First review! Plus stars!
September 30, 2011
That’s to say this is the first review on this site. Fear not dear discerning blog-lover, I have written quite a number previously. Indeed, my reviewing efforts were once rewarded with the prize of $200 worth of wine by the ACT Writers Centre, as part of their annual awards. That’s what a poet calls ‘Breakfast’. I have the pleasure of judging the same award for book reviewing, sponsored by Z4 wines, this year.
And actually, I’m lying. There is a link here to a review written by a Canberra writer who calls himself or herself Poetix. So the review is not really here at all. I assume Poetix is a Canberra writer as the review of Canberra and Beyond by well known Canberra identity Bill Tully appears on the RiotACT, a Canberra-based discussion site about all things Canberran.
Sometimes you can have just too much Canberra.
For those 99.999% of the world’s population who have no interest in Canberra (which is the capital of Australia, for those overseas who have never heard of it) please enjoy this little poem about the frustrations of astronomy. The night sky differs between the hemispheres, but there are always stars.
Kicking the telescope
All this antic fiddling
when I wanted wonder
injected from you
like a syringe of pure white.
Fingers work, and thumbs,
in order to make a handle
of space, my grip as dumb
as a paralytic’s knee.
Perspicillim, sounds like
a Martian’s green-snot cold.
Ugly tripod, alien crouching,
on those three ungainly legs.
I swing mine to make a fourth.
You bow your one-eyed head.
P.S. Cottier
About whales
September 6, 2011
Stranded
Huge rubber torpedoes loose themselves onto shore;
a giant’s speed-humps beached. Incomprehensible,
these commas in a language no-one knows to speak.
Like sheep they follow each other, but no canny dog
can turn them, head them back to deep supporting sea.
Victims of gravity, bulk weighs them down,
and spread of sand becomes a massy grave.
That short word why grows in watchers’ minds,
pressing like the bodies on that fatal beach.
No answer comes. We water them like giant bulbs,
and strain to plant them back in bed of ocean.
But sometimes there can be just too much coast.
Unseen sirens called them, and some turned back
to dire, heavy death. Lapped by waves,
gentle as a fading memory, what do whales see
in that final surge, before their spirits swim away?
P.S. Cottier
PS Cottier 