Jan Owen

'String says' by Jan Owen | States of Poetry SA - Series Two

States of Poetry South Australia - Series Two • 20 February 2018

in my end is my beginning – just a rat’s nest coiled in back-shed dust,a tangle of demented knots gothic as the Grimms’ dark plots,a thrumming song of wreak and wreck (whose satin bed, whose trusting neck?),the tautened threat from fist to fist, the carpe diem tug and twist.My image haunts your DNA, that tiny ruthless shadow play.I’m hairshirt-hallowed, gallows shred, bog-buried hair ... (read more)

'Indoor Cricket' by Jan Owen | States of Poetry SA - Series Two

States of Poetry South Australia - Series Two • 20 February 2018

  Insects are nature’s netsukes, and, by jiminy, crickets are such bright creatures. JJO ... (read more)

'Rhyme' by Jan Owen | States of Poetry SA - Series Two

States of Poetry South Australia - Series Two • 20 February 2018

This ‘structural scandal’, tongue’s yen for kinas family is a sort of chime, the thriftof loaves and fishes unconsumed by scorn, is natural as natural historywith all its modulations of again –seed, crystal, comet, crocus, rain. Even our code’s in rhyme – adenine,cytosine, guanine and thymine – turnand turn again (cynghanedd rules the cells). Call cousin metaphor a silent rhyme,fl ... (read more)

'Woman Holding a Balance' by Jan Owen | States of Poetry SA - Series Two

States of Poetry South Australia - Series Two • 20 February 2018

after the painting by Jan Vermeer Two strands of pearls, warm cream, cool blue,are spilling over a coffer and ontoa crumple of ultramarine against a wallbelow a yellow curtain shifting the muted light.Four gold coins and a silver ducatwait to be weighed along the table edge,but the sidelong mirror’s narrow sliver can findno avarice in its harvest, this calm face:the soft mouth and downcast eyes ... (read more)

'Venetian Blinds' by Jan Owen | States of Poetry SA - Series Two

States of Poetry South Australia - Series Two • 20 February 2018

Heaved up or fountained down, the wooden slats breathe a shirrand clattered repeat of the mill of their making, a satisfactory thud like the outcome of a stock plot. Half hoist, they hang askew with apained smile, and bell pulls for self-service which pirouette to a glut of knots. Tilt by tilt they’ll orchestrate your day, underlining gloomand overruling light. Or clapped full shut on the heat ... (read more)