Tuesday Poem: Australian junk
January 28, 2014
Australian junk
Perfect beyond compare, the composition
glimpsed behind the sand dune, visitation
of a nation, expressed in three fork prongs:
a cricket stump, a tinnie, and a single thong.
Was there an arranger, of design intelligent,
or was it just luck, dumb evolution, that bent
time and space to make this eloquent trio?
Leprechauns fix just one shoe, but there’s no
Irishman likes cricket, it’s just not their game.
Should I search for walkers gone lame,
one side leaning? Or a patriotic drunk
who made tribute, through placing this junk,
into a precise summation of our Antipodes:
weird sport, sour booze, and feet liking breeze?
P.S. Cottier
A very light poem indeed today. Ye gads, it’s not even a proper sonnet! Yesterday was the public holiday for Australia Day (which was Sunday the 26th, for all you benighted foreigners), and the flags hopped out like feral rabbits. I find the yobbo aspects of patriotism very hard to take.
But the rhyming thing above celebrates a moment when I saw a thong (a flip-flop for all you benighted foreigners), a tinnie (an aluminium drink can that once contained beer – oh, do keep up!), and a cricket stump (surely you know what that is?) discarded at the beach.
Meanwhile, of course, morons are killing sharks in Western Australia as they occasionally bite people who are in the water. Meanwhile, our navy is reportedly pushing boats of asylum seekers back to Indonesia. Meanwhile, we still don’t recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution.
But at least we beat the Poms in cricket. (Men’s cricket, that is.)
Now, after this dubiously un-Australian rant, with all the affection hidden in the poem, I suggest you cleanse yourself by flying to New Zealand. Click this feather, and It Shall Be:
I promise not to mention the Black Caps…*
January 14, 2013
Scorecard
Genius comes in many forms: scientist
to poet, astrophysicist or scribe,
and from its milky way we imbibe
a celestial drink. We’re often pissed
on the fluffy ducks of cleverness,
garnished cocktails of the everafter.
But if you would engender laughter
and gales of glee quite effortless,
suggest that genius might reside
in knitting, crotchet or a recipe
for jam, or scones, or fricasee.
They’ll call you mad, in accents snide.
Quite different from the game of cricket
where it takes a Shane to take a wicket.
P.S. Cottier
Not another one?
Yes, it’s summer, and a young (or autumnal) woman’s fancy turns to cricket. And in keeping my poetry on its toes, at least as alert as a New Zealand batsman. (*I lied….)
In that spirit of relaxed experimentation, please find above a wee sonnet on a gender and cricket theme.
Cricket Poetry Award: Line and length
June 15, 2012
Perhaps that should be lines. The Cricket Poetry Award closes on 31st August, so if you have an idea for a poem about playing or watching cricket, it’s time to pad up.
The prize is $2000 AUD, entry is $20, which can be done by Paypal, and the announcement of the winner is made at the SCG members pavilion. The top twenty poems from each year have previously been published in a booklet.
Entry forms and full conditions can be found here. There is a tight word limit of 150, so there is no defensive play allowed. No Boycott. Only Gower. And that has to be a good thing.
Bloody batting metaphors. Grumble grumble.
Tuesday poem: Watching Les Murray
February 21, 2012
That's Les Murray's beer
Watching Les Murray
(I am not making this up)
I went to hear a certain poet
the best known one,
the big one we own.
I wished I could draw
his gentle circles,
his particular infinity.
But I can’t draw.
Though there were pencils.
Giant ones. Three metres tall. Red.
I am not making this up.
So I sat and watched Les,
dwarfed by these giant pencils.
And if you don’t believe that,
you won’t believe this;
the place where he read
was called The Gods.
So I sat, a poet from Lilliput,
leaning on a giant pencil,
listening to God, or at least,
his Southern emissary.
I laid wistful eggs on the pencils.
In time, something may emerge,
and help me make something up.
P.S. Cottier
I went to see Les Murray read at the Gods, a café/restaurant on the Australian National University campus on Wednesday, 15th February. Organised, as always, by the indefatigable Geoff Page. There are giant pencils attached to the walls of the café, as you can see in this appalling photo:
Les Murray is so very good as a reader, and I was impressed by how many humorous poems he read last week. I wrote the poem above about four years ago, when I was just starting to make contact with my fellow poets (but before my licence was issued, in the form of my first book). It recalls a much shyer Penelope, sitting in the corner, watching Les read.
Another poet at Les’s reading was Mark Tredinnick, who, as you may know, recently won the Montreal Poetry Prize for his poem, ‘Walking Underwater’. Mark is of course endlessly teased now by cruel people (who shall remain nameless) about how he is spending the prize money, but he takes it very well.
A rather surprised Mark Tredinnick
All in all, this was a wonderful night and it reminded me of just how good poetry can be. As Les Murray said, poetry is strong stuff, and it doesn’t need the crutch of prose to justify itself.
Easy for you to say, Les!
Give it back? Why would I give it back?
If you click on this quill you will be transported to a hub based in New Zealand, and will find Treasure in the form of poetry:
On a totally unrelated issue, my review of ‘A Tingling Catch’ : A Century of New Zealand Cricket Poems 1864-2009, ed. Mark Pirie, Wellington: HeadworX, 2010 has just been published at Cordite. Those who were worried that I was going to write a post without mentioning sport can now breathe more easily. Although watching poets read (and listening to them, too) has aspects of a sport about it.
How to wrestle an angel
February 17, 2012
I just had a poem on this very useful topic published at Eureka Street. So if you would like a quick education on wrestling holds (including the Frankensteiner, a personal favourite of mine since the nineteenth century) why not have a look? Click here to have ring-side seats. There is also a lovely poem by Melbourne’s Barry Gittins.
Go for his wings! His wings!
PS Cottier 