Poems
In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Francesca Sasnaitis introduces Kate Llewellyn who reads her poem 'Oxytocin' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.
... (read more)States of Poetry 2016 Podcast | State editor Felicity Plunkett introduces the Queensland anthology
In this episode of the Australian Book Review's States of Poetry Podcast, state editor Felicity Plunkett introduces the 2016 Queensland poets: Nathan Shepherdson, Ellen van Neerven, Lionel Forgarty, MTC Cronin, Sarah Holland-Batt, and Stuart Barnes.
... (read more)States of Poetry 2016 - South Australia | 'Gilbert Place - Cafe Boulevard' by Ken Bolton
for Lee Harwood
Softly solarised and parallel
two lines echo each other, glow slightly,
in a space that is nowhere
#
...
1.
Angling over star-fields,
the pitches lit like billiard tables.
Those lengths you were shouted up and back,
lungs scoured by brillo air.
The lazier concord of close mown grass
and low hanging fruit
of the short boundary. A tang of primitive
electronics: the circuit board's braille labyrinth,
the slab type of Amstrad.
This callow path, you< ...
Octopus
Quick across the twilight road,
the eight legs of the cat.
Flood
Water corrects the earth
to flatness, patching fields with sky.
Alarm
Little boat of red figures, adrift between two days.
Window
The creek slides through the rain's eyelashes.
The do-it-yourself piano isn't
kicked to matchwood, and you take
this for affirmation. When we
work out how to switch off
Bob Dylan, your plangent homemades
will go unaccompanied, no longer
sought like an injury lost in the mists
of Hansard. People suggest topics
they won't be using, and this is
more like an archive sneeze
than what yesteryea ...
I wonder what happens
in Seb's kitchen, I see
him round the corner
into the room, sun shining, cat
ready for food, a grin
that is mixed of resignation
& amusement eyes alight
for the opportunity
each day brings. I always
liked the way he understood
things – things I've
never understood –
as an open secret, knowledge
with w ...
States of Poetry 2016 - South Australia | 'Alterations to the little black dress' by Jelena Dinic
A little pin-up
three fingers
above the knees.
Behind the curtain
a dress-up game –
pretty things come undone.
He chalks lines
on raw stitches.
I catwalk.
My body fits the timeless black.
'You can live in it, or die'
smile the lips full of needles.
Do I look a little dead
with black fabric
on bone-pale flesh?
States of Poetry 2016 - South Australia | 'The Silence of Siskins' by Jelena Dinic
for my grandfather
He circles my arrival
on the calendar.
It is late November
and it doesn't snow.
A wooden pallet
hardens his bed.
He dreams of grandmother.
He doesn't want new dreams.
Two siskins in cages –
their song frozen like the air
that other November
when she lost her heart
c ...
for Mia
I wore my grandmother's clothes
and sat on her doorstep.
Monday to Friday.
She talked.
I lied.
'I'll teach you how to write,' I said
pretending I could
hold a pen.
'Mouse will eat your ears,' she smiled.
At night we leaned on pillows
watched TV with subtitles.
I made up foreign words.
I tol ...
