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.
Poem: Plains-wanderer
April 3, 2023
Plains-wanderer Pedionomus torquatus Someone took a quail and put it on a rack. It hasn’t stopped being surprised, and looks around comically, this tiny survivor, this left-over, balanced on gum-boot yellow legs. Or perhaps it is shocked by all the sheep, the cats, the fox, the foul apparatus introduced by recent arrivals, cockier than any cockatoo? Plains wanderer likes the quiet life; endless stubbly land it punctuates like a soft bracket. Last of its kind, all it needs is space unruffled, except by herbs, and the female’s russet red, blooming like a tiny sun, as she calls to smaller moon of male. PS Cottier
JJ Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This year I was lucky enough to see the Plains-wanderer in the wild, which is truly a unique bird. The female is much larger than the male in this species, a bit similar to some birds of prey. But it is a truly harmless bird, and it was quite moving to see it hiding in the grass.
Tuesday’s Child is Full
October 20, 2022
This is the front cover of my latest book, a collection of poems first published on this very blog. I am particularly delighted with that cover, which relates to one poem inside the book about the Australian White Ibis, or tip turkey.
I have been writing this blog for thirteen years, frequently posting new poems, usually on Tuesdays, hence the book’s name. Thank you to all readers who have followed/commented/read the blog.
The book can be ordered here, from In Case of Emergency Press, which is the best name ever! It is priced at $20 (AUD). Re-reading thirteen years of this blog and selecting the poems was an interesting process, only occasionally bringing on a cringe. Dealing with Howard Firkin, the publisher, was a pleasure.
I will shortly be arranging a launch here in Canberra. Details to follow.
Cassowary
July 15, 2022
Cassowary Only the emu and ostrich outgrow them, these flightless, man-sized, razored birds, scuttling through the thick leaf litter like a nightmare turkey; all wattle and claw. I hear you run at 50 K an hour, leap fences like a show-jumper, and swim like a plumed platypus. Long-lived as any cockatoo, deep-voiced as a baritone, you strode your forests these many million years. Accessorised bright blue and red, you balance on stretched palm-leaf feet, and only fight when there is no escape. But no bird can outrun the ropes of road we push into your world, those hard nets of bitumen, tightening like a noose around Queensland's neck. Huge eggs hatched for aeons before we brought pigs and dogs and cars into that humid, secret, fruitful world. However brave the male who guards the heap of leaf which hides tomorrow's clutch of many birds, he can't see us off, with our strangling wire, and our certain need for boundaries. Cassowaries wear their casques like crowns; but how long can the regal booming sound, or chicks survive, in their bright-striped down? P.S. Cottier I wrote that poem over ten years ago, and it was first published in The Canberra Times. I am republishing it as I saw my first wild cassowary earlier this week in far north Queensland, where they live. A male with a single chick revealed himself after six hours searching.
Tuesday poem: The night I grew wings
April 12, 2022
I woke from uneasy sleep, as feathers tickled my suddenly sneezy nose. That has not stopped, and I need to bless myself twelve times a day. I carry tissues tucked between the feathers. If you are hit by sodden snow, it is probably a cloud-like tissue, slipping from inexpert wings. I would call the wings adequate, though, as I do not miss the morning commute. Please do not mistake me for an angel. I often swear, up here amongst the fluff, and my fingers pluck no cunning harp. Mittens cradle my blue-cold hands, and a beanie holds my head like an egg. Why this happened to me, I can't really say. Who has not dreamt of flight? Yet so few wake to feather doonas sprouting from shoulders like quotation marks. 'Anything becomes usual, given you have enough time to get used to it,' as I said to the press. I ride updrafts, and predict the patterns of sneeze. It is quietly wonderful, to share a life with pigeons, and to perch, a woolly gargoyle, for a quick cup of tea. PS Cottier
A fun poem, more than the illustration by Hans Tegner, which is excellent but a bit grim. And everyone should recognise the origin of that first phrase!
PS Cottier 