Poem (via link)
October 30, 2023
Very happy that my poem “Hip gnomes” was just awarded the Australasian Horror Writers Association Shadows Award in the poetry category for 2022. A great trophy! And everyone needs a tombstone arriving just before Halloween.
You can read the poem here, where it was first published at AntipodeanSF late last year. (That’s a link to Trove, which may take a little while to load.) AntipodeanSF is a free online publication that has been around for many years. Thank you to editor Ion Newcombe, and also to Kaaron Warren, who gave a speech on my behalf and picked up the award.
I’ve had two poems about osteoporosis published; this is by far the more fantastical (and dark) of the pair.
Tuesday poem: Palm cockatoo
October 9, 2023
Palm cockatoo Heads like a child's drawing of bird heads, huge beak and feather mane, flopping, last extant beat-poet, croaking of things hep and cool. Man, you hit bedrock on that arching drum, selecting the sticks that give the deepest echo, sound playing through that tall wooden amplifier, from dark roots to hazy blowing sky. You contemplate the waving tops of tropical trees, plumed angel-head, stylish in your deep black daytime rhythm. Inimitable pulsing punctuation, beaky accent perched above the forest's bright green flow.
PS Cottier
(Image copyright Birdwatching Tropical Australia)
I have posted this poem before, many years ago, however I just saw Palm Cockatoos in the flesh (or feather) for the first time up in Cape York. The male uses sticks to drum on hollow trees, something possibly unique among non-human creatures. (Although we do tend not to see, or hear, things that other species do.) My left shoulder boasts a tattoo of a Palm cockatoo; over ten years since that was inked I saw one.
The photo is of the one we got a good look at; I also saw a couple in flight. We saw Golden-shouldered parrots on the way up, an equally special bird that nests in termite mounds. It is unfortunately one of Australia’s most endangered birds.
The next bird I really want to see is more common. The budgie (the wild one) has always evaded me. I’d love to see a large flock of them in the wild. Occasionally one is seen in Canberra, but they are escapees from aviaries, given away by size and colour, probably wondering where all the seed went.
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.
PS Cottier 