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Gig Ryan

Gig Ryan

Gig Ryan has published six books of poetry and her New and Selected Poems was published in 2011. She was Poetry Editor of The Age from 1998 to 2016. Her next book of poetry will be released in late 2022. (Photograph by Mia Schoen)

 

'Simaetha', a new poem by Gig Ryan

December 2020, no. 427 25 November 2020
(‘Idyll II’, Theocritus) Where are my bay leaves and charms, my bowl with crimson flowerswhile he inexorablehas gone from my bed like a dressDistance: spells of fire wreathe you Shine on this spin or graveas sight stunned me leaves burnWheel of brass turning from my door Now wave is still and wind is stillMy heart stopped in its foundry As horses run, so we to itStarts love’s knife who ... (read more)

Gig Ryan reviews 'Starlight' by John Tranter and 'The Salt Companion to John Tranter' edited by Rod Mengham

October 2010, no. 325 01 October 2010
John Tranter has published more than twenty books since 1970. They include long dramatic monologues, a type of verse novel (The Floor of Heaven, 1992), prose poems and traditional verse forms. Starlight, his new collection, continues his ‘evisceration’, as he calls it, of other poets. His first book, Parallax (1970), signalled an important theme in his work: parallax is ‘the effect whereby t ... (read more)

'Fortune's Favours', a new poem by Gig Ryan

May 2020, no. 421 27 April 2020
1.Two birds scoop white skyinto the lank pines behind your stoneas if to say we’re with you.In front the road crofts and peaks.You can’t pinpoint the sectorbut it was adamantinelike your knowing to pull outto sail through the lock, ink a renunciationinto an oiled bay.The monstrance twinkles ahead, a wheeled pizza,while catastrophe tourism tails them with its clothes.My friends in books clashbu ... (read more)

Gig Ryan reviews 'Selected Poems 1967–2018' by Jennifer Maiden

August 2018, no. 403 27 July 2018
Jennifer Maiden’s first books, Tactics (1974) and The Problem of Evil (1975), introduced a fantastically complex and enquiring poetry, with strangely fragmentary assemblages of character wrought from conflict. Both books were partly inspired by television’s gory nightly footage of the Vietnam War. While much poetry in the 1970s was of seditiously unvarnished protest, Maiden’s was intricate a ... (read more)

States of Poetry Series Two - Victoria | 'Rented features' by Gig Ryan

States of Poetry Victoria - Series Two 06 June 2018
There’s plenty to crack onto, he says, a laundered Valkyrie stomps the DIY:I reconstitute in the shed, my notes can hit the rafters,no-one’s selfing over it, like upstairson their asbestos balustrade,a tick-off at the slightest, though their kidchatters and bounces on the planks.At last summer rises on a blue cactus.Without, it’s crumpled outside of time and dead.I’m not the stonkered stud ... (read more)

States of Poetry Series Two - Victoria | 'Know your product' by Gig Ryan

States of Poetry Victoria - Series Two 06 June 2018
As her to you, unhurried,pair formations addle a skyline,extrovert welcoming traffic, selfless despot on the inner.Even so, his pin-cushioned face glues to the backdrop’s nest of wombats.The city changes from one skyscraper and slateto the creek’s bag-junked ripple, decisive formaldehyde splitting a cloud’s anagram of discontent,replacing slouched velodrome with mouse-topped stove.The introd ... (read more)

States of Poetry Series Two - Victoria | 'Simaetha' by Gig Ryan

States of Poetry Victoria - Series Two 06 June 2018
(Idyll II, Theocritus)   Where are my bay leaves and charms, my bowl with crimson flowerswhile him inexorablehas gone from my bed like a dressDistance: spells of fire wreathe you Shine on this spin or graveAs sight stunned me leaves burnWheel of brass turning from my door Now wave is still and wind is stillMy heart stopped in its foundry As horses run, so we to itStarts love’s knife ... (read more)

States of Poetry Series Two - Victoria | 'Grotto' by Gig Ryan

States of Poetry Victoria - Series Two 06 June 2018
You long for night to push away injunctions and sodalities,sky’s hexagon clouds,as veins lined with velvet straighten the road and undone casketand morning’s birds click through dream. Rest your eyes on the road like an inn,bundled rubbish a corpse on the nature-strip.You take the waters.You embrace a door.Snaked fields welter through moleculesas you burrow a dynamic exit.Day tells you to cir ... (read more)

States of Poetry Series Two - Victoria | 'Principle of Insufficient Reason' by Gig Ryan

States of Poetry Victoria - Series Two 06 June 2018
 I remember you as you were, polished and dismissivenow sawdust and spangles lie on cedar.‘Insufficient funds’ responds to my favoured transactionat the checkout’s dystopia, a green-haired maenad slices the machine.You saw in the eyes the future going away.It carouses in the shadowsa watery silhouette of vengeance. Mouth in ashes, words lie in air.They trot off to a knobbly paradigmwh ... (read more)

'Spring Idylls' by Gig Ryan

April 2018, no. 400 27 March 2018
1. ‘My new persona helped me to make money,’ says the streamer,but cruel and petty, unhoped for ideal like a hovercraft shimmersbehind a definition of a chair.You tarnish the boulevardswith your shrapnel castanets and chucked heelsdancing under the exsanguinated sun, but insufficient,burnt coat of meaning wages a lost covenant. You hang out till the last minute then take what’s left.At hom ... (read more)
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