Review: Peter Doherty on the virus
August 29, 2021
I thought that some readers might be interested in a review I wrote of Peter Doherty’s book An Insider’s Plague Year. And just in case I am right, here’s the link! The following illustration has nothing to do with the review, except that mice feature there, too. I just had to use this, so why not now?
My reviewing is picking up a lot after I made my first swag of selections for poetry at The Canberra Times, which took a great deal of thought. The straight ‘no’ is easy, as are the obvious yes poems. It’s the maybes that kill you.
Poem: A woman crossed the road
August 14, 2021
A woman crossed the road
when she saw my Staffy
and I wanted to call out she’s a honey!
she only bites her food, and she loves
to lie on her back, let the sun delve
into her belly, and when I watch her,
I feel happy, almost as happy as when she
sees me, and her tail wags her body,
but I could not help but feel punctured
by the woman equating this dear dog with
violence, I could not help feeling anger,
and realised she had turned one part of me
into a poor imitation of how she sees Staffies,
for I felt like chasing her, shaking the nonsense out,
out of her head, and instead I reached down,
and patted the keg of a dog that she had spurned
just because dog-she carries a sad history
written by some thoughtless people
upon her plump body and her muscled breed.
She wagged her tail, oblivious.
My lips stretched to a smile.
PS Cottier
Pretty self explanatory, that poem. We’ve been in lockdown in Canberra for a couple of days now, and walking the dog is the only exercise worth doing.
A nasty nursery rhyme
August 3, 2021
Diddle diddle cumquat gnomes on the porch eating all the fairies with a golden fork See thirteen budgies aviary all full? screaming at a guinea pig red flag to wee bull Poets are itching itching with an itch one is a rhymer one is not so rich Gnomes are coming cumquat diddle dum hungry for eyeballs now they’ll have some fun! PS Cottier
I seem to be writing a lot of fantasy lately, probably as an escape from the exigencies of editing. Just had another very little thing published at the venerable AntipodeanSF. A scifaiku, the first of a few to come.
haiku
July 15, 2021
Grey pigeons my father's colour flown away PS Cottier
Rather cold Russian pigeons in that beautiful photograph, to accompany a quiet haiku about loss.
They say
July 2, 2021
that riding a unicorn is not unlike herding clouds that garden gnomes wake each night and eat snails that pistachio! is said by elves to each other after they sneeze that Pinocchio actually liked being a puppet more than a real boy that mirrors store each image and watch a kaleidoscope each night that marshmallow tastes exactly like drowning in freshly laid snow that the stomach inside the earth is always churning and burping that empty wine bottles stored in cellars refill every twelve years that walls are built by the fearfully dull [both giants and States] that mushrooms glow green when the moon goes superpink that hearsay could equally be called listentalk PS Cottier
Sometimes it’s good to write something just for fun. I think I’d like to meet the ‘they’ who say the things in this poem. The illustration is by Hugh Thomson, via the ever wonderful Old Book Illustrations.
PS Cottier 