My last post!
September 26, 2013
No, not on this blog, dear reader. Still those sobs.
http://www.australianpoetry.org/2013/09/25/pucks-girdle-or-the-web-and-poetry/
If you dare, click that link and read my final post for Australian Poetry on the Wonders of the Web or How I Learnt to Love the Difference Engine.
This blog tends towards the short and sarcastic, so it was fun to be able to write some long pieces elsewhere.
Tuesday poem: To Sleep by John Keats
September 24, 2013
O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
Rhyming soul and mole is a brave thing, isn’t it? And sorry for using that photo again so soon, but it seems appropriate to one caught up in the exhausting world of editing! Click this link, dropped from a kakapo feather doona, and see if other poets have been thinking about dozing:
Tuesday poem: Air in the heart
September 16, 2013
Air in the heart
You might think it would be a good thing,
being light-hearted, like a kite, or a bird
riding up-draughts. But air in the heart
can stop pumping, block flow, rather than
bump it up. Diver into four ringed death,
ventricle prevented; you have blown
your last, and so you expire,
choking, full, oxygenated.
Open mouthed like a fish
surprised in sudden air;
a blimp crashing
through inflation.
Mouth a circle
of airy shock,
bubbling
an SOS
of ‘O’s.
P.S. Cottier
This jolly little thing, first published in The Mozzie, dates back to my disastrous attempt to scuba dive. That’s only disastrous in the sense that I couldn’t do it, rather than dying, though. Fortunately, I was learning (or failing to learn) in a pool in Canberra.
I had the totally irrational urge to remove the mouthpiece. Not so good in forty metres of water…
I suppose that I’ll never swim with the fishes. But neither, hopefully, will I sleep with them.
For more poetry, press this feather. Which reminds me that I’ll never skydive, either.
My column at Australian Poetry which will go up later this week is about different ways of performing poetry: slams, bush poetry and ‘literary’ readings. Pop over there as well! My first one was on being a poetic guinea pig, as mentioned before.
Tuesday poem: Unholy sonnet
September 10, 2013
Yes, I’m afraid it’s another link! My poem about mining in Australia was just posted at Eureka Street, along with some excellent poems about asylum seekers. I rewrite a John Donne sonnet as an address to Gina Rinehart. Fun fun fun! Press this link to go there:
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=38158#.Ui6JomthiK0
prospecting for pentameter
Then if you like, fly freely to New Zealand by pressing this feather:
Australian Poetry’s inaugural on-line Poet in Residence
September 5, 2013
I will be writing about poetry at the Australian Poetry site over the next month, as their on-line Poet in Residence. Inaugural Poet in Residence, which makes it sound slightly Presidential.
http://www.australianpoetry.org/2013/09/04/introducing-p-s-cottier/ If you feel like it, press that link which will take you to the site. This first piece is just a general introduction to me.
You can see what a keen mind Australia Poetry has on its hands for a month…Gloved in synapses, they will be.
I’ll be talking about reading only poetry next week, and how I have gone nine months untainted by prose. Should be fun!
PS Cottier 