There are times when I read a book that reinvigorates important questions for me – such as how language carries and creates meaning, and what, after all, is the function and force of poetry. Usually, such a book is a creative work and I like to imagine that the first readers of volumes by George Herbert or John Donne responded with such questions – to poetry that consistently registered a pers ... (read more)
Paul Hetherington
There was never an explanationas to why he walked into the river,took hold of a logand floated away.They found lettersbut the love he expressedin sometimes obsessive detailwas no explanation –except, the coroner declaredthat perhaps it indicated'a lack of a grasp', etc.Someone who saw him pass bysaid that he was waterlogged;another said he sat upright,as if triumphant, and was singing;a third (u ... (read more)
A gap opened every eveningemitting a panting – as soft as darkness,or stray dog at exhaustion's end.Unsettling, like a straggly bird,it dropped dark feathersof prickling desire into the room.It knew the edges of solitudelike the blue glacier's encrusted ice,and morphed into a clouded mirroron which each searching glance stuck fast.
Paul Hetherington ... (read more)
for BL(from 'Paintings')
A hundred eyesexamine me like an insect,red and yellow like fear.What walks about mein dirty boots, holding my ideasridiculous? Whose facevisits restless nights,threatening to blank my dreams –a near-perfect oval and no-colour;obliteration like a smile?The painting becomes a murderof Aztec nobility in the Templeand time droningthrough aeons of absence,away from ... (read more)
Every morning, with an authorityof clinging, earthy foundationsa house sat in air.Inside someone was singing an ariaabout how love inflects its failingsand a woman, absorbed in her toiletteconsidered how pained words workthe world awry, even as air fills with song.Outside a man hammered boardsto make a dwelling; crows sat on a wireas if planning insurrection.Drought held paddocks tightlyas a team ... (read more)
for TAW(from 'Paintings')
This black dressis also a painting –it hangs on a wallwhere light holds it close.It's a doorway to placesno-one quite knows;that bloom and rainwith extravagant vistas.
We've sometimes enteredinto the paintingdipping dark hats,watching childrenriding down lanes(their slit-eyed scrutinyprickling our backs),finding a housemade out of art –colourful images; chaotic sign ... (read more)