Tuesday poem: Foul
September 11, 2023
Foul I was warned about suddenly dodgy knees from stopping, ground-anchored with ball, not travelling, rose-red cheeks blooming if I mis-stepped, netball unlike free dancing. But it was my back that wrenched, pain slicing. Score forgotten, I limped and winced, green stomach threatening to disgrace the court. Later, my mother warned Be quiet about it, or we’ll get you a metal brace. The idea of steel encasing me, a permanent cage, a canary caught in inflexible grid, shut me up. I cried at night, tried to hide spasms at school. A broken bone flexing from that ladylike sport? PS Cottier
Netball was the main team sport for girls back when I was at primary and secondary school, which was a few years after that wonderful image held by the State Library in Queensland. I don’t think I actually broke my back playing the game, but I certainly twinged it!
Tuesday poem: [haiku]
August 23, 2023
deep Dickensian dark angler fish holds a lamp — Please Sir, I want more light PS Cottier
That’s not really an angler fish, but it’s such a great illustration by J-J Grandville that I had to use it.
Tuesday poem: Rest and silence
June 26, 2023
The last woman looks up, languid, at the three moons hanging in the sky, and thinks of fruit, although she’s not seen an apple for ten years. How strange to be the last woman, she thinks, you’d think I’d be extraordinary, rather than simply the last. She scratches her scalp, realises that the bugs will outlast her, for at least for a week or so. She feels she should record thoughts, have a sudden itch for poetry, erupting like a wordy pimple. But there would be no-one to read it, should she drum out an elegy, despite that superfluity of moons, enough to drive a Wordsworth mad. She decides to nap the species into oblivion. The last woman yawns. PS Cottier
The book of poems made up of those originally published on this blog, called Tuesday’s Child is Full, has received a couple of positive reviews recently; here and here. That’s at Compulsive Reader and The Canberra Times. Both like the humour, which is refreshing.
Tuesday poem: Nothing mechanical
June 13, 2023
Some say they are machines for love but there is nothing mechanical, nothing electronic about that truffle nose pushed into my leg, the translation between species without the need for words. PS Cottier
I think I would like to write a poetry collection entirely about dogs at some time. The poem above is really a kind of note towards a longer poem. I can’t imagine living without a dog, but then I am lucky enough to have a yard, and no hideous landlord making pet ownership difficult.
Tuesday poem: How Canberra
May 22, 2023
How Canberra
Parking at the AIS, pink imps called to me, or rather, grey imps wearing pink floppy hats. Gang-gangs opening gates in the sky. Walked to the pool, touching the bronze Guy Boyd woman poised on a plinth, the magic saint of all bad swimmers. Crawled through my twenty laps, more snail-stroke than free-style. Back to the car past groups of kids, past a well-known former athlete, past the memory of Covid marked by a discarded mask. Coffee at Tilley’s and more cockatoos, swinging below powerlines like avian punchlines, yellow fringes tickling the clouds.
PS Cottier
So a little translation for those who don’t live in Canberra; the AIS is the Australian Institute of Sport. Tilley’s is a venerable cafe in Lyneham, a suburb in the inner north of Canberra. And gang-gangs are a type of cockatoo. They are the faunal emblem of the Australian Capital Territory. An absolutely beautiful bird which can be seen quite frequently in Canberra, but which are overall becoming quite rare. Unlike the cocky in the photo.
PS Cottier 