Gina Mercer
'After, there are the birds' by Gina Mercer | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two
He sends me photos
of the singular crimson rosella
who observes him through the kitchen window
as he cooks dinner for one.
He sends me boxes of her best clothes:
designer jackets, silk shirts, tailored trousers.
Asks me to share them among family
even though she was the size of a wren
and we’re all currawongs.
He sends me photo after poignant ...
Forget
all you know about Canute,
the king who believed the waves under his dominion,
he could stop the tides by command.
Remember
to bet all you have
on the dead cert
that global warming is real
& ...
Me alongside that world-famous celebrity
The Atlantic Ocean ‒
complaining
I haven’t caught its best side.
...
La rivière Bow, Banff, Spring 2016
The light gets tired, he writes, and I wonder if water, too, can get weary with all that
flowing & sliding & washing away. In the hotel swimming pool the water looks
weary, constantly banging its soft body against concrete, making the effort to dimple
upwards when disturbed, entered, by our alien soft bodies. Unable ...
'Extracts from "The Dictionary Aquatic"' by Gina Mercer | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two
Extracts from The Dictionary Aquatic
Burble
Distinctive mating call of wild creeks. Rarely heard in cities where this species has been driven underground, incarcerated in lightless, concrete tunnels. Such conditions have proved unconducive to reproduction or generation.
Gina Mercer enjoys a three-stranded career as writer, teacher, and editor. She has taught creative writing and literature in universities and communities for thirty years. She was Managing Editor of Island magazine, 2006–10. She has published a novel, Parachute Silk (Spinifex Press, 2001) and two academic books (UQP, 1994 ...
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Swept away
Dear Editor,
I was among the many swept away by Elisabeth Holdsworth’s essay, ‘An die Nachgeborenen: For Those Who Come After’ (February 2007). From the moment she confided, ‘I have returned to the Netherlands to have a specific conversation with the past’, I became an intent listener, almost an inter-loper, following this haunted child’s return after decades away, back to her heritage, Zeeland – ‘The land of my nightmares’.
I do not know the stark Calvinist low country of dunes and ‘massive dykes’, though I flew over it often enough at night. I followed the returning child entranced and often shocked: the fearful Nazi reprisals, the deliberate flooding of the hard-won lands; brother executing brother; the unofficial motto of the province even: ‘never forgive, never forget.’
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