Tuesday’s Child is Full
October 20, 2022
This is the front cover of my latest book, a collection of poems first published on this very blog. I am particularly delighted with that cover, which relates to one poem inside the book about the Australian White Ibis, or tip turkey.
I have been writing this blog for thirteen years, frequently posting new poems, usually on Tuesdays, hence the book’s name. Thank you to all readers who have followed/commented/read the blog.
The book can be ordered here, from In Case of Emergency Press, which is the best name ever! It is priced at $20 (AUD). Re-reading thirteen years of this blog and selecting the poems was an interesting process, only occasionally bringing on a cringe. Dealing with Howard Firkin, the publisher, was a pleasure.
I will shortly be arranging a launch here in Canberra. Details to follow.
Poem: No genie, no wish
September 2, 2022
No genie, no wish I thought it was a safe dwelling, this huge shell, bright blue, blooming on sand. Not petty house for me, no scrummaging for dangerous weeks. My belly needs support, is un-calcified, tending to slump. I need other species to form places for me to hide, to live, and from where I scavenge, daily, for minute bites of food. Imagine my joy, at this mansion, the cavity through which I pushed an eager few centimetres of crab. And now I find myself trapped, unable to live in this blue world. When I die, I send out a cry, not in words but scent, telling other hermits that a shell has become vacant, and so, how many others will meet inside this treacherous, plastic tomb? A million such containers cover the beaches’ sheets of sand, a kaleidoscope of pain. Fake promises of security, washing up with very wave. I am a message, trapped inside a blue bottle of disaster, an artificial gift of doom. PS Cottier Hermit crabs are dying inside plastic and glass waste washed up on Australia’s remote islands: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/12/05/what-happens-when-hermit-crabs-confuse-plastic-trash-shells-an-avalanche-death/
Tuesday poem [haiku…sort of]
August 23, 2022
Chitinous plates turtles party with roaches zoot scutes PS Cottier
It’s lovely thing to have a blog, wherein one can post one’s weirdest creations. I was thinking of an old fashioned phrase for parties; bring a plate. And I had a vision of cockroaches and turtles partying, with plates attached to their bodies (part of their bodies). A scute is the hardened shell of a turtle. And an excuse for a pun. Look up zoot suit, if you need to.
That wonderful illustration is by Jean Ignace Isidore Gerard, who used the name Grandville. Courtesy of the site Old Book Illustrations, which is just fantastic.
I will shortly have news about forthcoming publications!
Cassowary
July 15, 2022
Cassowary Only the emu and ostrich outgrow them, these flightless, man-sized, razored birds, scuttling through the thick leaf litter like a nightmare turkey; all wattle and claw. I hear you run at 50 K an hour, leap fences like a show-jumper, and swim like a plumed platypus. Long-lived as any cockatoo, deep-voiced as a baritone, you strode your forests these many million years. Accessorised bright blue and red, you balance on stretched palm-leaf feet, and only fight when there is no escape. But no bird can outrun the ropes of road we push into your world, those hard nets of bitumen, tightening like a noose around Queensland's neck. Huge eggs hatched for aeons before we brought pigs and dogs and cars into that humid, secret, fruitful world. However brave the male who guards the heap of leaf which hides tomorrow's clutch of many birds, he can't see us off, with our strangling wire, and our certain need for boundaries. Cassowaries wear their casques like crowns; but how long can the regal booming sound, or chicks survive, in their bright-striped down? P.S. Cottier I wrote that poem over ten years ago, and it was first published in The Canberra Times. I am republishing it as I saw my first wild cassowary earlier this week in far north Queensland, where they live. A male with a single chick revealed himself after six hours searching.
Except for the cat
February 10, 2022
The cancer riddled Staffie, the muzzle white where it was brindle once, the Great Dane who clocked up only three years (for we breed dogs too big for their strained hearts to cope) the smelly terrier who outlived them all, sitting with the bald budgie Chomp on his head (something that would never have been allowed when the dog was alive), the coin-sized islands of terrapin, the scurry of guinea pigs, the cat that adopted you even though you don’t like cats, the many goldfish that floated to the tops of tanks, all come to greet you as you travel over to the other side. They bite and scratch and peck, and the ballooned goldfish push inside your throat, and you feel the choking although you are dead, and you realise that the animals did not enjoy their lives being stunted, to fit into your notion of pet like a blistered foot caught in a too small shoe. Except for the cat, who never gave a shit.
PS Cottier
A fun piece of prose (poetry) in a vaguely horrific way. As an editor, I’m amazed by how many poems contain cats. Here’s my contribution.
PS Cottier 