Tuesday poem: Love letters
November 22, 2016
Love letters
I love you poetry because all I need is an old envelope — Telstra or power bill or guff — and a pen
And you wait there hidden between the grains of paper like a wee tiger, pouncing, or a huge poodle, primping
I can write you for everyone, or just for me
And through you I have met clever people, and some even good (and also pricks, but let’s not dwell in embroidery)
Poetry you keep my mind in the top fifteen percent of my generation
And you make me embed my thought in Real Words™ like a bloodbug in a mattress, burrowing
I weep for you when some use your name to produce pungent advertisements for self — ah! the faces I have slapped, the duels I have fought in your name (if only on paper)
You allow me to take a word — say egregious — and handball it back to myself with slicker hands than Hawthorn
And you stretch back and forward as far as music
And you adapt like Galapagos, but quick
Tourniquet and snake, you bite and comfort, and I love you like a convenient maiden aunt loves her old cat, who miraculously survived the pitbull
And you are the very pitbull, and the pitbull’s teeth.
P.S.Cottier
***
And in vaguely related news, I was just highly commended in the Poetry category of the Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing, organised by the New England Writers Centre. Very nice. The winner of the poetry prize (which I won last year) was Ian Hood, with a poem called ‘Drowning Satan’, which I look forward to reading. Paul Prenter was commended. All the poems (and stories, etc) will be published soon at the New England Writers Centre website, and I’ll link to that when I can. My poem ‘On average’ was about domestic violence.
The judge was John Foulcher, a fellow Canberran. (Judging was, of course, anonymous.)
P.S. ‘Hawthorn’ in the above, is an Australian Rules football team, who have dominated things over the last five years or so. (Until this year, in fact.) Another helpful guide to Australian culture for benighted foreigners my lovely overseas readers.
P.P.S. Pitbulls are awesome dogs, and are only vicious if abused.
Tuesday poem: Sequential menu
November 10, 2014
sequential menu
methane farts
too many cows
thick beefy skies
thick beefy skies
drive for takeout
taste that plastic
taste that plastic
(onion rings)
defenestration
defenestration
gutter wrapper
sea junk flourishes
sea junk flourishes
macturtles sup
second hand meat
second hand meat
too many cows
thick beefy skies
P.S. Cottier
but not so charmingly rural
I like this one; parts of it were originally written for a science haiku competition, but it grew and grew like cattle in feedlots.
***
Currently I am co-ordinating an on-line course on writing speculative poetry for Australian Poetry, which has nothing to do with cows. I just set an exercise, and, in case anyone out there is interested, here it is:
EXERCISE YOUR ALIEN
Imagine you meet a supernatural or alien creature. In a poem, describe this being, which could be from another planet, another dimension, or another time. It, or he or she, could also be a fairy tale character, or a character from mythology.
Try and avoid cliché. For example, if you have chosen a vampire, don’t use bat or crypt imagery. Don’t put your ghost in a graveyard!
Imagine meeting it in a common situation, such as your house, walking the dog (is that actually a dog?) or at a supermarket.
How does the creature sound? Smell? These senses are just as important as how it looks. Try and be specific in description rather than using abstract terms. (For example, don’t say ‘its alien hands’, say ‘its caterpillar tentacles, slug soft yet avid’.)
Tone can be humorous, terrifying, matter-of-fact.
Any form. A haiku can say as much as a ballad. But don’t let rhyme become the main reason for the poem!
Enjoy yourselves.
***
Now New Zealand has weird creatures, including the flightless poet. One of them just dropped this feather onto my screen. Click it and read her or his poetry:
Okay, the feathers have disappeared, ruining all my amusing references used for years on this blog. Please excuse! Our feathers now are ended…
Tuesday poem: Peripheral vision flicker (A poem found at Conflux)
October 13, 2014
Peripheral vision flicker
(A poem found at Conflux)
That subterranean process
alien or not alien
everyone is pretending
peripheral vision flicker
she can smell if you’re sad
more oxygen than carbon
prone to sooting
the aroma of porcelain
observe the strange world!
I was actually swooning
wouldn’t send a trunk story
we churn through them
faffing around before
a source of buoyancy
sketchy with world building
arrogant rockstar scientist
no socks in fantasy land
bounce off the person you are
every village is a city
chunky unspeakable matter
just people in an environment
herbivore men
arcane and hideous process
when we have wings
tend not to rhyme
a paisley black hole
P.S. Cottier
I love not listening properly, or even listening improperly…that is, just hearing little sound-nuggets (or sense nuggets) and recording them. Here we find some little phrases from a science fiction convention held in Canberra a week ago, joined together and called a poem. It’s more a peripheral sound flicker, to adapt the title to my nefarious ways.
Have I no decorum?
If you want proper poetry that may even make sense, may I suggest that you press this feather, and be beamed sideways to New Zealand and in other directions to other parts:
Endgame: The anthology
November 12, 2013
We are finalising The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry. Here is a recent photograph of me as I enjoy the process of fine-tuning things:
I am both the one in the hole and the one with the weapon.
My only consolation is that Tim Jones, co-editor, probably looks worse…
It will be a wonderful day when I hold the book in my hands, and all this egregious checking is out of the way. Then I’ll no doubt find a typo, and hit myself over the head with that.
PS Cottier 