Poems
The colour of eyes
For Banduk Marika, Aboriginal artist
1. After your story of the funeral, August 1991
Black, Banduk, is the colour of eyes
like night shrunk
when grandma tidies after grief.
Perhaps she could not spill
to stain the room.
Black, Banduk,
this quaver fisted
in her throat –
it has no moon,
it ache ...
Lucy afloat
After the scattering of ashes
Pulpit Rock, 26 November 2014
And then the light
on these layers of grief,
grit, glow
that make a rock.
From blinding white
to ochre soft, then rust
and pink
running into each other —
who knows which colour came first
or if the glow came
before the grit
...
An argument in glass
For Jenni Kemarre Martiniello,
Aboriginal glassmaker
As you hold me,
you think your fingers know
I’m glass magic,
this slip and slide on cool satin,
then suddenly I’m water
and an eternity of greens —
O song of sea flowers,
you make drowning
beautiful.
Or so you say.
But what of other ...
After Reming
Super typhoon 2006
‘Purple.
Unlike any that I’ve seen,’
Mother says.
‘Behind an iron gate
beside an immense hole
on the ground,
but no house.’
She pauses,
and I’m suddenly
beside the purple
behind the gate
in the hole
in the house,
led by the definite article,
thus defini ...
kangaroo grass
ramayana puppet
angled, spare
you gesture with sharp fingers
beckoning insistent
eloqu ...
Our second 'Poem of the Week' for 2016 is 'Clare and Nauru' by Jennifer Maiden. ABR's Poetry Editor, Lisa Gorton, introduces Jennifer who then discusses and reads her poem.
... (read more)In this episode of 'Poem of the Week' John Kinsella reads ‘A Spiral, After Blake's 'Roughly sketched figures ascend the stairways of Paradise.' (Paradise, Canto 10, lines 72-87)’.
... (read more)In this episode of 'Poem of the Week' Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet reads her Peter Porter Poetry Prize shortlisted poem 'Rage to order'. ABR's Poetry Editor, Lisa Gorton, introduces Lisa who then reads and discusses her poem.
... (read more)In this episode of 'Poem of the Week' Toby Fitch reads 'In Fancy'. ABR's Poetry Editor, Lisa Gorton, introduces Toby who then reads and discusses his poem.
... (read more)In this episode of 'Poem of the Week' ABR Laureate David Malouf reads 'Visitation on Myrtle Street' which will appear in ABR's States of Poetry - NSW anthology. ABR Editor, Peter Rose, introduces David who then reads and discusses his poem.
... (read more)
