Poetry
This week on the ABR Podcast we consider a poetics of contemplation with Scott Stephens. In his review of Kevin Hart’s book on reading and thinking, Lands of Likeness, Stephens writes, ‘there is no desire to consume the object of contemplation; what there is, is a longing to understand’. Scott Stephens is the ABC’s Religion & Ethics online editor and the co-host, with Waleed Aly, of The Minefield on ABC Radio National. Listen to Scott Stephens’ ‘Nothing but kestrel: Kevin Hart’s invitation to read contemplatively’, published in the March issue of ABR.
... (read more)Mud is loath to relinquish anything –
even in the name of science –
it will do so with a belch of methane
and black cloud in water.
The instruments are called ‘loggers’
Real estate: that’s all Postumia can think about,
always bragging about her ‘portfolio’,
dragging it round like a bad painter.
At last count she owns eight flats
in suburbs she’s never visited,
Homer and His Iliad by Robin Lane Fox & The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
See,
how this slow tide
tugs
and sighs against
the flank of patient night –
the driving pulse that
aches towards the
fleck
of dawn then
shifts,
and curls around skin’s soft
warmth, that quiet space –
So much shown in a little space
All humbleness, all dignity,
Hand-work – the Knitted Nativity!
Seeing, one whistles on an arc of breath
Wonderful, oh wonderful!