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States of Poetry Victoria

'Rented features' by Gig Ryan

Gig Ryan
Wednesday, 06 June 2018

There’s plenty to crack onto, he says, a laundered Valkyrie stomps the DIY:
I reconstitute in the shed, my notes can hit the rafters,
no-one’s selfing over it, like upstairs
on their asbestos balustrade,
a tick-off at the slightest, though their kid
chatters and bounces on the planks.
At last summer rises on a blue cactus.
Without, it’s crumpled outside ...

'Know your product' by Gig Ryan

Gig Ryan
Wednesday, 06 June 2018

As her to you, unhurried,
pair formations addle a skyline,
extrovert welcoming traffic, selfless despot on the inner.
Even so, his pin-cushioned face glues to the backdrop’s nest of wombats.
The city changes from one skyscraper and slate
to the creek’s bag-junked ripple,
decisive formaldehyde splitting a cloud’s anagram of discontent,
replacing slouched ...

'Simaetha' by Gig Ryan

Gig Ryan
Wednesday, 06 June 2018

(Idyll II, Theocritus)

 

Where are my bay leaves and charms, my bowl with crimson flowers
while him inexorable
has gone from my bed like a dress
Distance: spells of fire wreathe you

Shine on this spin or grave
As sight stunned me

leaves burn
Wheel of brass turning from my door

Now wave is still and ...

'Grotto' by Gig Ryan

Gig Ryan
Wednesday, 06 June 2018

You long for night to push away injunctions and sodalities,
sky’s hexagon clouds,
as veins lined with velvet straighten the road and undone casket
and morning’s birds click through dream.

Rest your eyes on the road like an inn,
bundled rubbish a corpse on the nature-strip.
You take the waters.
You embrace a door.
Snaked fields welter through molecu ...

'Demurely' by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Wednesday, 06 June 2018
Brunette or shocking white, these wallabies
have their own special nook nearby,
under that blackwood.
                                          Why ...

'At Table' by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Wednesday, 06 June 2018

In memory of Graham Little

I scribble in cafes, which inspire
                  The forms in which I’m able:
Although invited, I‘ve declined
                  A pizza at ...

'Heidi-Ho' by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Wednesday, 06 June 2018
Below great ears like galleon sails
hangs an off-grey trunk – odd word –
more than the puny dangling tail
marking this leatherjacket.
So much overcoat in our tropics, then?
But why is any creature as it is?
The ark’s gangplank must have been sturdy,
shipping creatures from those Turkish hil ...

'Creature' by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Wednesday, 06 June 2018
All those hominids stood around to watch,
scratching their heads and hairy armpits.
So like them it was,
                                     well, sort of
but ever so ...

'Nuages' by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Wednesday, 06 June 2018
Ah, the ever-lyrical, even if
stared into from a cabin up above:
snowy cloud-sonata which then
recedes into softness
with its airy iceberg flocks
can be the stuff of verse or
counterpoint, say, but can’t
feed serious fiction for
the yarnspinner has to eat
the heavy middle of our sand ...

About Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Wednesday, 06 June 2018

Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry. His most recent books of verse include The Universe Looks Down (2005), and Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw (2008). He is Professor Emeritus in Culture and Communication at Melbourne University. Also a public speaker and commentator on the visual arts, he specialises in ...