PS Cottier

Perfect words

Sometimes they reach out
caress with syllable fingers —
egregious is my long term love
half egret feathers with the jus
noise saucing the end,
despite the meaning
or because it’s such a better way
to say doubleplusbad.

Gnarly enchants, with that
drowning g, wiping out
in the endless surf of the ee.
What wetsuit could protect,
what board shorts deserve
the sweet yet egregious sea,
with the tincture of shark grin
and the promise of release?

P.S. Cottier

That illustration is most egregiously gnarly, and not AMA approved.

***

Here’s a photo in a different key, of Susan Hawthorne and Lizz Murphy who were participants in a discussion on The Poetics of Politics which was part of The Canberra Writers Festival.  I moderated the session on Saturday, and it went well, I think. We covered quite a lot of ground, and read several poems.  Later I thought about the event, and I realised that all the speakers and questioners had been women, which was a first, in my experience, at a mixed gender event.

Here are Lizz and Susan at Tilley’s après the panel.  They both ate.  I drank, and had a quiet evening watching horrendous Swedish murders being solved Nordically.

And here’s another one before the wine at the end of the event itself; thank you Gina Dow.