Poem of the Week - 'Are You Ready to Go Superfast?' by Kent MacCarter
Welcome to 'Poem of the Week' with Australian Book Review. Each Thursday a different poet will introduce and read his or her poem. We are delighted to be making a lasting record of these poets' voices. We hope that you enjoy hearing these poems, freely available on our website. 'Poem of the Week' also gives us an opportunity to offer longer poems.
'Poem of the Week' is just one part of our coverage of Australian poetry. Each issue carries new poems as well as reviews of recent poetry collections. We welcome submissions from new and established poets. The Peter Porter Poetry Prize (worth a total of $7,500) is one of the country's most prestigious literary prizes. In coming months we will also introduce States of Poetry – an innovative series of state and territory anthologies of new poetry, curated by different local poets.
Our inaugural 'Poem of the Week' is 'Are You Ready to Go Superfast?' by Kent MacCarter.
Lisa Gorton
ABR Poetry Editor
Are You Ready to Go Superfast?
Osteospermum jucundum
to be with the dancing women
cosecants of how their diet pops
wet mimeographs is to be organised just off
the gravitas of early jitterbugs
stems and earlier still
peahen down to portrait calm and votes
their faire frou frou
to fly and woo as tai
babilonia twisting there a calatrava
cantilevered onto stamps in paraguay
the telephony of english butter
say or our aperitif of snowbank
are you ready to go superfast
on de beers the carat of massachusetts
to be with the dancing women is singeing weed boy
george s wind up
chameleon and it s so meteoric why the african
coastline resembling a llama s head
sip bent for antarctic ice
skates the retina of lake
victoria you re a daisy if you do
Kent MacCarter is a writer and editor living in Castlemaine. He is the author of three poetry collections – In the Hungry Middle of Here (Transit Lounge, 2009), Ribosome Spreadsheet (Picaro, 2011) and Sputnik's Cousin (Transit Lounge, 2014). He also edited of Joyful Strains: Making Australia Home (Affirm Press, 2013), a non-fiction collection of diasporic memoir. He is Managing Editor of Cordite Poetry Review. 'Are You Ready to Go Superfast?' was first published in the September 2015 issue of Australian Book Review.
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