Feet, not face
December 14, 2012
Shoes so cool that people say
could I photograph your feet?
Face up to yourself woman,
there’s a party happening downstairs.
Thanks to Sharon who liked the shoes so much!
Tuesday poem: My daughter’s words
December 10, 2012
For Zoe
Snow falling in flumps
down to make a slushy mud
as rolled in by
the dalmination of pigs
marketable, beef-eating and
weeweeweewee,
shown on Playschool,
and repeated forever,
one yawning stretching week,
between half past three and four.
(That giraffe-necked word
animation, she connects
with 101 Dalmatians,
a hang-dog Disney book
dredged together from the film
and read once when she was two.)
All hail the child genius, says Mum,
struck with awe, but not quite dumb.
Here, would you like to see a photo?
Every wallet a portrait gallery,
the child nestled beside the notable.
When she’s eighteen,
she’ll deny that
flumps ever passed her lips,
those cubes of whiteness,
borne from experiment,
flavouring my day.
An only child learns fast,
melts into cultured age
and books, the favoured flavour
of literacy.
Her ecstasy at reading now hints
that flumps’ days are numbered.
Expelliarmus, flumps!
She’ll wave her wand of bigger words,
casting new spells.
Not yet, please, not yet.
Bide a little longer,
stay home from school,
and we’ll be two flumps on the couch
between half past three and four.
PS Cottier
My daughter graduated from primary school last week, so I dug out this poem written when she was just starting school, which was published in my first book, The Glass Violin. Now for a list of cliches:
They grow up so fast
Blink and they’ll be gone
No, that’s not your little baby is it?
All so true, and all so tedious. (Note that I am being tough here; back to the safer realm of the satiric after a very rare leap into family matters.)
The Tuesday Poets are of all sorts. Click this feather and track them like endangered birds:
Busy-ness unbefitting a poet
December 1, 2012
What a lovely present for a launch speech! Yesterday it was about 36 degrees in Canberra and unusually steamy, and I gave my first launch speech for the pamphlet In Response to Magpies. This was organised by Hazel Hall, Australian Poetry’s café poet at Biginelli’s café.
Hazel Hall
It went quite well, and the readings by the poets included in the collection were enjoyable. Here I am looking up in the air, as if there is an invisible magpie swooping:
Fortunately I am wearing my special invisible helmet
I am hoping to write up the speech for publication. The wine remains intact, as it is gin weather.
Last night I went to a poetry slam, co-organised by fellow Triptych poet J.C. Inman at The Front, and it was so steamy and hot we were all like pieces of tofu floating in a laksa. Here is a piece of poetic tofu, also known as J.C. Inman:
J.C. Inman
(my phone was fainting from the heat)
I realised how exhausted I was when I read a poem before the slam and my hands were literally shaking. People must have thought I was a very sensitive flower, but that was not it at all. It was: half heat, half gin, half gym. So what? A mathematican I ain’t.
Canberra: freezing one day and Brisbane the next. If only I could afford a pankawallah. Or another gin.
Now I’m off to be languid. After the gym.
Tuesday poem: Silver-eyes and figs
November 26, 2012
Silver-eyes and figs
Each bird a single note, played
between the heavy figs, swollen
breves in this flighted music,
swing accents in an airy score.
The eye does not dissect
any swift segue of feather,
rather the bird breeze shakes
the hand-leaves, palms turned away.
It is the movement we see, not
a display case specimen mounted,
spread eagled for our slower eyes.
To watch this quick-silver is to
turn away from focus, to become
silver-eyed ourselves, as the ruffled
feathers of the fig
breathe scent of bird.
This uncharacteristic poem appears in my first book, The Glass Violin, copies of which are still available from Ginninderra Press. (Scroll down this linked page to Cottier.) Annoyingly, the last two lines above should appear as a broken line, with the word ‘breathe’ under the word ‘fig’, but this broken line keeps being removed before I can post this entry, creating a lovely chunky effect. Sigh.
I still remember how nervous I was before the launch of that first book. Geoff Page did the launch speech.
And now I am doing the launch of a book for the first time on Friday. The book is called In response to magpies, and is a small pamphlet of nine poems dealing with this charismatic Australian bird. The idea is that it would make a wonderful alternative to a mere Christmas card. The authors are Denise Burton, Amelia Fielden, Hazel Hall, Norma Hayman, Kathy Kituai, Sandra McGahy, Fiona McIlroy, Sandra Renew and Jill Sutton.
golden eye, not silver
Details: Biginelli Expresso, 5th floor, School of Music, Australian National University, 2pm. Please come along if you feel like poetry or coffee (or both) in the middle of the day.
I understand that magpies cause some havoc in New Zealand, where they are an introduced species. So even though one might say Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle, I doubt somehow that this feather represents the magpie. Click it, and you will fly to New Zealand, where further poetry awaits you.
Tuesday poem: Sausage haiku
November 19, 2012
This poem was written on the spot at a recent event at my daughter’s school, where the students presented their explorations on themes of social inequality and discrimination to the assembled masses. As at most things I go to these days, there was a sausage sizzle. As a vegetarian, I feel somewhat redundant at these things, even where vego items are provided. All weak and salady and wilting. But give me something to write on, and I’ll write.
I recently saw a wonderful poet who composed a much more impressive and less sausagey poem on the spot, based on words called out from the audience. Khairani Barokka, known as “Okka”, is an Indonesian writer, performer, artist, producer and researcher. She is definitely one of the most exciting performance poets I have ever seen, and her appearance at the ANU School of Music, organised by the group of poets who meet there and by Australian Poetry Limited, was something I will remember for a long time. Particularly her poem about being asked to rate pain on a scale of 1 to 10. She combines the highly personal and historical and political aspects in her work, without any of the seams showing.
Here she is at the recent Canberra performance. Not the best photo, but I’ll blame Okka for not standing still!
Local poets also read their work, and Indonesian Butet Manurung spoke about her experiences with marginalised jungle-dwelling people in Indonesia. She read from her non-fiction book The Jungle School. The book is already available, but will be launched in Australia and New Zealand next year.
All round, it was an exciting event. And not a sausage to be seen. Or smelt!
Click this feather for further poems. Go on. Click like a clicky thing.
PS Cottier 