States of Poetry - Poems

'Travelling To My Mother Last Century' by Anne Kellas | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

States of Poetry - Poems

'Travelling To My Mother Last Century' by Anne Kellas | States of Poetry Tasmania - Series Two

I step in a taxi, again. It takes me there fast,
cutting the white dotted lines of highway
into miles of silence. Back to my mother
in the ship or the plane, reversing my steps
to see her curving herself into her pillows
her red walls, her eyes not seeing me but a blur.
My mother calls to me from her place far away
in deep mind, where she has built a tower of knowing.
From her far tower, she can see the white gardens –
her Vita Sackville-West, the lighthouse, waves,
still far away enough for her
to remain in greenness, to inhabit
the green light of Pre-Raphaelites.
She can read the mind of clouds.

Anne Kellas

Anne Kellas

Anne Kellas’s third collection – The White Room Poems (Walleah Press, 2015) – was shortlisted for the Margaret Scott Prize in the 2017 Tasmanian Premier’s Literary awards. Written with the support of an Australia Council grant, it also received a Blue Giraffe Press poetry award. Isolated States, supported by an Arts Tasmania grant, was published by Tim Thorne’s Cornford Press (2001), while Poems from Mt Moono (1989) was published in South Africa. The Netted Air appeared in early 2018 in Ginninderra’s Picaro Poets series. Anne’s 2017 Masters by research degree drew on her work in youth studies (as Anne Hugo) and covers similar territory to The White Room Poems.