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.

If you go to this site, you’ll find a new poem I wrote called Amorphous Solid, which is about a person turning into glass. It’s included in an on-line journal called Liquid Imagination, which has been around for quite a long time. Have a browse around. Unfortunately this is the last edition of the journal. The Poetry Editor is John C. Mannone, and the Managing Editor is Sue Babcock.

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

brass depth of field instrument jazz
Photo by Chevanon Photography on Pexels.com

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!

Tuesday poem: Ursa major

August 8, 2017

Ursa major

Some old ones blow up
and some contract into themselves.
Crab nebula or hermit crab
seems to be the question.
Surely it’s better to reach out,
even with pincers, than to ban light’s
customary caress, its kissing blush of face?
I want to be the crabby old bear,
stained with purple,
snatching berries like song.
Bulking up for my Winter’s
last diminuendo.

PS Cottier

whole-herd-1

A middle-aged poem about age, first published in 2011 in The Mozzie, edited by Ron Heard in Queensland.

It’s by link to Tim Jones’s site, where he posts a poem from my new chapbook Quick Bright Things: Poems of Fantasy and Myth.  He also gives some commentary on the poem and the book, which is cool as a sea cucumber.  (The poem is about a sunken city, hence the sea imagery creeping in there.  Or sliding, or however sea cukes move.)

I was thinking of posting an appropriate Atlantis type image, but here instead is the cover of the book once again, with the cricketing fairy drawn by Paul Summerfield.  You can buy a copy here.

quick-cover-copy-front-only-copy