Gillian Swain My Skin its own Sky (Flying Islands Press 2019) is Gillian Swain’s first book, following the chap-book Sang Up (Picaro Press, 2001). Gillian’s poetry is published in various anthologies including A Slow Combusting Hymn (ASM & Cerberus Press, 2014), The Grieve Anthology (Hunter Writers Centre, 2014; 2019) and some journals including Burrow #1 (Old Water Rat Publishing, 2020), and the Australian Poetry Collaboration (2019). Gillian shared equal first place with Magdalena Ball for the Maclean’s Booksellers Award, in the Grieve Project 2019. She has been a feature poet at several events around the east coast of NSW, holds poetry workshops for adults and children and is the curator of poetry and related events at the Indie Writers Festival ‘IF Maitland’, plus other poetry events. Gillian spent her childhood exploring the waterfront of Lake Macquarie and has lived in Newcastle, Northern NSW, the UK and Ghana, after finishing studies at the University of Newcastle. She lives in East Maitland NSW with her husband and their four children, where they run their successful coffee roasting business, River Roast.
The cover picture on My Skin its own sky is an extract from Girl on a swing in blue on blue by John Maitland. Look up his work, it’s wonderful.
Poems from My skin its own sky
Summer Holidays
After “Fair Haired Girls End of Summer Holidays” by John Maitland.
Broom-straw grass whispers to our shins
as we wade toward the end
of summer holidays.
Our hair fair and sun-bleached
scruffy clusters like
broom-straw grass.
We have played, these days.
We have moved stridently
across the endlessness of summer
have understood the sky
and have become the dry, bending
hush of broom straw-grass.
Our longish white dresses breathe.
We look forward and completely
occupy each step and have nowhere
except the heat-hazed horizon to reach.
Nothing is everywhere. Nothing
fills our days solidly.
Summer sweeps us forward as we
are every last delicate chance of magic
we sweep through, ethereal.
We don’t know how beautiful we are.
All we know is floating
and sweeping
through summer parched paddocks
and broom-straw grass.
Ambulance
They took you this morning.
The lamp turned like a red light-house
one way.
You’re on rocky ground
I balance
for now
on love’s groundswell of stillness.
This too will pass.
Renovators hints and tips
No crimes are hidden
in the white bathroom
of one who washes often
and cleans rarely.
My Skin, its own sky
and how did the storm treat you
Sheets lit
sky bright
skin electric
took me up
gave a good thrashing.
how did the ground reply
Grass leant
back to let it
in happy for the return
of wild.
Familiar wind hurl of rain
slid like syrup down
soft blades
to earth.
were you hungry in the cold
Not cold.
Warm air wet every
pore swam and I gave it
salt my skin its own sky
my tongue
fresh with the landscape of night.
Hunger only for more.
was it deafening
All I could hear
was everything,
flicked and billowed out
crowds of spirit answerings
there for the listener
in time with always.
was the room big enough
A storm needs no manners
treats as it pleases
and what lush treat it is.
You wonder at the space an altar
inhabits hear this
the gods laughed when you asked
these questions
thunder has no walls.