Tuesday poem: haiku
April 16, 2019
Autumn wind
white leaves swirling
cockatoos
In Canberra at the moment there are thousands of sulphur crested cockatoos and corellas, supplemented with galahs and gang-gang cockatoos. Some of these birds come down from the higher mountains to avoid the even worse cold, and some stay here all year round.
This morning I was having a coffee outside a café watching a cockatoo eat seedpods in a tree, making the leaves fall down, as many other birds flew overhead. Blame him/her for this little poem.
Tuesday poem: Two stroke (or more)
April 8, 2019
This one is via link to Not Very Quiet, an on-line journal of women’s poetry. The guest editor for this edition on the topic ‘Performing gender’ was KA Nelson, and the editors who run the whole thing are Moya Pacey and Sandra Renew, with the production being managed by Tikka Wilson.
There’s lots of good stuff to be found there! Here’s a slightly terrifying image to get you in the mood.
Tuesday poem: On the couch
March 4, 2019
This poem was published last weekend in The Canberra Times, one of the few newspapers to still have a regular ‘corner’ for poetry. You can see ‘corner’ in terms of a place to hide, or the place where boxers go between rounds. I prefer the latter idea!
The poetry section is edited by the indefatigable Lizz Murphy, who also has a blog.
UPDATE: The Canberra Times will soon be open for submissions of poetry. The editor is particularly interested in work by Indigenous poets. Here are some details.
Tuesday poem: decant
January 29, 2019
decant
sax snaking
between notes,
tonguing air for directions,
poisonously honeyed
ears overflowing
quick thickening
and her voice,
both glacier and moraine
digging cool deep graves of swoon,
lowering us in,
willingly, longingly
noise-swaddled
now punctuated
by exhortations of snare,
the metal finesse
of the cymbal
jaggedly round —
its clanging infraction
PS Cottier
Writing about music is never easy; it always escapes being pinned down by meaning. Hope that you enjoy this attempt to write jazz. I have posted it once before, but I thought a reprise was in order.
Very happy to be back, by the way!
Two anthologies for spring
October 20, 2018
Very happy to have a poem in Best Australian Science Writing 2018, edited by John Pickrell (NewSouth Books), and another one in Poetry Bridges: Canberra/Nara Commemorative Anthology, edited by Saeko Ogi, Amelia Fielden and Noriko Tanaka (Ginninderra Press).
I just attended the launch of this second one, and it was a delight to hear the poems, including mine, translated into Japanese. There is a Nara launch next month, where the Japanese poems will no doubt also be read in English. Nara and Canberra are sister cities, and have been for 25 years. BASW is being launched in Sydney in November.
I am on two panels at Quantum Words in a couple of weeks; this is a day long festival looking at science and writing in Sydney. One is specifically about poetry and science, the other has the unassuming title ‘Writing the Universe’ which sounds vaguely biblical to my ears! To finish off, here is a very Japanese crane, at home in Hokkaido. We were lucky enough to see them in the wild, as well as at the sanctuary.
PS Cottier 