States of Poetry

someone is leaving a plane and feeling the city wrap around them again. the atmosphere, it is always heavy around here. what that means is that it's humid. within the person there is an internal battle, then there is a decision, then there is action. while the consequences of the action play out, crickets play and not even in the background. the sound rises and all of a sudden it feels like they are all around. but they are nowhere to be seen, so it is terrifying as well. something invisible can be so consuming. yes, the atmosphere is still heavy here. the person who leaves the airport had no one to meet them and was going to get the airport train but figured a taxi wouldn't be so much more expensive than the train fare. it was probably about two dollars more. this is the kind of person who has to wait to run errands that would be easier with a car because she doesn't have one herself. they wait until a friend with a car has a weekend free. this is the kind of person who leaves their phone at home and goes to dinner with only a book. they like to walk home through back streets to explore the city, stop to pat friendly cats for a little while and dawdle all the way back because it is always good to go a bit slower. the noise of the crickets, the absence of a breeze wrapping around all the time make this giant place seem smaller.

Susie Anderson

Recording

I love the whole world
she said,
without sounding
corporate

(Agnes Martin
said it)

I love arctic phlox
but
have never seen it

*

a bit 'light'
on equipment –
a T-square
& a tape measure

might need extra
for researching

to avoid
grains of salt

*

(an ascription)
Agnes Martin
was a lesbian

tho
she often
denied it

                  wonder
                  how her lovers
                  took that?

*

&, now,
a new question

it's
for Moe Tucker

(Velvets drummer)

why why
the Tea Party?

furious
about the way
we're being led
towards socialism

(Moe Tucker
said it)

no no no Moe
'we're' not
&
that's the trouble

politics though
can happen
       ominously,
with what
between
       the rich & the socialites
       & technology

couldn't play
a perfect roll
for a million dollars

moody

cymbals
never mattered

*

Agnes Martin,
              had she lived
              long long long,
might have been
      Tea Party

her capable paintings
put me
to sleep
(reproduction only)

making a map
of hints
& clues

you'll never know
    what
abstraction
    is
          unless
          you ask
          the women

*

I dream another grid

Pam Brown

to think the
future

                               I've
                   always had
      frugal expectations

thinking
what cannot
be thought

trickgensteinian

*

everyone's
been to Paris
or claims it

           where influences
           live
           & teach
                     & children
             lift giant leaves
                         & blow
                               fluff

*

start to loathe
the sun's
shrivelling

           affordable viola
                         planted
                       for cheer

wilted

even the sun has cancer
(norma cole)

*

singed

no
signed

                         repurpose
                           funding
                                   get
       brand poetry t-shirts

rain taxi
book thug
I ate all your bees

*

noodle bowls
trestle table

                           white cloth
                       pristine, cool
               embroidered edges

lidless jars
potent chillis
fresh bean shoots

mint

*

nothing
       'under the bed'
       just dust
       & a five cent piece

*

I don't give a

*

windows
rattling
blind cord bead
tap tap

a southerly

what's there to say

you went away
twice

you didn't die

*

money
language
time

electric money
safekeeping
beyond panic

an ethic
an epic

writing
to say

hooligan affection

                     takes up
                               all
                     the time

*

standing waters

watery metaphors
persist

putrified slime
mites
mal aria
misaquaterrists!

       forbidden swamp
                 filthy mire
           nether regions

fountains of youth
marshes
ague

*

'thinking with'
undoes
things

&

the future
talked past

Pam Brown

at the patisserie the waitresses speak in French to each other while they slowly put in your coffee order. they do not seem rushed and their dialogue makes the experience seem authentic. I did not have cash and asked if they had a minimum on card. it was $10 and I had to add a chocolate truffle to my order to meet the price. I laughed to deflect attention from getting chocolate in the morning and said it would be my afternoon snack. I was lying. I planned to eat it well before lunch on the way back to my building so no one I work with would know. on my way back I realised that no one actually speaks to each other at the office. so I could eat what I want or sit and write the whole experience down in my notebook at my desk and no one would notice.

Susie Anderson

Recording

on the first night
coo coo cooroo
falsetto blues singer

       blinded by the hurt
       coz I'm
       blinded by the hurt

troubled refrain
slowly building
backing singers

       it's intersubjective
       I
       join them
coo coo cooroo

blinded by the hurt
repeat

*

anti day
everyday
partly cloudy
in Wiley Park

Jan
   'taught the Beats'
     to a secular mix
     at Wiley Park
     Girls High School

after her job
on Tribune,
communist newspaper

here am I
in
the train

'this train
will stop
at
Wiley Park'

Jan
& her whiskeys
& crime novels

*

the way
cloud
banks

*

this sign -
       do not visit
       after heavy rain
       risk of tree failure

glue gum
eucalypt haze
blue gumski
karrabin
bundjalung
red gum

*

I can't
help you

*

third floor -
     is every woman
       on the third floor
       here
       for a mammogram?

*

there
     a little poem
     tucked
     at the end
of the lifestyle supplement

just a bit bigger
than
a horoscope chunk

to give it its due

*

I can't
help you

*

going going
koala
powerful owl
gang gang

coo coo cooroo

*

documentary –
       the teabag tag
       jiggler dangling
       from
Noam Chomsky's
cup

endearing

*

troubled refrain

     real life
     tastes plastic
     anyway

repeat

Pam Brown

she used to walk out to the road at the end of town, put her arms and legs up to the sky and stretch out to reach all of the stars. the next summer it seemed like she would never have the chance to do it again, because of the locusts. everywhere in the town there were dead locusts covering the roads. locusts met their deaths on windscreens of cars and meshed inextricably into the grates of the trucks on the highway. the people in town stayed indoors most of the time because you could not go outside without breathing in or stepping on a locust. elderly people raised their eyebrows at the young as if they were receiving their penance. the middle-aged accepted the locusts as another weary feature of their lives. the young checked the weather on their phones and knew there was a 80% chance a rain storm would come and wash the locust carcasses away by next thursday.

Susie Anderson

Recording

u salivate over the lavish merch     & navigate the root
     the riot marches down     pour lemonade into yr filters
           watch it     fizz w/ the aura of philosophy
     confit the poor     toys & velour     lining yr demon crèche
where right wings cook     the science left   wings wilt
     where the schism u imp about     cycles     & the ex u con
           script says au revoir!   it’s get on or get off if u
     serf on ice / sir vice the military     exploit the monstro
city in yr self     & yr peak industry body perks   apply!
     it pays to be Trumped up     logorrhoeathmic     crazed   ex
           ponent of that power to witch   re volting masses stick
    aux! centre yr cynic     for some scenic prostitution
pawn off yr core   values & move     evr forward     evn
     the fixed come unfixed       as iphones on the blink   keep
         snuffling the paywalls’     patois       paths so logical
     it’s tough   love      u illuminate       swipe right
eat the drapes     eat everything night drips w/

Toby Fitch

Recording

I am always on the edge of being careless. if I am leaving a table at a bar, for example, people always remind me to pick up my phone or my wallet as opposed to forgetting it. it is kind that people care to remind me. leaving the bus I didn't have enough time to do my checklist, which involves locating important items like my Opal card, wallet and phone. after I got off I knew I didn't have my Opal card. I looked fervently through all my bags anyway. I took out my wallet and my phone and my diary and shook my books by the spine to loosen the pages. my efforts only revealed a lack. it's an old habit to cling and lament things that are lost, but I suspect that habit also drove off on the bus along Military road. I am surprised at my ability of letting go.

Susie Anderson

Recording

daze of body & soul come to a / won’t come to an
       end on this / the last night of dearth
             browsing eBay & Etsy / the Cloud i erode
       drops in & butts out like a tide
u appear in my inboxed head eating snow
       eggs & depression for dessert as if
             Bondi Beach were fatigued of its breathing
       unsound government ships the crowds
back off into knots i glance at
       the sea / poles flip & newspolls murk / spill
             over/ as vague as a wave it is
       career weather for doze who believe He loves us
all in the choked capital of wherever
             i / u / our brain didn’t go

looking for grief after noon / it found us
       in the form of an algorithm that could remember
             & dismember our feeds / our new dream
       scrolls in reverse that echo
(according to music vids & some fat
       graphic lips in a txt)
             the future consumption of everything before it’s even
       been munched thru like ancient gums
suffering Hillsong yr funding’s been
       approved by the Ministry for Excellence /
             Spirit / __________ but mate
       it cannot be redeemed for bodily release
in the Cross shutdown by new police power & assumption that
             our impact on the environment won’t be felt

out there in the multiverse
       apparitions behove themselves as certain
             heads of state racing long into action deferred
       mouthing out confected norms as swift & whimsical as
horses for courses men continue to fall from
       the sky caused Obama anger / joy /
             guilt told a story factoidally
       something about the seven plots of our Hadron Collider
existence looping round like hope /
       happiness / liberty / __________
             but the feelings downloaded got stuck in
       a sinkhole / promises resounded
& the earthworms began to travel w/ tradition again / asking
             do u remember yr body or bodies

curled up together / wanting to buy for a long time
       machine that can fatalise any experience there is/was no terror
             that couldn’t be franchised out for all the purple
       warming into peepholes online
the storm-rented sky/sea became stationary
       another perfect accident for sadness journos to parse out over
             the future’s raging culture wars that u & i trouble
       for a fleeting exit strategy to the current
maze we fund ourselves in
       & numb to the looming crash of
             summer / winter air
       delicate explosions that fall foam & home
in on the present w/ a superinhuman
             affection / pure surface

Toby Fitch

Recording

all of the businessmen are pleased to be outside on their lunchbreak. young men looking slightly awkward in suits reminds me of a past lover and I assume I will make this association for the rest of my life. I am always more ready than the men I meet. the clock in the arcade has the inscription above it 'time conquers all'. you could live by such a maxim, I daresay.

Susie Anderson

Recording

Strange, that there are sequences
we live as cinema, if I looked
over my shoulder
I might recognise the front wall
of my bedroom
opened out towards the camera,

my furniture as hollow
as a stage prop. I am
vicarious to myself: strange,

                                         that sometimes
we recognise significance
instead of burning it back in, much later
and imperfectly.
               Some nights I wake up
gasping at the air, I dream
I'm trying, through my sleep
                                      to speak,

to call your name
from the wet depths of slumber
but I can't will my mouth
to move: if we are unknown

even to our selves
how can we try to hold each other
still? I sit against
the bedhead, my knees

press against my breasts. Outside
are stars, a car door slamming,
the last train shunting back into the depot.

Fiona Wright

Recording

her temper tanty's sus but your mites say sassy
's entering the pleather dome lookin'
poised w/ noose & savvy much obliged to
glorify her cunning firm & tout
its nous for oblivion

where the pert velvet diva never lets you rest
your glass head in which infinite
pools rotating w/ lust
voice toots from the comments field
dissing your angel

figuring abject horror & austerity
measures your crotch slave reared as an infant's souvenir
you stick a bandaid over & own to pervert the
curse of just eyes commerce purrs w/
amour whenever you feign amen

to her abortion you think of Maldoror
honour dents your lava
humbles the dead science of your hairy elephant
violence so reset the dementors
to aim at corporations

her competition in the night sky neuters your who-man
fate reconstellating into dignified rendition
ancient & harmonic it's the
pumiced land! where serum is eeked out
& for the phone of it you make a meme of your self

sharing w/ electric fingers
this poison in your veins to maintain
cut & comb again the veneer her elegant
perm foils you parry & cite
though technically it's lice marbling your corpse

in back alleys they clack like louvres bare-backed
freaking out in a chevvy touché
ah man she's beaut but what an omen: bored
ouija face terrific rack atrocious fan fare all point out
how bent the moonbeams

Toby Fitch

Recording

Toby Fitch

'In Fancy' was first published in The Bloomin' Notions of Other & Beau by Toby Fitch (Vagabond Press, April 2016)

Recording

Toby Fitch

Recording

Today in Sunday weather grevillia leaves
in turmoil, no evident breeze. A sugar hit. A honey
-eater, upside down at tilt and tumble.

The body also in Sunday mode. The mind
idling on automatic with no need
to be occupied or coloured, having come at last

to the end of a long apprenticeship in learning to leave
well alone. No empire to account to. No
account-books to square. The anxiety of nothing

in hand, nothing in prospect, set aside for
a bird in a bush, just one, warm air at play
in the windchimes; whose only news is that our missing

sea-breeze has clocked in, and from further
off, instant, astir, the air-borne voices
of children in a world all swing and seasaw.

David Malouf

A soft October morning,
adagio sostenuto. Some part
of me is still delayed

in sleep. It is one with
night, with daylight
stars, moths that fumble

at a window pane, bewildered
that this tract of sky,
like no other, will not yield.

The coffee cup, double espresso,
is deeper than it looks.
Each sip I take

a dark reaffirmation.
A practice
run for the big sleep.

David Malouf

after Horace, Odes I, v

What slim-hipped beachboy dripping
with musk is riding you
now on a bed of roses
in your snug den, Pyrra? Is it

for him you have braided
those honey-gold locks
in a knot so neat, so
homely? One day

soon, black moods, black
looks, he'll be cursing
you and the fickle
gods who have dropped him,

but for now he's
hooked, you're his, all this
is for him:
calm seas, endless horizons.

Well tides,
as we know my precious,
can turn. These trophies
I've hung on the clubhouse wall

speak for one
man in his golden prime
cruelly dumped
and broken. A warning to all.

David Malouf

Sweet nothings in our ear
   cherub   pumpkin   dearest chuck
but to the heart   which is the better
     listener   the password
to a tongue that only two in their comings
         and goings have access to

A blessed mouthful

   Drawn from a stream that is forever
       fresh   and on our lips forever
         true   however
                   casually we call
upon it to speak for what we have no other
                         words for

                  What we catch
       at a glance   or in a breathless
         moment
                   what catches
         us   at the first
             touch

David Malouf

I was woken at some hour
of darkness before dawn by a scent so heavy
on my senses, on the room, that I was convinced

a burglar had broken in
and was loitering
upstairs or in the hallway, or having caught

my step on the stairs above him was lying low
in the laundry, or sitting
upright and unbreathing

in one of the Windsor chairs, unaware it was
his scent that betrayed him.
I checked the door to the balcony, then the door

to the street with its double lock. In the dark front room I checked
the sofa. Stretched full length
on its French blue he'd be hard

to detect. No one was there
but the scent was overpowering. 'What kind
of scent?', K would enquire

at breakfast. 'Was it
musk? Was it pine?' 'No, something sweeter – why
do you ask? Something sharper, maybe cheaper.'

'Because that would tell us,' he told me
seriously, 'what kind
of angel you were visited by.' 'Here?'

I protest. 'In Myrtle Street?' 'Why
not?' I took it in. Sometimes I wake to the smell of coffee
being brewed downstairs. It wakes me. Why not

the smell of an intruder?
When I woke again the scent had faded. What
had not was the change I felt

on my skin, on my nerves.
Later I worked for an hour or two
at my desk, struggling with angels

of another sort, who leave
no trace I would call a scent. Of musk or sweat,
or pine. Only pen-strokes on a page

they have changed with their lingering, when they deign
to linger. Or a dazzling
blankness when they do not.

David Malouf

The storm blows you back
its funnel ardent
its wide hungry eye
Its tongue croons you
onto flatline of prairie

When poppies drowsed you
red breath drew
gravity into your limbs:
you yearned for tall grass
a narrow tunnel
of consciousness brain
heart sharp, nerve

Migrant loess skims west
You root back into plain
– Call this home
– Call this no place
Ground glows like ruby
dense and knotted
as blood

Kate Middleton

The dawn is only a thought.

The fulcrum on which we rest our newsprint, our toothless fingerprints, our balmy Paxil days.

Only a thought of the windy, dwindling kind.

Wake to urgent messages, to the waltz of hours crisp and fragile as thin pastry. To roulette of lightning yes. Of arid no.

Kate Middleton

The ‘greate fyshe’, terrible
colossus, dark cathedral of days
and nights, arrests
lost Jonah in his flight. Three

days and nights spent
in wet earnest prayer, dread
dowse of whale’s
appetite, drowse of oceanic

will. It is a liturgy
of krill. A pinwheel spun
in blur of hope, despair.
The shroud of stomach’s wall,

grave chamber, draped
in sacred bile. Three days lost.
Three nights. Till their
cadence, amen, resolves.

Kate Middleton

Cut out a sixth of the heart.
At a day old—furless,
close-eyed, resembling nothing
so much as an infant's thumb—
he can survive it.
The mouse can regrow that missing part
in three short weeks.

Aesop knew it:
to be mouse-hearted
is as good as wearing
the swagger of lion.

His heart
perhaps the size of a Lilliputian walnut.
Barely a mouse, already
ripped apart.
He does not wait
for a Godhand to put him back together.
Alone he blindly furrows toward wholeness.

Kate Middleton

In black chalk the beast
brusques forward   Silence   Rubens
has stopped his mouth
with a single line     He is already
awed by the den
he will find himself in even now
as his mane curls into wisp
of emptiness     A study on paper

But there in white chalk the grim
pose brightens
into recognition smudged nose
bent toward the scent
of viewer Eyes steadily lighting
toward the years one swift textured paw
lifted ever so slightly
Patient as an avalanche

Kate Middleton

The grass grows longer on the easeway.

A pelican swipes the sky
towards the seascape we can't yet see,
its webby legs outstretched:
I wait for these,

for sunburn behind the knees,
for sand between the bedsheets,
champagne at dusk
and pelicans,
and their unthinking ease.

They clap their chitin jaws
when we gut bream up on the sandbank,
this they augur:
to swallow fishheads
and stare with oyster eyes
at the tangle of tackle and flaked scales
that will sandcastle by our toes.
You grew up inland
and don't yet expect this.

We'll eat straight from unfurled paper,
and leave our oily fingerprints to refract,
buy coffee at the marina
(and it will taste like sump oil
and salt, but a tiny chocolate biscuit will balance
on the spoon.)

You have no history here,
and don't yet know this.
You can't yet read
the ocean
for its undertow.

Fiona Wright

Recording

Perhaps the best cells are the ones we can't kill off,
a persistence of the fittest, although mutation's
always painful. It's two thousand and fourteen,
and I know no-one who has been
uninjured. It thinks in me,
this shadow. I put on sunscreen, and am surprised
to come in contact with my skin.
In the same day, I'm chatted up in a café
by an aspiring novelist who's using boldface
and an ugly font, and the woman I pay
to tear the hair out of my legs offers a discount
because my skinny limbs
won't need much wax. In the same day,
I watch a woman in pink boardshorts
hold out white bread
for a spring-loaded terrier,
an ancient cyclist on City Road with bubble wands
mounted on his handlebars, although they say
this place has gentrified: mutation's
never simple. I dream my top teeth
splinter, turn to chalkdust in my mouth:
so I am in the world's gaping jaw.

Fiona Wright

Recording

for Ian

And suddenly:
the men
are holding beers
and standing round
the trampoline,
and not the barbecue;
turning over toddlers,
instead of steaks.
The women
make the salads.

Fiona Wright

Recording

for Eileen

The light's older
in these sandstone suburbs,
jam-thick.

A clipped-haired man held a dog leash
saying one of us is single,
and even the leaves
had hunched their shoulders
in the gutters.

A waiter, golden-brown as a bread loaf,
squirted water at the pigeons
that sat cock-headed at the tables. My tart
was soft and skinless. Later, your cat

curled fluidly against my legs
and watched the water fizzing on the moorings.
There are crossed oceans
that must spill still
at the edges of your vision,

things we can not understand.

You said perhaps we're both like this because.
Or perhaps because we are like this. Perhaps
it doesn't matter. We stack
your fridge with blueberries and sushi. You roll
up the lid
of your old writing desk,
curved in three places,
like a spine.

Fiona Wright

Recording

Susie Anderson

Susie Anderson is a writer and multimedia artist based in Sydney, Australia. A descendent of the Wergaia and Wemba Wemba people from north western Victoria, her practice is concerned with the distances between place and people, themes she explores through prose poetry and media based works. Susie has performed and presented widely at literary festivals and events in Australia and abroad, and in 2015 co-ran an event of collaborative poetry performances at the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle. Selected publications include Alien She, Keep Brave, Shabby Doll House, The Lifted Brow, For Every Year and Voiceworks Magazine. Susie was a recipient of a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship in 2014.

Susie also makes work as part of the arts collective sociocreative trust, most recently Elsewhere, an exhibition at Redrock Books & Gallery in 2015, and Speak Easy, a curated dinner and performance at the 2016 Festival of Live Art in Melbourne.

State Editor's notes

'Susie Anderson moved from Victoria to New South Wales fairly recently. She writes strikingly easygoing, relaxed prose poems. They are confessional and deceptively off the cuff – as though presenting thoughts and actions unfolding in real time. Her unaffected voice, typically keen to reveal her quirks and shortcomings to the reader, is endearing in its honesty' writes ABR's States of Poetry - New South Wales State Editor Elizabeth Allen. Read her States of Poetry introduction here.

'time conquers all'

'the bus'

'small town apocalypse'

'minimum spend'

'egress'

Recordings

#42 States of Poetry 2016 NSW Podcast | Introduction and 'small town apocalypse' by Susie Anderson

#43 States of Poetry 2016 NSW Podcast | 'time conquers all' by Susie Anderson

#44 States of Poetry 2016 NSW Podcast | 'the bus' by Susie Anderson

#45 States of Poetry 2016 NSW Podcast | 'minimum spend' by Susie Anderson

#46 States of Poetry 2016 NSW Podcast | 'egress' by Susie Anderson

State Editor's notes

'Reading Pam Brown's poems is a bit like watching jazz; it can feel like she is going off on long solo improvisations. Things from the outside world – a train announcement, a sign she passes – interweave themselves with her inner melodies, and she seems to play with the sounds and rhythm of words as much as with sense and nonsense, as in this passage: "rain taxi / book thug / I ate all your bees".' writes ABR's States of Poetry - New South Wales State Editor Elizabeth Allen. Read her States of Poetry introduction here.

States of Poetry

'November now'

'Ascriptions'

'Electric money'

State Editor's notes

'Toby Fitch's poems possess an unusual physicality and form beautiful and intriguing shapes on the page. They are clever and energetic, full of word play, puns, and politics. Reading them is like sliding down a slippery dip. They are also inversions of Rimbaud's Illuminations. Another ride down the slide – this time maybe backwards' writes ABR's States of Poetry - New South Wales State Editor Elizabeth Allen. Read her States of Poetry introduction here.

States of Poetry

'Gen Y'

Recordings

#26 States of Poetry 2016 NSW Podcast | 'In Fancy' by Toby Fitch

#27 States of Poetry 2016 NSW Podcast | 'Diva Maintenance' by Toby Fitch

#28 States of Poetry 2016 NSW Podcast | 'Mauvement' by Toby Fitch

#29 States of Poetry 2016 NSW Podcast | 'Democrazy' by Toby Fitch

#30 States of Poetry 2016 NSW Podcast | 'Gen Y' by Toby Fitch

State Editor's notes

'David Malouf – one of our greatest writers and Australian Book Review's Laureate – finds ways of expressing very difficult things in a way few other poets can, to "speak for what we have no other / words for". Sometimes, I see David sipping coffee under neon lights at the busy Broadway shopping centre, watching people come and go. I was pleased to able to juxtapose this mental image of him with those of his "Late Poem", a hushed and contemplative reflection on a much quieter coffee drinking experience' writes ABR's States of Poetry - New South Wales State Editor Elizabeth Allen. Read her States of Poetry introduction here.

States of Poetry

'Visitation on Myrtle Street'

'Pyrra'

'From the Balcony'

'Terms of Endearment'

'Late Poem'

State Editor's notes

'In her poetry, Kate Middleton displays an intricate knowledge of many topic areas and texts. She follows her obsessions with enthusiasm and takes her willing readers along for the ride. Here she takes us into a Rubens painting, into The Wizard of Oz, and into the belly of a whale. Kate adroitly uses similes to bring together ideas which at first seem contradictory, but then make perfect sense: a lion is as "patient as an avalanche", while the ground beneath Dorothy's feet "glows like ruby / dense and knotted / as blood" writes ABR's States of Poetry - New South Wales State Editor Elizabeth Allen. Read her States of Poetry introduction here.

States of Poetry

'Study of a lion'

'Daybreak'

'Mouse (Wunderkammer)'

'Utopia / After Oz'

'Jonah'

State Editor's notes

'Fiona Wright's poems are open; I like that about them. Her voice – sometimes vulnerable – is often gentle and strong at the same time. Everyday images become quite surreal in her poems. For instance, in 'Crisis Poem', she takes a satirical look at gender stereotypes, which adds a strange twist to an otherwise 'normal' backyard barbeque' writes ABR's States of Poetry - New South Wales State Editor Elizabeth Allen. Read her States of Poetry introduction here.