ginninderra Press in 2021.
JEAN KENT was born in Chinchilla, Qld, in 1951. She published her first poems in a literary magazine in 1970, while she was completing an Arts Degree (majoring in psychology) at the University of Qld; her first collection, Verandahs, appeared twenty years later, in 1970. Since then, another eight books of her poetry have been published. The most recent are The Hour of Silvered Mullet (Pitt Street Poetry, 2015) and Paris in my Pocket (PSP, 2016).
Awards Jean has won include the Anne Elder Prize and Dame Mary Gilmore Award (both for Verandahs), the Wesley Michel Wright Prize, the Josephine Ulrick Prize and Somerset Prize. She has been a runner-up for the Newcastle Poetry Prize and winner of its Local Section, and was a judge of the prize in 2013. She has received several writing grants from the Australia Council, including Overseas Residencies in Paris in 1994 and 2011.
As well as writing poetry, fiction and (occasional) nonfiction, Jean has worked as an educational psychologist, counsellor in TAFE colleges, lecturer in Creative Writing, mentor and facilitator of poetry workshops.
With Kit Kelen, Jean was co-editor of A Slow Combusting Hymn: Poetry from and about Newcastle and the Hunter Region (ASM/Cerberus Press, Flying Island Books, 2014).
Her Flying Island pocket book is The Language of Light (2013), a selection of her poems with Chinese translations by Iris Fan Xing.
In 2020, Kit Kelen invited her to converse with him by email for his blog spot, The Daily Kit. Their conversation over six months, covering a lot of topics, including poetry, but also COVID19, the deaths of their mothers, gardening … and some very recent drafts of poems, can be read here:
Jean lives at Lake Macquarie, NSW. Her website is jeankent.net.au
Views from the desk, Kilaben Bay
Some Poems
A PLATFORM FOR LEGENDS
On the verandah of my grandparents’ house,
the day falls asleep around me.
This is the roof of my childhood.
And this, the floor. Tin and wood:
silver-grey, sibling corrugations.
Like platforms for family legends
they wait, rehearsing allegories
as if it is always the end
of a sun-limp day, the lucerne cut,
wheat bagged and a needle in the hessian
beckoning its tail of string.
In the fragrant dusk, soil settles.
Crickets, ants and unseen lives
team over cracks in black earth’s surface –
years are strung like tales of Min-Min lights
along this world of roof-creaks,
board-sighs, a home paddock barracking
for the far-off calls of dinner plates,
falling tablecloths, cutlery and relatives.
Time melts here. Ghosts with glasses of Scotch
catching the last day’s light in their hands,
bend their knees, ease back
into squatters’ chairs. I wake.
A cool breeze is balancing
beside the verandah rail, roping it
and ruffling off, up into wisteria leaves:
sitting tenants now, under the roof.
Time melts. On the ends of long wooden arms,
ice, moonlit, hugs the air.
JEAN KENT
(From Verandahs, Hale & Iremonger, 1990; reprinted Picaro Press, 2009.
Also in The Language of Light, ASM/Flying Island Books, Macao, 2013.)
(The verandah of the old family home, Weeoomba, Qld)
QUARANTINE CAMP, 1919
After the tents of war, now the tents of Wallangarra:
one last quarantine before the unfamiliar family
can escape to what they hope will be a home.
Seven days—seven and six a day—
under the sheltering granite ranges, fires
heat drums, the coats of the women skim just high enough
to escape the frost, the men in their new civvie uniforms
stand stiff as saplings, not happily transplanted, yet.
On the bare ground by the railway,
they should be thankful prisoners. So many huddles—
and in amongst them, this trio who will step away from here
into my family history: one man, his wife …
and a two year old girl, confronting this stranger, her father.
Just beyond the wahlenbergias, the shy native bluebells
at the camp’s edge, are the Pyramids of Girraween:
bald monoliths, made by volcanoes, not men.
Half a century later, I’ll try to climb one …
But it is too early for a returned soldier to brave
that skyline—better to bivouac here, picking bluebells,
waiting at dusk for a wallaroo in its shaggy greatcoat
to do a reconnaissance of this temporary invasion—
negotiate with it for peace.
After the certain attacks of war: now world deaths
from Spanish flu. In this border camp, learning to speak
with the wary trust of the child, what can my grandparents do
but hope they have outrun the final assault?
In training for a domestic truce,
trust there will be a tomorrow soon, flinging over them
only a tent of sky—as wahlenbergias, those fallen-
sky flowers, cheer the edges of the last road home.
JEAN KENT
(Published in the Weekend Australian Review, 12th Sept 2020)
THE LANGUAGE OF LIGHT
Weekends, Paris walks. Something shifts
underground. Like a Rubik's cube
slightly twisted
the lines of colours realign, the harmony of humans
gently shudders the city’s symmetrical grid.
Like the still spaces we enter when music
moves us, weekends separate us from the deafness
of habitual days. More so than ever
here, on the other side
of our usual world —
here, where we live lit up
like cymbals always on the verge
of being struck. In the Luxembourg Gardens
I am one small vibration in the shivering of the city
toward some Sunday song. The babble of all the world
is being quietened here —
Poles and Italians, Australians and Africans,
small boys and motorised boats all blend into a buzz
swarming from under the acid-yellow horse-chestnut leaves
toward the end of summer’s silver
hived within the lake.
Weekends, Paris talks with less tension
accelerating its tongue. Even the tourist buses —
clattering to halts like the abruptly dropped snakepods
of bauhinia trees —
release people who become, after a little time here,
as calm as seeds
waiting to be planted. We almost believe
we could all belong — as we settle briefly
on these wrought-iron chairs with their ringletted arms
and verdigris-barred backs. We subside
on seats tattooed all over with holes
spraying sunlight onto the crushed white gravel below.
How many faces
have fallen here —
waiting for Paris light to persuade them
to float back up, to lift
towards it their first foreign shoots?
Weekends, Paris walks. It stalks us — as gently
as the grandparents we never knew, those ghosts
who passed through a war here
eighty years ago.
Like the nano-shifting of volcanic plates now,
something in us shifts. Whatever homes we thought
we had brought with us
settle like hidden pockets
in our winter coats — and we join the long lines
of stilled people in black swivelling towards
the slightest caress of sun. The light,
as it negotiates peace settlements
within this temporary country
of cold shoulders,
is speaking everyone’s ancestral tongue.
JEAN KENT
(From Travelling with the Wrong Phrasebooks, Pitt Street Poetry, 2012;
also published in The Language of Light, ASM/Flying Island Books, Macao, 2013.)
she
taping people from her village
The Peloponnese in an agrarian past
collecting voices that will disappear forever
then standing on this edifice
to look backwards
and then deeper, into the 18th century
now like a roaring train, a novel
the history of Greece, so tragic
she says
another she
doing genealogical research
first the family
the migrations, then back
back to the island
becomes
becomes a whole history
Ithaca
the Venetians
the Turks
the Byzantines
very different, she said
we had war
in one of her windows
the mandarin tree stands
in the centre of a brick paved yard
on another window
the lace curtain
shields the lemon tree
180° of glass
the vlita, the horta in the garden
this beautiful peaceful space
In another window
Skype video
I see them
doing genealogical research
and he also doing genealogical research
and the search on our name
a Byzantine tangle
a clan under the radar
maybe secret Turks or secret Jews
escaping the Inquisition
they had records, you know
the Venetians
so Ithaca is a different matter
I hold up the page of the book
to the Skype camera
this proves there were Couani’s on Kastellorizo
a page from this old book
strangely printed in landscape orientation
with the list of boat owners – Κουανης
and he
on video Skype
an English life
reaching back to France, Egypt, Africa
finishing an autobiography
I sit in her living room
a window opens
I see him
Sky
the fairy story effect
the magic of childhood
Sydney in a snow dome
possible because of its
bowl-shaped geography
ringed with mountains
girt by sea
its foamy cliffs
the sublime
people
miniature
the sky
so vast
the clouds so high
and puffy in the southern sky
the higher one, gleaming white in the sunlight
whiter than white is
is it so big
or are we so small?
showers coming and going
humid, then a shower
from above
the land is full of water and sunlight
a shower falling on one small area
shadows and sunlight
Reminiscent of Blackheath in The Blue Mountains and its fabulous summer alpine climate, air constantly washed clean by afternoon thunderstorms, sublime mountain vistas. The 19th century children’s novel, Heidi, set in alpine country. The snowy white bread rolls wrapped in crisp cloth and Heidi’s little gingham swag with her belongings in it. Heidi, so lucky to be an orphan.
people swim in the rain
raindrops cool on their skin
in the pale aqua water
The fact that it’s aqua because of the chlorine feels irrelevant, especially on sunny days. It’s not unlike the colour of the water around the Mediterranean islands. The pool, in the park just next to Broadway.
Broadway, Sydney’s busiest intersection, just erase the traffic and the noise and you’re left with a perfect landscape. I’m dreaming of turf being laid over Broadway like they did on the Harbour Bridge for a day, except permanently.
a flock of corellas
with their pretty call
circling
and doubling back
Broadway is like a bowl or part of a bowl that empties into the harbour at Blackwattle Bay.
Sublime, the depth
of the harbour
a mirror of the mountains
valleys that continue
downwards
but now, into murky depths
Is childhood magical? What is the temperature of the sublime? How we loved Caspar David Friedrich in the early 70’s! Before we were ravaged by Conceptual Art, that is. That’s when many of us stopped painting, when painting died for us, replaced by the minimal gestures of others, requiring no effort and almost no thought. Somnambulist Art. Work they did between hangovers.
The whispering quiet of the
valleys from the cliff tops
transcendent, individuating
rupture in disguise
the sublime thing
I could have gone that way
with feminist representations
some did
that’s where I was wanting to go
drawing female figures falling into chasms
so much like
classic Romantic images
it was men who dissuaded me
but 10 years later
similar images were
visible
in the art galleries
Vivienne Shark LeWitt etc
but then with the
imprimatur
of some art world bureaucrat
incommensurability
that was the problem
between them and us
I met people who understood why you’d want to rail against the parochialism of your peers
Australian Art
it’s a joke
and in Australian minds
it’s all happening elsewhere
distance creates the sublime
not that there aren’t fabulous artists here
but don’t tell me they’re Australian
So my work became
what was possible
maybe constraints help us
to map the unknown
aesthetic unboundedness
rupture
I made small drawings using pencil and aquarelle. Some like an abstract Reg Mombassa, some hyper-real. Learnt the Chinese method of watercolour painting. Wrapped up in teaching art to people who didn’t want to be artists. I took a holiday from history.
thinking
Communism, Utopia
group projects
where every offering
is valued
and adds
another element to the lexicon
The haunting
the bamboo pen
the ink well
vintage glass thing
with its pressed pattern
and three wells
the paper ready
the concertina book
carried around for weeks
where the practice drawing
will occur
also
the sketchbook
the real thing
started
cover done
title chosen
first poem
printed on tracing paper
and glued in
with spray adhesive
photos of all the objects
taken and uploaded to ipad
there
accessible
waiting
all the preparation done
the pen haunts me
I think and dream about
picking it up
I can feel the sensation
of moving the bamboo
across the paper
think about it constantly
imagine the black ink
sitting in the ink well
and about two other colours
as yet unchosen
I mentally scan the box of inks
think about the beautiful
senegal yellow
thick and glowing
everything is ready
and yet
the series consists of drawings
of objects from my parents’ houses
both parents now gone
so objects are not objects
it is essential to choose the colours
at least for the first drawing
the amber cigarette case
and think
is this a gestural exercise
or will each drawing
take on some complexity
become a painted image
become watercolour
water
always there
at the ready
to sooth
now that we’re really alone
