Poem: Bogongville
October 1, 2026
That flag-pole must be magnetic,
pulling them in like soft iron filings,
throwing them down to fluttering lawn,
now carpeted in giant rug of quiver.
Magpies fatten on sudden protein,
flightless sumos, warbles muted
by wads of cotton wool moth.
Is it the twisted light, the hot rumble
that lemmings them here in Canberra,
those soft knock-knock jokes told
on Parliamentary windows?
The conga line of lunatics
dies, baited by abundance;
mistaking glare for moonlight’s
whisper, its fitting glove of glow.
PS Cottier
The numbers of bogong moths are finally increasing, after their numbers crashed in 2017. Drought and increasing temperatures were to blame. It’s great to see them coming back again; hopefully not just an upwards blip on a downward trending graph. Parliament House in Canberra used to sport very fat magpies who feasted on the moths. The flagpole referred to is the enormous one that flies the Australian flag over that building.
This poem was written back in those days where they formed huge swarms, and hid in discarded shoes. (They are flying to cool caves to multiply and die.) The photo, which does not really catch the numbers around, was taken on the south coast of NSW.
Poem: A further squalid thing
January 16, 2026
The spaces between dog’s toes
are gardens of smell
erupting fungus tickles the nose
with a soupçon of shit.
She stores a safe of comfort there
and sniffs the spaces
to remind her of the day, the week,
perhaps the fragrant year.
Her brain is a sommelier’s,
sensing the slightest hint of dead bird,
the one at the street corner,
and comparing it with the cockatoo
whose carcass she pranced through the park.
The mixture of these avian scents
must be a kind of heaven, a menu
of brown and must, tucked between
those neat non-books of toe.
The title refers to Sei Shōnagon The Pillow Book, the section called Squalid Things. Poem first published Womens Ink!, November 2024
Poem: Components (via link)
November 11, 2025
If you go to this link, you’ll find a poem I just had published at the venerable AntipodeanSF, called “Components”. It involves a horse and cart, which allows me to use that wonderful illustration by Phiz, of a scene from Dickens’s David Copperfield.
The poem is about routine and magic, and is rather long, by my standards. But by no means Dickensian.
Poem: The Smell of Heaven
October 16, 2025
To a truck driver
Nullabored,
it may be McDonald’s
The dog combines
bone with noseshadow
of absent master
The writer mixes
new printed book wisp
and any wine
Christ died scented
with sweat and piss
and others’ spit
Only a dead-brave poet
would mention roses
but yes, heaven
will be those too,
and we will turn thrice
and smell that which
we smelt in the womb —
warm blood and love.
As that dog, replete
with his master’s tang,
knows meat and bliss
were always one.
PS Cottier
An old poem, this one, first published in Eureka Street ten years ago.
Our sense of smell is so weak, compared to that of the creature in the photo, but I think it’s an important sense to explore in poetry.
Tuesday poem: Deep sea vents
September 16, 2025
Deep sea vents
Starfish cluster like orange suns,
clinging to the bewitching vent
whose toxic warmth allows them life.
Ghost-fish haunt these black depths,
blind, or carrying lanterns made
from their own anaemic flesh.
They flash like deep sea paparazzi.
Aliens live far beneath our boats
without a breath of solar light.
Planets of giant long-legged crabs,
and copycat worms in tubes near
long boiling steaming lava chimneys.
Smoking is definitely
good for their health.
PS Cottier
Alphonse de Neuville, illustration to Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
