Tuesday Poem - An instance of the genre by Vincent O'Sullivan

An instance of the genre

You can't help liking this grey-haired

never-quite-pretty woman who tells

you, 'Frankly,' as she says, aware

the word is fondling a hedgehog

should you trust it too deeply, 'Frankly,

I love being middle-class. I vote

of course we all do, I've only to see

a flood halfway up a village wall

and I'm phoning with a donation. I

have the local bookshop automatically

deliver the three best books

of the month according to the list

they get – good bookshops do.' I

like the way she tells you, straight

out, how well the children prosper.

She uses expressions like 'A-team'

and 'B-team' without a hint of either

swank or rancour, and assumes you

understand the praise her husband

gleans on the back of quite justified

glamour some years back is only as

it should be. She smiles, she knows

there's a dash of irony with any

success, she says, 'Luck? Of course

luck's crucial.' I know if I wrote

this out as accurately as I can

to the way I heard it, the reader

as likely as not may imagine

there's a slinking figure somewhere

not being quite straight on what

the story is. I appreciate why

you'd think so, geared as we've

been for decades on the lookout

for subversion. In even the most neutral

phrase say, 'You can't help liking...'

This poem is from Vincent's latest book – The movie may be slightly different - published by Victoria University Press 2011. It is such a strong, rich book, from cover to cover, it is jolly hard to pick just one. All the poems seem to work together and ring each other's bells. Not that they don't stand alone. One of the best books I have read for yonks. Almost carelessly generous.

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/vup/2011titleinformation/moviemaybe.aspx

Tuesday Poem - The Toppled Head by Les Murray

The Toppled Head

The big bald head is asleep

like Lenin on a pavement.

Tipping backward, it starts

a great mouth-breathing snore

throttling as stormwater.

loud as a hangar door

      running on rails

but his companion gently

reshapes his pillow, till his

postion's once more foetal,

breathing towards his feet.

His timbre goes silent, and

the glottal dies in a gulp.

This poem is from Les Murray's book Taller When Prone published by Black Inc. I went off to Adelaide Writer's Week this year to have some fun on the excuse that my book Barefoot had been short listed for the John Bray Award, and I promised myself that I would ask the winner if I could have a poem for my blog. I knew it couldn't be me because they tell you if you have won. But not if you have lost. You just have to infer that. And Les won. He is a mate and a fine poet so I was well pleased. It is a strong shortlist, perhaps because it has been, up until now, awarded every second year, so it draws on two years of poetry. But that changes from now on in, it will be a yearly thing.

John Bray poetry award

Jennifer Compton, Barefoot (Picaro Press)

Diane Fahey, The Wing Collection: New & Selected Poems (Puncher & Wattmann Poetry)

Les Murray, Taller When Prone (Black Inc.)

David Musgrave, Phantom Limb (John Leonard Press)

Tracy Ryan, The Argument (Fremantle Press)

Petra White, The Simplified World (John Leonard Press)

Tuesday Poem - The Portuguese Fish Basket by Connie Barber

THE PORTUGUESE FISH BASKET

                     

Surprised to meet an intriguing light

in woven whitewood: fine strapping like corded silk,

half boat, half sideways egg, I bought it

in an avant-garde, up front, high-tone boutique:

an impulse to engage with its beauty,

its total practicality.

It carried fish for the family from the market,

                  heads resting against the woven wood,

eyes smiling and comfortable. It held to

the deep sun-splashed window sill

like a throne, like a ritual boat. Straked sides, a curving base

bound to a wattled rim, the whole shell woven as one

to strong gunwales with sleaved wood like bands of silk,

held fruit for the children: apples, bananas,

                  and one small bowl for small unthought-of  things.

In another hemisphere, it played a role as crib

for a small saviour, tried out parts in school plays —

                  unsuitable for poisoned apples the director said.

It could hold a pumpkin on its side,

until fetched on command, without capsizing. 

After the children left it lived on above the sink

cradling ginger and garlic and a few strange fruit:

avocado, custard apple, purple figs. In time

it collected dust. A hulk, it lost

its half-shining creamy glow, its silky touch,

                  held corks and candle ends in the small bowl,

garlic and ginger, until it had to move.

Still holding the air of continents and the strength

of trees it moved to a narrow room,

still remembering fish, and the hands that wove

forest into a coracle. Dirty and dull,

washed with care, scrubbed a little, dust

rinsed away, its weft and woof exchanging light,

its silky woven flesh shone again — satin.

An old vessel, ready for fish, fruit, or dreams,

whatever you need to take into the next room

The basket dripped water propped against a red geranium

in the return corner of a ramp linking cottages;

a ramp that allowed the frail and weak to walk

to ground level — look, no steps —  a rail, a web of wire.

a corner to hold the geranium.

The potted flower, steel wire, careful ramp,

shrunk rooms, all intimations of time

that has passed and memory.  A frail evening wind

blew into the basket’s hull. The Portuguese

fish basket fell across the boards, open, vulnerable.

And kicked. It would not slide below the wires,

would not fly, bounced back from a kicking foot,

kicked and kicked and kicked. It lay sideways,

half strangled by the wire below my window

above the ramp, the wire and the red geranium.

I brought the basket in. My neighbour of the ramp

has not seen me. She has stopped kicking, retired.

We share the ramp. We need to reach the ground.

Now the basket lies in the shelter of a fridge,

holds a knob of ginger, garlic and tomatoes

still remembering the fish it used to hold smiling,

coming from the bustling  market in the square,

and forests of woven light in another continent.

I heard Connie read this poem at the Wheeler Centre at a MPU reading – Celebrating the Celebrated, and I was so taken with it I just had to have it for my blog. And Connie was most kind and gave me permission. This poem was shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize in 2010 and published in the anthology, Time With The Sky.

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Tuesday Poem - In the Desert by Stephen Crane

In the Desert

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said, “Is it good, friend?”

“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it

“Because it is bitter,

“And because it is my heart.”

I watched the Czech movie Tobruk on SBS recently because I have an Australian friend who is a Rat of Tobruk  and he has told me many stories. But I didn't know there had been a Czech  unit defending Tobruk so I was intrigued, and I also wanted to see what sort of fist they made of any Australians that appeared. The Australians were believable but absolutely not the focus of the story. That in itself was fascinating. At the end of the movie this poem by Stephen Crane was displayed. I hadn't come upon it before and I liked it very much. It was perfectly in context.  

It made me wonder if perhaps T. S. Eliot had read Crane because the line – I will show you fear in a handful of dust – (from The Waste Land) came into my mind as I read the poem on the screen. I read the subtitles of course, because the poem had been translated into Czech.

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Tuesday Poem - Outback by Kerry Popplewell

Outback

3.00 am Copley, South Australia

A single aeroplane

throbs through silence.

Dogs converse,

their morse erratic.

Awake in our tent

we try to translate

their talk of distance;

their talk of cold.

North

Salt bush. Blue bush. Blue Smoke.

Roads straight as a perspective line.

Subdued by space

we expected silence,

not knowing how various

the voices of the wind can be

when it goes scouring

rock face and ridge.

It spoke a language

we could not decipher –

a hoarse ululation

from another time.

Paraphernalia

A broken windmill by a disused well,

rail sleepers rotting, stockyard posts askew.

These aren’t the kind of records this land keeps.

It takes a longer view.

Roadhouse at Ebenezer

An Anangu man points to a map

showing tribal areas. This took six years,

he says, to make. When it was completed,

many complained that their tribe wasn’t on it.

Roast lamb and beer in the bar;

all night, the generator’s rumble.

Behind the campsite hedge,

horses snort and shake

in early sun. On each fencepost,

a magpie provides national coverage.

Coober Pedy

Consider the opal tailings:

those small, most perfect cones.

They glow silver at dusk –

a spent moonscape mirage;

at midday, a set

made to film Desolation.

People live below ground

to escape from the sky.

The sky knows no limit.

The sun gives no quarter.

Graveyard, Alice Springs

Hot gravel underfoot. Grit in the eyes.

A few graves of the famous – then the rest.

Even in death, distinctions:

the Afghan camelmen, all facing Mecca.

Far out where faint tracks end

their testy camels roam and multiply.

This is a poem that really intrigued me because it is a New Zealander engaging with the Australian outback – and all that that entails.

It is in Kerry's book Leaving The Tableland published by Steele Roberts.

http://www.steeleroberts.co.nz/books/isbn/9781877448959

Tuesday Poem - Two Poems by Janet Jackson

Lawn

It softly touches the bricks

at its edge,

a gentle but definite border.

The bricks say

      You can't come past here!

      This is our flower bed!

The lawn says

       OK, I won't

       but let me look.

The bricks let it look.

Breastfeeding a four-month old

As you stroke me

carefully opening your hand flat

I realise

that the annoying jerky movements

your fist made a month ago

were your very best caresses.

Here are two short poems from Janet Jackson's book Coracle which I picked up when I was in Perth. You can get the book from here - http://www.proximitypoetry.com/Books/coracle.html

and it is also available at Collected Works, Gleebooks, Mary Martins, Crow Books and a few other discerning book shops.

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Tuesday Poem - By Moonlight by Jennifer Compton

By Moonlight

You didn’t know where Moscow is or who Mozart was.

I touched you and asked you to dance but your face collapsed.

As you slammed the pupils of your eyes shut you unleashed

a powerful one-note perfume, like a carapace, like a cicatrice.

I loved you. I remember you by moonlight, inaccurately,

with the white hair-slide of false hope curving like your shy smile.

I remember you by moonlight, accurately, suddenly barefoot,

suddenly adroit, as the white horse lay and groaned in his sleep.

The moon swayed, the pine trees,

on your boundary, like a premonition,

switched perspective, becoming foreground

with smooth, elusive panache. Trees can do that.

I’ll take my teeth out and put them in a glass beside the bed.

So I can’t bite. This is my last and best gift. Such sentiment!



Here's a poem from my book Barefoot published by Picaro Press.
http://www.picaropress.com/page1/page1.html
On its very last chance at the prizes it got the nod and got shortlisted for the John Bray Award at the Adelaide Festival. Oh well done, little book.
http://www.arts.sa.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/2012_AFAL_Media_Release.pdf

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