Poem: This is a poem, not a listicle
February 9, 2023
This is a poem, not a listicle. It tastes like leather. If you listen you will soon note that it speaks bad French. It has never been to France. It bought cheap steroids in Bali. It would like to contain the word 'roseate', but can't. It read itself out loud just last week and was well received. It just watched the film The Brain from Planet Arous. It keeps reciting 'After I'm gone, your earth will be free to live out its miserable span of existence, as one of my satellites, and that's how it's going to be...' It can't translate that into French. This is a poem, not a listicle. PS Cottier
A poem dating back to 2015, published here once before, which shows that I was watching too many old science fiction films! I will be posting newer, even new, work here again soon.
But first I have a launch of the book V8 (written by Sandra Renew and one PS Cottier) at Smiths, Alinga Street Civic on Monday 13th, 7pm. Sarah St Vincent Welch will launch the book, and there will also be an open mic before readings from the book. In case you’re wondering, V8 is about cars and other vehicles, and is a poetry collection published by Ginninderra Press.
Passing beauty: poem
January 10, 2023
Passing beauty It's moving, just ahead of the player's most clever feet. Every four years, we fill a cup, then pour it out, a month of dreams. Was it just last week that Bergkamp flicked with orange elegance, side-footing space and time? No, he is long gone now, off fielding fifty years. Others follow. Messy time melts beauty, remoulds it, casts it always anew. It never ages, constantly fired, as we fade, we watchers, yesterday's players, passing. Twenty sips at the cup will fill a lifetime; held safe in keeper's hands. PS Cottier This football poem was first published in Eureka Street, and then in broadsheet (New Zealand), no 13, Special World Cup football issue, 2014. Finally (before today!) in Boots, a new edition of Mark Pirie’s 2014 football poetry anthology, 2017. I refuse to look up how old the Dutch player Bergkamp is now! I am not the only one still suffering minor withdrawal symptoms after the end of the World Cup. Great to see Argentina win, and the pun on the word 'messy' in my poem is deliberate. I am very much looking forward to the Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this year.
Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Poem: Befitting
December 4, 2022
Twice as long as my palms, my new loves sparkle, shine, make no demands. I do not intend to attract anyone with them. They are certainly not flashy signals or invitations. I stroke the glassy sides, kiss where a tongue would sit — but neither has a tongue. They glide onto my eager feet just when I want, and if I dance, I dance for myself, admiring the play of sun on cupping glass. My feet framed with transparency, I skip, slide, saunter and spin on the open, prince-less green — slippers fitting just so. PS Cottier
And I do note the overwhelming wee-ness of the slippers in that illustration! (Aubrey Beardsley)
Tuesday poem via link: Amorphous Solid
October 11, 2022
If you go to this site, you’ll find a new poem I wrote called Amorphous Solid, which is about a person turning into glass. It’s included in an on-line journal called Liquid Imagination, which has been around for quite a long time. Have a browse around. Unfortunately this is the last edition of the journal. The Poetry Editor is John C. Mannone, and the Managing Editor is Sue Babcock.
Tuesday Poem: I was meant to stride through
September 28, 2022
I was meant to stride through armour jingling, a whole orchestra of metal bits, cymbals and triangles. But something made me rest in the still, mushroom strewn wood, dank and smelling like dogs’ paws. Taking off the shiny carapace, I wriggled into the moss, napped, awoke to a gnome stealing gauntlets, to store in some illicit cavern. I decided not to give chase. Let him take what he wanted. Rolling over, my moist pillow seemed to release rich spores imbuing me with memories, indistinguishable from dreams. Before all this striving, all these ventures and clashes, I used to take the time to examine things, the varied feathers of birds, the damp exigencies of the frog. Who knows? In a hundred years someone may find a mossy log shaped a little like a knight, on which an escargatoire of snails pursues the silver quests of their kind, clothed in quiet brown armour of shell. PS Cottier
Any excuse to use the word ‘escargatoire’…
PS Cottier 