Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

States of Poetry Poems

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 o ...

Here,
leafing through stone-quiet papers,
I freeze in the 8 am birdsong morning.
No fog-horn traffic noise or school-song children today,
just daffodils
pinned to spiked leaves
and sea light far away.

Anne Kellas

...

It’s dawn but it’s dark.
Winter. Your Winterreise
begins. But you don’t want to wake.

I tried to wake you but you wouldn’t, then you would.
If I knew then what I know now.
But there was the ticket, the passport.

Your father’s ready, names and numbers, labels on the luggage.
The car is idling outside.
It’s dawn but dark.

It’s wi ...

I’ll go that way, by sea,
in a ship that sails at night,
dropping life-boats,
like lifts down lift shafts,
onto storm seas below.

Anne Kellas

...

‘Ah, that layer of snow of which you tell me! For a long
time I too had it! But I turned it into the tablecloth my
wife spread over our – pleasantly round – table in order
to host ... so many incarnation ...

I lie on the couch
like a beaten dog
as Philip Mould advances
on his latest art forensics
and there are these absolutely
free and liberated daubs
of greens and browns
in close-up on the screen.
They are of the earth
in a surprising and counter way
to all that sateen, country houses,
rich people by the yard.
And from my beaten dog pose< ...

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Susie Anderson introduces her anthology and reads her poem 'small town apocalypse' which features in the 2016 NSW anthology.

... (read more)

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Susie Anderson reads her poem 'time conquers all' which features in the 2016 NSW anthology.

... (read more)

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Susie Anderson reads her poem 'the bus' which features in the 2016 NSW anthology.

... (read more)

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Susie Anderson reads her poem 'minimum spend' which features in the 2016 NSW anthology.

... (read more)