Tuesday Poem: (haiku) by P.S. Cottier
June 25, 2013
Gloves house hunger
moths make gaping mouths
finger tongues speak
Now that’s me, begloved in gloves which never had fingers, at the launch of Poetry in ACTION yesterday, in front of my poem, ‘April mornings’. ACTION stands for ACT Internal Omnibus Network, by the way. I bet you didn’t know that! (And it just occurred to me that some readers won’t know that ACT stands for Australian Capital Territory, which was set up so that Canberra wasn’t in either New South Wales or Victoria. Most of the ACT is national park.)
If you would like to read this poem properly, along with the other nine poems selected to appear on Canberra buses, please press this link, which will take you to a page within the Arts ACT site.
You can also see the short-listed poems, and children’s poems, if you navigate from that page.
It was beyond freezing in Canberra yesterday. Note the loverly weather outside the bus window in the photograph above. It may snow at the weekend, which is positively un-Australian. Next month, though, I am having a handful of days in sunny Wellington…
Click this feather for further poetry frisson from the tropical climes of New Zealand:
Tuesday poem ‘In a London Drawingroom’ by George Eliot
June 18, 2013
In a London Drawingroom
The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.
For view there are the houses opposite
Cutting the sky with one long line of wall
Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch
Monotony of surface & of form
Without a break to hang a guess upon.
No bird can make a shadow as it flies,
For all is shadow, as in ways o’erhung
By thickest canvass, where the golden rays
Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering
Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye
Or rest a little on the lap of life.
All hurry on & look upon the ground,
Or glance unmarking at the passers by
The wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages
All closed, in multiplied identity.
The world seems one huge prison-house & court
Where men are punished at the slightest cost,
With lowest rate of colour, warmth & joy.
George Eliot
Such a modernist sounding work; even a tad of the other Eliot (T.S.) about it, but this was written in the 1870s. It was not published during Eliot’s lifetime.
For further poetry, please press this feather, and you may find more Victorian poetry. Or you may not. I’m not promising, you know.
Don’t forget, if you’re in Canberra, to come to the reading at Smiths, Alinga Street, Thursday 20th at 6pm, with Nigel Featherstone, JC Inman and myself. Unfortunately George Eliot can’t make it.
Tuesday poem: Innumerate
June 3, 2013
Innumerate
Adding up was one thing, boring as thick porridge,
each sum a trial rather than a triumph, but I could
do it, just, stir that numbered pot, when teacher-cook
required us to follow her bland, lumpy recipe.
Once spicy symbols joined the foul stew, however,
I was forever lost. Mathematics was a language
alien to my brain, slipping off unformed synapses
like bald car tyres on slick roads. I crashed out.
I comforted myself with the appearance
of her pimpled acolytes; thick glasses flashing
as they squealed their joy at piggy feasts of number.
I was vegetarian amongst eaters of formulaic flesh.
I still am. My brain is one-sided, and it walks like a sailor
who has lost his wooden leg, but can’t read the compass
to save his limp, to save his salty soul. But so what?
My mathy albatross still stinks — and I’ve sailed different seas.
P.S. Cottier
This poem appeared recently in The Canberra Times. Unfortunately, the first word was inadvertently removed, which made the whole poem a little difficult to understand. I thought I’d post it here in its uncropped form.
For more poetry, press this feather, and read the work of other Tuesday Poets:
Tuesday poem: Skywhale haiku
May 13, 2013
Cetaceous floater
chewing soft cud of sky krill
blubbered cumulus
P.S. Cottier
The best thing to happen during Canberra’s Centenary Celebrations (there are a lot of capitals around at the moment in the nations’s capital) took to the air outside the National Gallery on Saturday.
Skywhale, a balloon sculpture designed by Patricia Piccinini, is not exactly your typical whale. She has a bit of the turtle about her, and wings made of breasts. Is she an angel? I don’t know, but her presence is peaceful and wonderful; confusing those who like straight lines and easy classifications.
The money, some people are shouting! The outrageousness of producing a whale that isn’t even a proper whale for the centenary of an inland city! The threat to mental law and order! Read some of the comments here on RiotACT, where the haiku was posted by me as a comment. I didn’t want to argue the case, as Skywhale seemed so strangely perfect in her ambiguity. A poem seemed more appropriate.
There should be more of this sort of perplexing beauty, confounding those who think that art should be confined to easily recognisable portraits and lovely landscapes punctuated with useful sheep:
Moustaches and merinos
made Australia what she is today.
No fleecy clouds of maybe here!
No blubbering queens of perhaps,
with flowing boas of breast to tease
certainty into mere sniffle;
our capital’s castaway.
P.S. Cottier
Through all the controversy, Skywhale maintains her dignity, moving gently through the sky with her wings of breasts, a kindly and whimsical presence, powered by hot air but quite serene. Skywhale is certainly the Queen of the Centenary. She will soon be touring the country, looking down on her subjects with that benign and somewhat Mona Lisa smile.
Mona Lisa with barnacles
Long may she swish through the skies, delighting those who prefer their art to have a little whimsy, and to pose a few questions, at the same time that it delights and sets us free.
Click this feather for further poetry:
Tuesday poem: ‘Colonials’
May 6, 2013
Colonials
Angels dancing on pins are nothing to us.
Those celestials number thousands,
harpies with harps, slippery butterflies.
Bring the formeldehyde, I say,
and still their antic twists.
We live in millions, simple stars,
galaxies that give no light.
A bone slung hammock,
a fleshy divan,
your body transports us
as we rock, divide, and redivide.
Under the curved
frowns of your fingernails,
on the flaky deserts of your head,
we plant our sprawling flag.
Any crevice is our castle, your mouth
a plunge-pool for our disport.
Arise, Sir Realm, Lady Habitat.
King Bacillus is well pleased.
P.S. Cottier
Really, these little things rule the world; a successful form that’s been around a lot longer than we have, and which may outlast us.
Sucked in, hm?
Now, press this feather to read more, possibly less infectious, poetry:
PS Cottier 