Poems
The Poetry Exam
The hall begins to fill. The students sit.
She sets her papers neatly on the desk
and rolls the lines around her mouth, flits
from word to word, moves her lips. The rest
is left to memory. The tests are stacked
for passing out on perfect, icy lines
of tables set in single file, tables packed
away when half-right answers whine
Paris Evening
13 November 2015
It is Friday, around five. He is
strolling on the rue Voltaire, flâneur
for the young century. The afternoon is crumbling,
the trees are shutting down for winter,
leaves pirouetting to the street
and cracking like small bones beneath his feet.
All around him, the streetlights are coming on,
can ...
Mark, Pauline and Me
1970
John Foulcher
...The Undiscovered Country
tears itself from its own body
Minos condemns it to the seventh abyss.
wherever Fortune casts it, and there
it germinates, like a dropped grain of spelt.
...
The leaves here are not green, ...
Holly and Will
1972
John Foulcher
...submergence
I was all angle once
sharp and schist-like
a spiked rock dragon-back
arching into air
too late you learn the long
wash of days given grist enough
finds your fissures
chafes them wide
these days knowing I wade
in a rising tide of blo ...
Before the Storm
John Foulcher
...States of Poetry 2017 - ACT | 'Just leave your mark here' by Kerry Reed-Gilbert
Just leave your mark here
I won’t do you no wrong
I’m a man that you can trust
I’m not like the others
I’m a honourable man
Some people say
there’s no honour among thieves
but let me tell you straight
We, guberment men,
sent by the King we steal their land
by one stroke of the mighty pen.
But don’t tell anybody that.
States of Poetry 2017 - ACT | 'What you get when you search for silence' by Melinda Smith
What you get when you search for silence
(poem composed of Hansard search results from November 1962)
one of his colleagues has gone into a significant silence
to silence us, but this is having no effect
listen in silence
spoken and heard in silence
the Prime Minister has observed an unusual silence on this matter. There was an old Australian ...
Red Earth
dirt
sunset
sunrise
sunburnt
Old fella
Blackfella
Culture
Creation
Biamie
Dreaming
Belonging
Me.
Kerry Reed-Gilbert
...
