In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, State Editor Sarah Day introduces the Tasmanian anthology.

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Adrienne Eberhard reads her poem 'Distance' which features in the Tasmanian anthology.

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Graeme Hetherington reads his poem 'Avila' which features in the Tasmanian anthology.

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jane Williams reads her poem 'On World Heart Day' which features in the Tasmanian anthology.

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Karen Knight reads her poem 'Atonement' which features in the Tasmanian anthology.

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Louise Oxley reads her poem 'Graces Road' which features in the Tasmanian anthology.

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Tim Thorne reads his poem 'Theft' which features in the Tasmanian anthology.

In this first episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry Podcast, state editor David McCooey introduces the 2016 Victorian poets: Amy Brown, Kevin Brophy, Michael Farrell, A. Frances Johnson, Cameron Lowe, and Jessica L. Wilkinson.

You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry Podcast, state editor Jen Webb introduces the 2016 ACT poets: Adrian Caesar, Jen Crawford, Paul Hetherington, Jeanine Leane, Omar Musa, and Sarah Rice.

You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

In this episode of the Australian Book Review's States of Poetry Podcast, state editor Felicity Plunkett introduces the 2016 Queensland poets: Nathan Shepherdson, Ellen van Neerven, Lionel Forgarty, MTC Cronin, Sarah Holland-Batt, and Stuart Barnes.

You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

In this episode of the Australian Book Review's States of Poetry Podcast, state editor Lucy Dougan introduces the 2016 Western Australian poets: Barbara Temperton, Charmaine Papertalk Green, Carolyn Abbs, Graham Kershaw, JP Quinton, and Kia Groom.

You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

In this episode of the Australian Book Review's States of Poetry Podcast, state editor Elizabeth Allen introduces the 2016 New South Wales poets: Fiona Wright, David Malouf, Kate Middleton, Pam Brown, Susie Anderson, and Toby Fitch.

You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Francesca Sasnaitis introduces Kate Llewellyn who reads her poem 'Oxytocin' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

Oxytocin

On this bright morning
a cruel wind is up.
I don't care –
last night I strode among the stars.
Black swan shelter in the sandhills' lee,
while pelicans stand preening
on the lagoon's edge.
We each must share our little pill
of poison – a tattooed drummer,
a drunk, a married man –
while we sit at kitchen tables
drinking tea with other women.
Rain pelts down the windows
while we talk about the promises
they made. It's enough to make
you laugh since it's only down
to chemicals. When oxytocin floods
the brain, fools and dills
and maniacs look irresistible.
I don't care –
last night I strode among the stars
and my brain drank by the gallon
the chemical that makes me think
he's wonderful.
Now I'll need a thousand cups of tea
and tears measured by the litre
to flush the oxytocin from my brain.
Sunsets seem meaningful,
rain is glistening on the neighbour's roof
like tears. The rhapsody of nature
only underwrites that last night
I strode among the stars.

Kate Llewellyn

'Oxytocin' appears in 'States of Poetry - South Australia'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Kate Llewellyn's biography in 'States of Poetry - South Australia'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jill Jones reads two poems, 'Memory Lapses and Clues, or Don't Forget to Remember' and 'Bent', which both feature in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

Memory Lapses and Clues, or Don't Forget to Remember

Amongst discarded data, twigs,
plastic containers, fingernails –
'The unconscious, at all events,
knows no time limit' –
the shape of an ear, marginal facts
blown about by a northerly,
washed by stiffening rain – something
like symptoms, clues, bird spit,
possum fur, leaf miner, blood and bone,
a story or many of what passes
through here daily – what the drift of oil
or rice grains, the tea leaves (ah!),
might say, though they don't
speak at all. Or the message of
bodies or of precedents, portents,
what maps of rain or a star's passage
lay out before us in our days
and nights in the backyard
signs of the time, literally,
as they spark and spit in the sky
and over these grounds.

As women do we conjecture,
look at the evidence, terrestrial margins,
small movements in our yard,
materials under our feet, that move
through our hands and leave
scrap, pictograms and incisions,
odour and decay, diagnosis and taste,
gnosis and art, spider webs brushed away,
cuts from thorns, feelings (ah!),
shopping lists, flourishes of a gesture,
what is seen or touched, nosed
in all that specific and uncertain
divination of the present,
and what presents in the wind
and fleet shadows of today's weather:
for instance, the way a raven calls
and is answered from across the road
by another, with the same
or similar call, at differing intervals?
It's communication you can guess about,
though you don't really know
if it's a system of messaging,
or a type of presence, a big guess,
such as Holmes and cigarette ash,
Poirot and little grey cells,
the psychopathology of everyday life.

Though sky is always opaque as reality,
it bears clues and trajectories,
various evidences blowing like dust,
in fact, are dust – it all happens
as slowly, as quickly as a thought,
the event you know and forget
as someone writing all this down in evidence
against you – but there's a feeling
that can't be formalised or even spoken
as we pass in and out of and into again
the known, or the known knowns,
and the unknowns, the way things
brush past, or the way you fall
in haste, in love, what trickles onto
a porous path, as traverses of skin.

Quote from Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.

 Jill Jones

Bent

I am history now
in the scales, the age of sounds

I make sense then drop it
it gets dirty, it breaks
the ants carry it

I am bent at the switch
my tapes of the archive
decay, loops stutter
glitch arias

I am bent at the floor
facts roll under the chair
little dust songs
or songs outside
the parrots know

and I am still my species
struck, listening

Jill Jones

'Memory Lapses and Clues, or Don't Forget to Remember' and 'Bent' appear in 'States of Poetry - South Australia'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Jill Jones' biography in 'States of Poetry - South Australia'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Adrian Caesar reads two poems, 'Charlotte's Grace' and 'Spring Fall' which both feature in the 2016 ACT anthology.

Charlotte's Grace

(For my grand-daughter)

Coming in with stones from the garden
your first impulse is to make them shine.
Washing rocks, you call it, and give them
full treatment, soap and flannel and rinse,
your three year old hands and eyes intent,
absorbed, and this not a one-off game;
it becomes a favourite as if
to establish your own ritual
you show the specimen to me gleaming
in your eyes and palm the offer of a gift;
I finger the treasure smooth and damp
and see how even grey can offer a gloss
on elemental wonder and variety;
though it dries back, the sheen gone,
stone and water and gift abide
suggesting through silent invention
sermon and parable: child's play.

Adrian Caesar

 Spring Fall

I see you stand with your back to me
at the French window as you did last March
looking at early flowers
yellow and crimson, pansy and primrose
peeping from their crust of snow and
above them the steel-sculpted angel
rearing from a wooden plinth: guardian
of the courtyard. In those bleak days I knew
you were reading the cemetery metaphor
of your blighted time; your death-sentence
delivered too early before you'd finished
flourishing, much less gathered the fruits
of later life; the hope of a ripe fall.
I did not speak then, not knowing what to say
and keen to lend what strength I could to
elongate your stay. It's only now you've gone
these words insist, should I have spoken and
what said? The silence echoes in this
recurring scene of you turning to face
breakfast, the torture food had become,
and me, who could not stop the haunting
of that cold figure, the austere seraph
you'd bought, body and wings
three curved scimitars surmounted
by a featureless ball-bearing head,
apt messenger of death in spring;
an angel built to last: terrible, hard
and comfortless.

Adrian Caesar

'Charlotte's Grace' and 'Spring Fall' appear in 'States of Poetry - ACT'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Adrian Caesar's biography in 'States of Poetry - ACT'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Barbara Temperton introduces her poetry collection, 'Ghost Nets' (working title), and reads the title poem which features in the 2016 Western Australian anthology.

Ghost Nets

Evening, at the edge of the reef
a ghost net snags my fishing line.
Lead-core line is made to last and often
braided round plastic craypots tumbling
from West Coast to Madagascar
to shroud the coastline over there.

I write my dead friend's name in foam,
watch a wave rush it away.
In another's name a rose adrift
surfs an off-shore rip away
over the spines of whitecaps
and into her unknown out there.

Out there, in the gyre of derelict gear
and mid-oceanic islands of snarl,
cast off gill nets, lost purse-seines fishing,
shrouding the dead, the not quite living,
sargassum and its broken dreams.
Far off of the coast of this mute continent
rubber-skins of drowned Zodiacs
are being knitted into ghost nets.

I let my snagged line go and with it the reel,
go back, over reef rock and pool, to the beach.
An albatross is dead on the sand, gut blooming
plastic bits and pieces. Night is inevitable,
as is tide's turn and sea wind-writing in nylon
and polyester filaments, in salt and stinging sand,
in the razor-edge of grasses.

Sea wind rushing inland
papers sand dunes, spinifex, fossils,
with the names of my dead friends,
with the names of ghost nets.
Sea wind carves their names
into the hulls of abandoned boats.

Barbara Temperton

'Ghost Nets' appears in 'States of Poetry - WA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Barbara Temperton's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Barbara Temperton reads her poem 'Foxes Lair' which features in the 2016 Western Australian anthology.

Foxes Lair

Casuarina leaves disable the dog.
He halts on the track ahead, scratches,
then sits and sulks, his undercarriage
a matt of clinging tendrils.
My hands prickle with casuarina scales
so small they're almost unseen,
but my palms know they're there
and the dog does, too, his eyes accusing.
The she-oaks shouldn't have been a surprise,
but were. We came upon them suddenly
as we emerged from the jam and mallee.
I try to unthread their brittle strands
from the dog's thick coat, they snap in two
then two and two again.
I am brought to stillness
by the sense of something quickening
in the woodland behind me.

Barbara Temperton

'Foxes Lair' appears in 'States of Poetry - WA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Barbara Temperton's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Barbara Temperton reads her poem 'Anniversary' which features in the 2016 Western Australian anthology.

Anniversary

We've been in mourning just over a year,
or just under, depending on the date we're marking.
Not always celebrations, anniversaries
have a way of keeping their appointments:
they're ticked off at the level of the body
and brain, our biochemical wakes.

I've felt strange all week, sick and sleep-obsessed,
a willed agoraphobic. Show me the cave
I need to crawl into and I'll be there.

No headline-making bereavement here,
just the absence of two small dogs,
their apparitions appearing to join me in my chair.
This evening, with fever, I made room for shades
and only then did I mark the date,
our two dogs dead twelve weeks apart, a year ago.

Their anniversary arrived like a virus
assaulting the muscles of my heart
in a darkened room.

Barbara Temperton

'Anniversary' appears in 'States of Poetry - WA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Barbara Temperton's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Barbara Temperton reads her poem 'West Coast' which features in the Western Australian anthology.

West Coast

I drive in on Daylight Saving Time
with a pale, fat moon rising
over the Moresby Ranges.
New subdivision: Ocean Heights Estate?
It looks like Sandcastle Land.

Foreshore dunes
limestone-terraced into sharp ledges:
high-priced real estate
perched at weed-wreathed ocean edge
awaiting global warming.

Blowouts hibernate
beneath a skin of Papier-mâché
seeded with sunflowers,
native pelargonium, alien grasses.
Feral pines adorn the verges, neatly
supplanting saltbush, acacia.

Roundabout windrowed by sand
directs me to my soon-to-be street.
An adult date palm, transplanted like me –
gale-force sea-breeze flaying
its skirt of fronds – inclines toward the land,
acquiescing like the sand
to the so one-sided, the so-insistent wind.

In the near distance,
waves thrash about in the shallows.
Big dogs surf the trays
of 4-wheel drives heading home
from the 4-wheel savaged beach.

In the front yard of my new rental,
two stray ridgebacks are too cock-legged busy
pissing on green reticulation flags
to acknowledge my arrival.

Barbara Temperton

'West Coast' appears in 'States of Poetry - WA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Barbara Temperton's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Barbara Temperton reads her poem 'My Mother's Ravens' which features in the 2016 Western Australian anthology.

My Mother's Ravens

They toll hours. I trace the peak and trough of raven-call
through brick veneer walls to the hospital – an hour away –
with every throaty rattle, to my Aunt, morphine
pump filtering sleep. She's comfortable, her nurses say.
Housebound with telephone, I'm waiting, listening
for whispering oxygen, for rattle-claws on tiles,
black birds stalking roofs of this cinder block suburb.

Several streets away, Xanthorrhoea crown
the square of dry grass in front of my Aunt's
vacant house. Unlike banksia populations
infected by dieback, struggling in nature strips,
on road verges, in yards haunted by abandoned
cats and warring neighbours, Xanthorrhoea thrive.

Summer, a palimpsest of sirens, squealing tyres:
hoons burning-out their cars. Peace in these long, hot days
as temporary as sunset or red sunrise.
Aged grass-trees leaves, dried, rustle for want of burning,
relive bonfires flicking embers, altars shedding
resin and ash, crematoriums birthing stars.

Ravens escort each day into these shabby streets,
comb bins for kitchen scraps, find fresh offerings
at backyard shrines. They cold-call at lounge room windows,
cruise the verges, check out stained mattresses, TVs,
rusting patio chairs straddling discards left out
for collection. It's the season for kerb crawling.

Bottlebrush blossom stains the footpaths red. Fenced-in
in her garden, my mother strikes cuttings and grieves,
putting out prayers, chicken bones, cheap mince, nurturing
the Australian ravens. Her two raucous callers
keeping their day's appointments up and down the street.

The hospital is an hour away – maybe two –
depending on rush hour, the freeway. My Aunt's room
is where oxygen flows through tubes into the shrinking
spaces in her lungs. Landlocked with telephone,
I hear the ravens calling their claim from the roof.
Singing in counterpoise, neighbour at her clothesline:
Summertime
and the livin'
is easy*

Barbara Temperton

'My Mother's Ravens' appears in 'States of Poetry - WA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Barbara Temperton's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Ellen van Neerven reads her poem 'Love and Tradition' which features in the 2016 Queensland anthology.

Love and Tradition

for Aunty Nancy Bamaga

rising sea
takes and
breaks into backyards
to trouble families

we cannot live
with the seas in our bellies
we cannot rest
with the sea at our legs

the tide
is coming
to stroke
our dead

we want to know
who unplugged
our island
of childhood

island
of love and tradition
let them see
what has gone under

Ellen van Neerven

'Love and Tradition' appears in 'States of Poetry - QLD'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Ellen van Neerven's biography in 'States of Poetry - QLD'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Ellen van Neerven reads her poem 'Roo tails' which features in the 2016 Queensland anthology.

Roo tails

The ground felt like it did when it's about to storm. My feet were brown and my big toe blistered. My grandmother was talking to my grandfather. A wet patch on my grandmother's back. Her hands roping those tails along the fence.

She turned to me and I saw her. Grey. A little heavy. Everything I came here for. A magpie flew lower.

Ellen van Neerven

'Roo tails' appears in 'States of Poetry - QLD'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Ellen van Neerven's biography in 'States of Poetry - QLD'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Ellen van Neerven reads her poem 'Bricks and Lightning' which features in the 2016 Queensland anthology.

Bricks and Lightning

It seems I'm always walking
into the scene of a crime
moustached copper
and fuck-off tape
don't look too closely
you won't be able to sleep
I'm new to this building
I live now by the river where
the ducks look like shoes
in the water
I go to the department store
we used to frequent
I look at grocery receipts
to see how I'm saving
and sometimes I get so lonely
I can barely stand it
tonight I wanted you
like the rain wanted the streets
my building was one of two
struck by lightning
a chunk off the top
spilt bricks on the road
I am marked
drop a Google pin into my heart
like they say in Alice
when the Todd floods
this must mean I'm staying

Ellen van Neerven

'Bricks and Lightning' appears in 'States of Poetry - QLD'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Ellen van Neerven's biography in 'States of Poetry - QLD'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Ellen van Neerven reads her poem 'Chips' which features in the 2016 Queensland anthology.

Chips

Can I say
white people really bore me sometimes
to be exact
I grow tired with what's unmentioned
idling in surf club bathrooms
nothing wrong with the chips
but they're talking about Tasmania
my thoughts haunted by islands
maybe I'm dying
I've too many chips
teeth like stones
take me to be flossed
and cleaned
I need new soles
sticking to the floor
what is happening
with the dialogue of this country
they are killing people with words
if I'm not back soon
tell them I've had
too many chips

Ellen van Neerven

'Chips' appears in 'States of Poetry - QLD'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Ellen van Neerven's biography in 'States of Poetry - QLD'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Ellen van Neerven reads her poem 'Buffalo Milk' which features in the 2016 Queensland anthology.

Buffalo Milk

Suck until you burn the room
and the heat numbs
reduced to a sound
wet
like the come and go
of the ocean
water enters
my hand in your hair
my hand
if you leave me childless
this will be yours alone
these marks you make
openings, persuasions
of the woman I will become

Ellen van Neerven

'Buffalo Milk' appears in 'States of Poetry - QLD'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Ellen van Neerven's biography in 'States of Poetry - QLD'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Amy Brown reads her poem 'Snake' which features in the 2016 Victorian anthology.

Snake

We are following a track that loops
around a lake impaled with trees,
a pinned-down habitat for platypuses

I would like to see, so try to walk
silently until a shadow across the sun-
dried turf in front of me blushes

curls and slides down a bank.
I stop, tell you what I've seen, smile
at the luck. You jump onto a log.

For the rest of the walk, we stomp
and you look for a eucalypt branch
you can thump like a third foot

to seem heavier and many-er.
We discuss tourniquets, mobile
reception, anti-venom, helicopters.

Intermittently I mention the platypuses,
explain that my country's native species
hide in timidity not anticipation

so I seldom feel like prey. Giant ferns
and no people remind me of home.
At the far edge of the ellipse I recall

the lake is a fifty-year-old mistake
flooded with rainfall and dammed
by tonnes of weather-made shingle.

Humans would not choose to leave
a hundred trees piercing the water's
surface. The orchard of totem poles

seems tapu, uncanny as a gallery.
Past trunks, smooth and muscled
like horse flesh, I forget to march

find myself creeping, not watching
for monotremes but ghosts or
artists, reverent and vaguely willing

my Achilles to be bitten in exchange
for an encounter with the creator.

Extract from Our Effects

Amy Brown

'Snake' appears in 'States of Poetry - VIC'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Amy Brown's biography in 'States of Poetry - QLD'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Fiona Wright reads her poem 'After Mutability' which features in the 2016 New South Wales anthology.

After Mutability

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

'After Mutability' appears in 'States of Poetry - NSW'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Fiona Wright's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Fiona Wright reads her poem 'Crisis Poem' which features in the 2016 New South Wales anthology.

Crisis Poem

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

'Crisis Poem' appears in 'States of Poetry - NSW'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Fiona Wright's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Fiona Wright reads her poem 'Potts Point' which features in the 2016 New South Wales anthology.

Potts Point

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

'Potts Point' appears in 'States of Poetry - NSW'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Fiona Wright's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Fiona Wright reads her poem 'Set Piece' which features in the 2016 New South Wales anthology.

Set Piece

 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

'Set Piece' appears in 'States of Poetry - NSW'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Fiona Wright's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Fiona Wright reads her poem 'Smith's Lake' which features in the 2016 New South Wales anthology.

Smith's Lake

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

'Smith's Lake' appears in 'States of Poetry - NSW'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Fiona Wright's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jessica L. Wilkinson reads her poem 'FAUNE et JEUX' which features in the 2016 Victorian anthology.

FAUNE et JEUX

'FAUNE et JEUX' appears in 'States of Poetry - VIC'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Jessica L. Wilkinson's biography in 'States of Poetry - VIC'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Toby Fitch reads his poem 'In Fancy' which features in the 2016 New South Wales anthology.

Toby Fitch

'In Fancy' appears in 'States of Poetry - NSW'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Toby Fitch's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Toby Fitch reads his poem 'Diva Maintenance' which features in the 2016 New South Wales anthology.

Diva Maintenance

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

 'Diva Maintenance' appears in 'States of Poetry - NSW'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Toby Fitch's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Toby Fitch reads his poem 'Mauvement' which features in the 2016 New South Wales anthology.

Mauvement

 Toby Fitch

 'Mauvement' appears in 'States of Poetry - NSW'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Toby Fitch's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Toby Fitch reads his poem 'Democrazy' which features in the 2016 New South Wales anthology.

Democrazy

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

 'Democrazy' appears in 'States of Poetry - NSW'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Toby Fitch's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Toby Fitch reads his poem 'Gen Y' which features in the 2016 New South Wales anthology.

Gen Y

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

 'Gen Y' appears in 'States of Poetry - NSW'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Toby Fitch's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jelena Dinic reads her poem 'Alterations to the little black dress' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

Alterations to the little black dress

A little pin-up
three fingers
above the knees.

Behind the curtain
a dress-up game –
pretty things come undone.

He chalks lines
on raw stitches.
I catwalk.

My body fits the timeless black.
'You can live in it, or die'
smile the lips full of needles.

Do I look a little dead
with black fabric
on bone-pale flesh?

Suddenly in the mirror
I see the last party.
This dress is me.

In the front row
button-eyes watch
a grand entrance into the hand-made hole.

Around a little black dress
the roots of the earth
grow matching belts.

Jelena Dinic

'Alterations to the little black dress' appears in 'States of Poetry - SA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Jelena Dinic's biography in 'States of Poetry - SA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jelena Dinic reads her poem 'Handbag' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

Handbag

after Vasko Popa

Always ready to leave
leaving
each time further
from the whispers
of the grass.

She has forgotten
her death,
the calf she once was.

Curled around an arm
a new name sewn
into her mouth
she's been there, done that.

A tramp, living beyond
the stitches of life.

 Jelena Dinic

'Handbag' appears in 'States of Poetry - SA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Jelena Dinic's biography in 'States of Poetry - SA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jelena Dinic reads her poem 'Babysitting' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

Babysitting

for Mia

I wore my grandmother's clothes
and sat on her doorstep.
Monday to Friday.
She talked.
I lied.

'I'll teach you how to write,' I said
pretending I could
hold a pen.
'Mouse will eat your ears,' she smiled.

At night we leaned on pillows
watched TV with subtitles.
I made up foreign words.
I told her it was mostly German.

'Tell me more', she said.
'Tomorrow,' I said.
'Tomorrow is Saturday,' she replied.

Jelena Dinic

'Babysitting' appears in 'States of Poetry - SA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Jelena Dinic's biography in 'States of Poetry - SA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jelena Dinic reads her poem 'The Silence of Siskins' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

The Silence of Siskins

for my grandfather

He circles my arrival
on the calendar.

It is late November
and it doesn't snow.

A wooden pallet
hardens his bed.

He dreams of grandmother.
He doesn't want new dreams.

Two siskins in cages –
their song frozen like the air

that other November
when she lost her heart

cleaning and baking
for those who might arrive.

Above the fireplace a few flies
are nervous company.

'Not easy on earth,' he says,
'not easy below.'

Jelena Dinic

'The Silence of Siskins' appears in 'States of Poetry - SA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Jelena Dinic's biography in 'States of Poetry - SA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Nathan Shepherdson reads his poem 'the black hand of Badia Elmi' which features in the 2016 Queensland anthology.

the black hand of Badia Elmi

Nathan Shepherdson

'the black hand of Badia Elmi' appears in 'States of Poetry - QLD'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Nathan Shepherdson's biography in 'States of Poetry - QLD'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Carolyn Abbs reads her poems 'At the house where my father was born' and 'Triple Mirrors' which feature in the 2016 Western Australian anthology.

At the house where my father was born

'It hurts to go through walls, it makes you sick,
but it's necessary.' − Tomas Tranströmer

I'd expected a labyrinth of small dark rooms, yet
the house was lit marigold        scooped out like a pumpkin for Halloween
Flames flickered and spat in a wide fireplace
       a seaweedy stench had swept in       brushed walls with sea mist
Oak beams as broad as shoulders     seemed safe
                      the floor dipped like a ship

There was a tavern of voices outside
            laughter      bickering     sniggering
gossip in the street       lingering Victorian morals
                     Crash of sea over rocks din of death bells
                                                                       It was 1917

I was through that door    that painting     that wall to god knows where

A Woman in Blue Reading a Letter
                        a crinkly unfolding of paper sound
a letter that never came             after the Somme

Her sigh      swish of skirt
          I turned       she passed the mirror      a silvery blur
                     a light crunch of shoe on wooden board
          I saw the horror of her unwed shame in my own face
                     the same mirror that once held her

O to curl into the stillness of that blue velvet chair
                      its painterly stopping of time
Walls giddied me        terrified me       the emptiness of that room
          She was banished
                      He grew as his grandma's thirteenth child

                               * * *

I went through silence        a room bathed with pale sunlight
         It was late afternoon in winter
From a window        across a meadow towards the sea
I saw him walking away
He carried the burden of those walls
on his dark days         dark, dark, days
         Shoulders hunched
         he went towards the sea
                               the openness of the sea
                                                                   the sea...

Carolyn Abbs

Triple Mirrors

 After you died, Nana, I went to your room,
it was dark like that place beneath the breakwater
where barnacles cling and children never dare hide

I opened a blind, a stuck window, breeze fanned
and fanned the room, light across your dressing-
table, triple mirrors. Amidst perfume bottles,

hairbrush, amber beads, your art deco box,
walnut with inlaid mother-of-pearl; guiltily
as if invading privacy, I lifted the lid,

postcards of seaside scenes, turquoise Quink,
stamps, shells, keys, coins, and with sand-like
grit beneath my nails, I heard an echo of the tide
a slow swish, swish...

I tried a jet-diamante comb in my hair, the mirrors
shimmered silver; as if through mist, your blue-
grey eyes came back, three times, to look at me,
waves swept and swept the shore...

the room so empty without you

Carolyn Abbs

'At the house where my father was born' and 'Triple Mirrors' appear in 'States of Poetry - WA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Carolyn Abbs's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Sarah Rice reads her poems 'The Saying and The Said' and 'Dad' which feature in the 2016 ACT anthology.

The Saying and the Said

Timing and manner my mum would always say
and it's true, the how and when override the what
of what's said, and the same is true of poetry.

I don't think people remember their tone when speaking –
other people's yes, but not their own. Tone, like texture, is crucial
for the feel of things – is it honey or cactus, metal or water?

And if the words float toward you like ducks on a pond
looking for crumbs, or if they are the hard grit
embedded in a harsh wind as it lashes your face,

the words themselves matter less than the manner of their coming –
words that slip in to visit you in their night gown, or words that slip
their owner's leash and attack in packs and will not be called back.

Some words have tiny green tendrils that climb like pea shoots,
while others bite their nails and yours. It is a shame we cannot feel
the weight and warmth or will of saying, instead of what's said.

 Sarah Rice

Dad

We would sit on the wings of his knees
and see-saw our way through stories
              magical suitcases
                           Romanian folktales
              golden apples
                           and sea voyages
Sister                                                     and I
                           bookended
              holding each square corner
              and turning the pages

Sometimes it was pontoon
betting with matchsticks and forgetting
to hold the plastic cards out of sight
in our keen bending over the game

The tooth-cleaning song
upstairs and downstairs
and always ending with pie

Gathering leaves into high dry piles
               with crinkly edges
                in a navy roller-neck
Planting out and potting up
with rubber knee pads over the jeans
engaged in a small prayer service
to the row of terracotta pots laid out on the grass
and after offering fistfuls of potting mix to each
his large palms open on his knees
showed the black grains clinging along the creases

Unwrapping fish and chips from layers of grey grease paper
                         that the oil had already worked through
Singing Irish shanties
                         Scottish ditties
                                      gold rush songs in the car
and walking hand-in-hand across the car-park
               Playing squash together
the two of us in that odd white square
with old wooden rackets and older dunlops
the long reach of his hand letting him sit pretty in the centre
while I wove crazily about him in a mad maypole dance
                of sweat and the rubber slap of shoe-soles
with the tiny ball greying but warming over time
til it was a hot coal burning in the palm each time it was retrieved

Still the love of paprika and garam masala
                dukkah and kimchi
                             fennel seed
                curry powder
                             turmeric
biting on the bitter seeds and smiling
palmfuls flung into the pan with abandon
and the remaining powder clapped away in proud applause

And a very cold night in a tent to see Halley's comet
                       which I never saw
but swore I did with nods and ahs
when he pointed and held the binoculars for me
              despite the fog-smudged sky
and over-night involved a mid-sleep trip
to the concrete toilet-block together in the blackness
and an impromptu run around the cold field
to warm ourselves in the strange emptiness

                         And parties where
                                                 after egg and spoon
the orange wheelbarrow was filled with more than sister and me
           more even than all our small friends put together
                                      We would clasp the plastic rim
and it would buckle and tilt on a crazy angle
but he always got the big wheel turning
                            could always lift us
push us round the garden
no matter how many
how heavy.

Sarah Rice

'The Saying and The Said' and 'Dad' appear in 'States of Poetry - ACT'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Sarah Rice's biography in 'States of Poetry - ACT'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jeanine Leane reads her poems 'Lady Mungo Speaks' and 'Whitefellas' which feature in the 2016 ACT anthology.

Lady Mungo Speaks

For Garry Papin and the Muthi-Muthi People of Lake Mungo

Lady Mungo heard the white scientists trampling
on her people's sacredness and she began to surface –
to speak.
While you archaeologists are stomping on
our graves arguing about the depth of your
new Pleistocene layer my people already know
the story that always was.
They stumbled on my head in five hundred
pieces – they said – no bigger than the postage
stamps they placed on the letters they wrote to
their colleagues around the world to
come and see me too!
They spread me out like a jigsaw –
each piece an important part of their
puzzle of landscape and history.
But my people knew the story.
First time I left my Country was
in a suitcase bound for a university to
be studied by the experts.
Why are you still stealing us –
dead and alive?
My people heard me crying across the
miles in that cold collector's box and
told the whitefellas to bring me home.
They said we thought Aboriginal people
would be happy that we are discovering
their past. My people said she's our first
lady and wasn't yours to take.
For over two decades I cried.
When I came back to my Country, my
people came together to see me rest
where I'd always been.
When I heard the white scientists disturbing
my people's graves I rose forty thousand years
to say:
You didn't find me – I came back to tell you
that I didn't come out of Africa!
This is my home, and my people's Country!
We buried our dead in peace and with respect.
I rose to the surface to tell you to
stop desecrating the sacred sites of Australia's
first ladies, our men and our children!
Listen to my children's children and their children
first!

Jeanine Leane

Whitefellas

Whitefellas have a license to stare in
car parks, foyers, forums and gatherings at
anybody else who doesn’t look white.
They’re famous for asking Blackfellas
where we come from even though they
belong to the oldest diaspora of all.

Whitefellas are experts on
Aboriginal affairs and have ready opinions.
In particular white men in the academy
seem to know a lot about Aboriginal women.

Sometimes Aboriginal people amaze
whitefellas if we finish school and go to university.
Then we’re encouraged to be more like them –
but whitefellas are surprised if we are
too much like them and say;
Why do you call yourself an Aborigine
when you live just like us?

Whitefellas know Aborigines are good at sport –
it’s all about natural ability and intuition.
But whites succeed through hard work,
preparation and structure.
Aboriginal sports people can be a challenge
for white coaches because we lack discipline.
But white people are happy to say that
rugby league has done a lot for Aboriginal people
even though Aboriginal people have done a lot
for rugby league.
They are happy too that they created sports that
Aboriginal people excel at like boxing – then
they are happy to call us Australian

Whitefellas hope that the gap in health,
education, housing, income and life expectancy
between black and white Australians will close soon.
But they still put shopping bags on
bus seats between themselves and the nearest Aborigine –
maybe that  space needs to close first.
Perhaps the biggest gap of all is
across the grey matter between Whitefellas ears
when they think of us. Maybe they need to
build a bridge or a road to transverse that
chasm – because they like building things – don’t
they – Whitefellas! And when they’ve built that
bridge, they should walk back over it to
make sure it’s solid – not just tell us that it is
because we’re over promises.

Whitefellas feel sorry for us because we have
‘lost’ our culture over time and apparently age
doesn’t weary theirs. They call change progress.
Whitefellas like to study true Aborigines in the bush and
bring their knowledge back to cultureless urban mobs
like me – but we’re a pain – us
urban mobs – too many questions and
Whitefellas know that real Aborigines
don’t ask questions.

If we go to university we should take courses in
Aboriginal studies because whitefellas know that
with their guidance we’ll be good at it –
maybe we can even help other Aborigines.

Some say that Aborigines don’t work in Australia!
Truth is Australia doesn’t work without Aborigines!
This country would be broke without Blackfellas. 

Advice is a one-way street in colonial Australia and
Whitefellas never seem to tire of that well-worn track.

Jeanine Leane

'Lady Mungo Speaks' and 'Whitefellas' appear in 'States of Poetry - ACT'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Jeanine Leane's biography in 'States of Poetry - ACT'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, J.P. Quinton reads his poem 'Reading the Landscape' which features in the 2016 WA anthology.

Reading the Landscape

To read a landscape by another landscape;
Valley cloud reveals altitude.

To read the landscape visits the ego
That prevents a proper reading.

To this landscape, the circular fireplace
And a straight trunk – xanthorrhoeas present.

To read this landscape to the tune of other words,
As moisture moves us, is us, drowns us.

To read the landscape like a book
Means to think like a border

Like the roos who still jump
Where the fences have been removed.

J.P. Quinton

'Reading the Landscape' appears in States of Poetry - WA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read J.P. Quinton's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Sarah Holland-Batt reads her poem 'Quetzalcoatl' which features in the 2016 QLD anthology.

Quetzalcoatl

 —for Vera Pavlova, in Mexico City

On the bus to Teotihuacan, we turn
a new god's name on our tongues

like a charm, jagging past
cinderblocked hills

chocked over the motorway,
grey pixels stacked so high they merge

with the smoked white Mexican sky—
then a guitar player in the aisle

begins a song whose only familiar
word is corazon, we move on, billboards

graffitied Narco Estado scream by,
and I think of the jostling in the plaza

last night during the Ayotzinapa strike,
candled light salving poster faces

of the missing, and wonder
whether there is a god

who bothers to bless those who travel
on buses, not only those who scale

blunt steep steps of pyramids
where the world bends to an untenable angle

as if to say, kneel, human,
your heart isn't enough—

give me your life.

Sarah Holland-Batt

'Quetzalcoatl' appears in States of Poetry - QLD. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Sarah Holland-Batt's biography in 'States of Poetry - QLD'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Thom Sullivan reads his poem 'Suburban Panopticon' which features in the 2016 SA anthology.

Suburban Panopticon

i.

birds have their own topography : overlaid
on ours : which is vertical & detailed :
with its own system of needs :
its own deviations : the nerve-ends
in my fingertips : & a tremor in my latissimus dorsi
rouse me : a domestic industry
starts up : a saw : or sander : on some abutting title :
the sound raw : with alternating notes :
one contention in the hypothesis
of morning : suggesting whole lives :
whole civilisations : a parochialism : an argument
for god : or gods : or evil : a football crowd
clamours : & over it an umpire's whistle :
piping : a flawed adjudicator : the fiction
at the noumenon of the fiction : the field
on which the binaries play out : any number of them :
it's soul-work : in essence : & the day
rolls back its reminders : the eye in its socket : god :

ii.

in the subtractions of light : the season
of sheer high contrails : a midden
of laundered clothes : sheets peeled back :
over the shuffled pack of the morning paper :
i arrive at a sense : at a sense of :
at arrival : a body upright in its song :
a door clicks shut or open : on the further side
of the wall : a parallel space : in its inclusions :
in its variations on the same meridian :
the afternoon satiated : in its details : the spines
of unread books : horizontal : read
like a failed poem : leaf-fall on the pavers :
two leaves : on a forked tree : sheared back :
to an austerity it thrives on : a sluice
of sound : of traffic : blood in its hammering :
the upper room a panopticon :
power-poles an idiom : in the minutiae :
in the lengthening paragraphs : of shadow :

Thom Sullivan

'Suburban Panopticon' appears in States of Poetry - SA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Thom Sullivan's biography in 'States of Poetry - SA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Susie Anderson introduces her anthology and reads her poem 'small town apocalypse' which features in the 2016 NSW anthology.

small town apocalypse

 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

'small town apocalypse' appears in States of Poetry - NSW. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Susie Anderson's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Susie Anderson reads her poem 'time conquers all' which features in the 2016 NSW anthology.

time conquers all

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

'time conquers all' appears in States of Poetry - NSW. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Susie Anderson's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Susie Anderson reads her poem 'the bus' which features in the 2016 NSW anthology.

the bus

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

'the bus' appears in States of Poetry - NSW. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Susie Anderson's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Susie Anderson reads her poem 'minimum spend' which features in the 2016 NSW anthology.

minimum spend

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

'minimum spend' appears in States of Poetry - NSW. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Susie Anderson's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Susie Anderson reads her poem 'egress' which features in the 2016 NSW anthology.

egress

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

'egress' appears in States of Poetry - NSW. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Susie Anderson's biography in 'States of Poetry - NSW'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Cameron Lowe reads his poem 'Breathe' which features in the 2016 Victorian anthology.

Breathe

The particulars of the evening being, whether consciously
        evoked or – 'a great shemozzle'
                     as Kent said –
          merely one day washing over and into the depths
                          of the plane tree
and those other trees of
        darker green
              whose names I don't claim to know – the pissing
                 possums don't know them either
so worry not – and the block of cream
         apartments where one half of Gert
'the writer' Loveday
lives –
              'Thou art not possum nor lemur nor
mathematician' –
                     that is, the particulars
– putting to one side money,
its lack, that sudden straining
for breath – the particulars
being exactly what they are
and mostly the same
as the last time
I looked –
          Frida Kahlo's face
upon a field of green
beads, a tanker's red hull
through palms –
sway on sweet palms
against the lying
of the Right – they don't,
but the last sun falls
on roof tiles, on the corrugated
iron of the carport, on
the plane tree's leaves,
etc –
the particulars can go
on and on, or run off
to flirt with Gert –
'cyclamen, sing awhile
with me' – I was thinking
of love in the abstract way
one sometimes does,
this being the hour of
my lungs for now and
ever after –
                 when you spoke behind Kahlo's face,
                                             'dinner's nearly ready – I'll just
                                                                                         have a shower'
                       and Edith Pevensey's eyes a green leaning
                           to gold in the 'luminous hum'
                                as bats take to sky,
                                       in the slow fade –
                                            fade on – of Tuesday's light

Cameron Lowe

'Breathe' appears in States of Poetry - VIC. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Cameron Lowes's biography in 'States of Poetry - VIC'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, A. Frances Johnson reads three poems from 'The Book of Interdictions' which features in the 2016 Victorian anthology.

Tow

Lo, the cell phone sleeps in its cell.
The raven deactivates the horizon.
There is water for everyone,
but not the kind you can drink.
The interdiction crews bring slabs
of plastic bottles and one-syllable words
deployed with biblical clarity:
no, tow, flow, go, foe.

Lo, watch the oil on the water
shimmer, a miracle of evidence.
Wounded iridescent rainbows
leak from under the hull. For two days,
the hawk drone has shadowed
its nest of wood, dreaming of
the time after rain, flowers appearing
on the earth, the singing
of birds, the time come.

Fuse

Wire was once a useful thing.
Piano wire brought song,
made the piannola in the desert
unspool melodies to support
a soldier's farmblock optimism.
Wire brushes cleaned the mud
from workboots, penned animals
inside their stalls. Fine gauge
fixed the porcelain fuse so a light
globe shone over air-conditioned
Bethlehem. And here, razor wire
taught children what to expect.

Photograph

He avoids dining out
on his award-winning photograph;
its forced correspondence nags;
the camp's hall of mirrors looks
nothing like his shaving mirror.
He has seen this room before,
filed many versions of the same shot.
He knows how the poem goes
before the poet has written it:
war, movement, hunger, displacement,
incarceration, hopelessness, suicide, image.
He will not dine out on it; on the one of many.
But the next night he books a restaurant,
a good one, eating past life.
When a little death on a plate
arrives, he cuts the image
away like an army surgeon.

A. Frances Johnson

'The Book of Interdictions' appears in States of Poetry - VIC. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read A. Frances Johnson's biography in 'States of Poetry - VIC'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Aidan Coleman reads 'Secondary' which features in the 2016 SA anthology.

1.

Angling over star-fields,
the pitches lit like billiard tables.
Those lengths you were shouted up and back,
lungs scoured by brillo air.
The lazier concord of close mown grass
and low hanging fruit
of the short boundary. A tang of primitive
electronics: the circuit board's braille labyrinth,
the slab type of Amstrad.
This callow path, you
cannot take, curves around and through,
the way a perfect river might. You find
a little gate unlatched,
and the light tangles, as you step
into the ferment: into the heady reek of itch.

2.

The aubergine, by the window, glossy
as an eight ball: lavender,
the road, a torn-open
mountain pouring cloud. Noble erosions
from sceptre to cushions,
from mitre to trademark. A lavish
glut of adjectives, dissolving
in a merlot hour – flabby as any
soft landing among
the rubber bells of foxgloves.
The heart as wound
or badge, a tattoo, smudged
like junk-mail wet. A fading haze from clubs
like grates where fires have been –
signs hung out as dirty washing.

3.

Easier to paint
than rhyme, this volatility. A poet-envy
of the art-fluke, or ripeness
cut in segments sucked to the pith.
A plaintive case deflating
on a snack bar counter
where citrus men
swash fizz through lunch
and later repair the voltage of night
in the out-of-sync bounce
of signal and blinker.
You take a little kindling, the light
of a cupped match,
to hazard across deciduous campuses;
the vast, blue continent of theory. Go, softly on.

Aidan Coleman

'Secondary' appears in States of Poetry - SA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Aidan Coleman's biography in 'States of Poetry - SA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, MTC Cronin reads 'Little Track', 'The Grass is Full', and 'The Correct Way' which feature in the 2016 QLD anthology.

Little Track

Time falls out
of your house

and onto a slab
of lucerne which

the cows eat as
they wander away

from the orchard's
long flowing hour.

Sweet and full
of wild honey

is the flower
is the bird.

Part of your love
is timeless enough

says the little track
left by ants.

MTC Cronin

The Grass is Full

Moon is a paper lamp
burning all night.

The grass
is full of shadows.

Hardly room in here
with the cupboard's coat.

Small broken windows
open dream's row.

The wild birds
all leave my mind at once –

mouth banging shut
in the dark.

'The grass is full
of blue free stars.'

The universe just means
nothing gets left out. 

MTC Cronin

The Correct Way

The correct way to drink from a broken cup.
To welcome both dark and light into your house.
To imagine tomorrow.
To pick verbena and red clover.
On the path where nothing will grow.

The correct way to tend the frozen.
To take their sweet throats and swim down into their livers.
To disembowel without touching.
To do what is at stake.
To move from cage to cage.

The correct way to say only some things worth saying.
To recognize the world's mark.
(The shape of conception.)
To feed an apple.
To bruise.

The correct way to close your lips.
To keep a promise.
To remember.
And then, to die in a room.
Or out in the open.

MTC Cronin

'Little Track', 'The Grass is Full' and 'The Correct Way' appears in States of Poetry - QLD. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read MTC Cronin's biography in 'States of Poetry - QLD'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, MTC Cronin reads 'Above Us' and 'The World's Yard' which feature in the 2016 QLD anthology.

Above Us

Above us we hear the windmill yelping, circling like a trapped
dog while the house sits like a black skull on the hill. Above us
the tombs are rising from their rest and travelling along the
roads beneath trees turning sourly. Above us the wind flings
uncountable seed into the dignified light tossed through the
depths by a green moon rolling over and over in the shifting
lens of the waves. Above us nakedness stretches forever
against danger, ravishment and smoke. When we wake our
lives are on fire. Above us only our sleepy souls drifting like
reeds catching the air.

The World's Yard

The correct way to drink from a broken cup.
To welcome both dark and light into your house.
To imagine tomorrow.
To pick verbena and red clover.
On the path where nothing will grow.

The correct way to tend the frozen.
To take their sweet throats and swim down into their livers.
To disembowel without touching.
To do what is at stake.
To move from cage to cage.

The correct way to say only some things worth saying.
To recognize the world's mark.
(The shape of conception.)
To feed an apple.
To bruise.

The correct way to close your lips.
To keep a promise.
To remember.
And then, to die in a room.
Or out in the open.

MTC Cronin

'Above Us' and 'The World's Yard' appears in States of Poetry - QLD. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read MTC Cronin's biography in 'States of Poetry - QLD'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Kia Groom reads 'Alice at Last' which feature in the 2016 WA anthology.

Alice at Last

'Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly...'
– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

I un-wake to damage.
Light-bulb stutters, frantic
once off, once on, illuminates
imagined city
skyline.

Inside my bedroom it rains
for days. The head
full of synaptic hauntings
shudders. Old-milk sky
dimming.

I tell myself there is
a world outside
the world. Stay still
completely
still & gather dust.
             & watch the fretful halls.

Walls convulse,
contract & close. The filament
at the bulb's chest flickers. Lethe
is half
dream-drowned in me.
There is a sickness not worth
surfacing. Better
to sink. To listen: soft light, soft
light & the pressure
the pressure of doorways.

Kia Groom

'Alice at Last' appears in States of Poetry - WA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Kia Groom's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Kia Groom reads 'Catholic Education' which feature in the 2016 WA anthology.

Catholic Education

Itch in the vein, the road hot still
from sun, an asphalt stream
bisecting unlit houses. Slip of an alley
cat through a spittle of starlight.

Last cigarette, the way Em curls
her yellow fingers into small mouthed
sweater sleeves.

Clock tower bites light through the empty
parking lot. Gates we broke apart last summer, same
time I lost the laces from the leather
punctures in my too-small shoes, loom.

I taste penance, mouth wanting ash-dry and Em
ribs through rails, ducks under gate chain. I become
the sum of all my touches.

Here, the darkened grotto.
Here, stone-eyed Mary with her marble palms.

Under the Virgin's feet, Em's hips like Hail Marys.
Under my itch the scratch I cannot trespass.

Hail last of the cheap champagne,
Hail damp hair,
Hail sprinkler cycles,
Hail the scent of sulfide.

Flash of cop lights from the hill's dark lip,
and Em's hands nudging the dawn
down the bed of the sky, asking

one strike more. Just one
more toll of the hollow bell, before we lattice

fingers, streak through the blistered night.

Kia Groom

'Catholic Education' appears in States of Poetry - WA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Kia Groom's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Kia Groom reads 'Phantasmagoria' which feature in the 2016 WA anthology.

Phantasmagoria

Dot by dot, the backs
of eyelids. Draw it slowly,
shape of sentimental spine.
You curve that way.

I breathe the countdown
& the world falls, air by air.

In the white room you cloud
over bedsheets,
unsettled weather, & no electric
light will dare illuminate.

Your skin tastes clean sky,
polished gray. That clarity,
sharp on the tongue.
I snap off the hallway,
let shadows nip like kittens.

You are so still you shimmer.
So still you gutter out.

My ribcage phantoms. The rain
pretends to know your name,
but at the window only nail taps.
I watch your eyelids lightning.
I watch the static gather.

My chest is a wet sheet tattered.
Your shape embossed in the folds &
at my center black mold.

The light cracks, depressed
switch of the thumb-pad &
I see the vacancy,
the pale stretch of my own skin.

You are gone so thoroughly.

I lie in the damp & listen
to my wanting thunder, thunder.

Kia Groom

'Phantasmagoria' appears in States of Poetry - WA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Kia Groom's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Kia Groom reads 'Tulpa' which feature in the 2016 WA anthology.

Tulpa

from the Tibetan meaning 'to build' or 'to construct'

I.

In 1992, Alice made a Tulpa.

Carry an amulet. Kiss its three sharp corners. Shine.

It began subjective, but with practice could be seen: imagined ghost that flickered in the physical world, a sort of self-induced hallucination.

Recall the chalk clouds. Recall the scent of symbols scratched on motel walls. Remember rising damp, the face in the mildew who told you

              do not be

                                afraid.

In time the vision grew – Alice talked to Tulpa, Tulpa started

                             talking back.

II.

On the bedspread, summon your sixteenth birthday. Snuff candles, ask. Re-write time & split unopened jacket, tied with coils of braided hair.

Look at it – wish artifact. Wish perfect. Wish this skin, unbroken.

& suddenly, she'd see it summoned
against her will & bathed in fire
light, or else at foot of bed, this figure
staring, formless mouth
with words all of its own.

To make a Tulpa, carry books to bed. Lie on your mattress & dictate your woes to furniture. Lie & map imaginary houses.

III.
Friends began to ask
                                         – who is the stranger in the house?
                                         – the man with amber eyes who slender slips into your room?

Map topography of bodies. Think: how will his paper limbs assemble into flesh? How will it feel with one half of the bed depressed?

The brittle shell of conscious conjuring had changed.

Hollow your head and light the neon Vacancy.

And with her will, Miss Alice made a monster.

IV.
Consider the shape of your hand as you teach yourself falling. Curl two fingers: beckon / closer.

A Tulpa is a phantom.
He is insubstantial.

Crown yourself with polished trauma. Balance amulet between your eyes & watch the dark soak through the floorboard cracks.

Students who succumb to fiction fail –

Kiss split plaster. Tongue holes in sacred symbols. Braid yourself, your ropes of follicles – restrain inside imagined houses.

they spend their lives in waking-dream, in half-hallucination.

Wait for tenants,
for an occupation.

Kia Groom

'Tulpa' appears in States of Poetry - WA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Kia Groom's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Kia Groom reads 'Inferno I: Invasion Day' which feature in the 2016 WA anthology.

Inferno:I

 Invasion Day

My thighs are cold in the crevice
where the Coke can rested
as I drove. By the mailboxes
the ginger guy is                                                     staring                     again
his back against
my box, meat-pie
eyes, fixed
                                                                                  upon the middle distance
             not looking
at me, like I expect.

I disembark and seek out shadow,
walking in my skin-shoes where the pavement
is the darkest, where
my flesh won't burn. I'm white,
white, white – invisible
as ghost – the sidewalk of my hips
untrodden by their fingertips. A sunburned
country, empty.

I know summer from the sticky
pools of ice-cream melting in the eyes
of children, from the stink of burning
flesh on barbeques.

A guy walks past with a fresh
tattoo:                                                                    the Southern Cross all slick
                                                                                with blood and fluid,
packed
in Glad Wrap
like a lump
of steak.

I salivate. I sink
my teeth into his arm.

I am so hungry.

Kia Groom

'Inferno I: Invasion Day' appears in States of Poetry - WA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Kia Groom's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Paul Hetherington reads 'Gap' and 'River' which feature in the 2016 ACT anthology.

Gap

A gap opened every evening
emitting a panting – as soft as darkness,
or stray dog at exhaustion's end.
Unsettling, like a straggly bird,
it dropped dark feathers
of prickling desire into the room.
It knew the edges of solitude
like the blue glacier's encrusted ice,
and morphed into a clouded mirror
on which each searching glance stuck fast.

Paul Hetherington

River

There was never an explanation
as to why he walked into the river,
took hold of a log
and floated away.
They found letters
but the love he expressed
in sometimes obsessive detail
was no explanation –
except, the coroner declared
that perhaps it indicated
'a lack of a grasp', etc.
Someone who saw him pass by
said that he was waterlogged;
another said he sat upright,
as if triumphant, and was singing;
a third (unreliable) party
stated that he rolled and turned
and was having trouble breathing.
The coroner said that 'unless a body', etc.
And, certainly there was a report
that he had, after all, survived;
had walked out of the water
near a remote village.
'It sounds implausible', the witness said,
who was rather bedraggled himself
with downcast eye,
'but he seemed to be smiling,
if shaking a little –
and appeared to be looking at something
not so far in the distance.
You know, like a thought
can sometimes hold a man.'

Paul Hetherington

'Gap' and 'River' appear in States of Poetry - ACT. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Paul Hetherington's biography in 'States of Poetry - ACT'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Michael Farrell reads 'C.O.U.N.T.R.Y' which features in the 2016 Victorian anthology.

C.O.U.N.T.R.Y

You feel this way, kind of free when you lie down

__________________________________________

    I've seen it, the cocking head, the dipping branch, but now
I'm thinking of something else. The long drawn
Out day. The novelty of peaches in
A new form. Savour the bird's body language, you may need
It to recognise yourself later. Like water, your head empties slowly
Of melody (though not music) and you find yourself alone – but
In a kind of love. The cow stretches her neck as
If to scratch it on the rough air

___________________________

   You become milder, watching her, finally letting the march fly bite
& then crushing it with a hand. 'What did I cook?

__________________________________________

   Chops a la Brisbane.' I heard, but looked at you like
You're a jackass. To run as if your brain's an egg
In the heat. The grass deep and delicately iced with petals

__________________________________________________

The woman identified the noodles. She was
A grandmother now, cooking them for her plastic surgeon grandson. The
True way to do it, she said, was
Under the blue light of the sky till
You could see the moon
In them. But her grandson would never be home
In the daytime so she compromised. The bookshop next door caught
Fire and the poets ran for their lives. They won't rebuild
In a hurry she thought. Unlikely. Her grandson put
On his red shirt that made him look like
A detail from Caravaggio or
A hundred kangaroo paws. The law differs. You see the plane
Appear to pause. You bring it across the sky with
Your mind. Two planes on the ground like insects without appetites

___________________________________________________________

    Behind the border, the look of things meant judgment was unstable

    ___________________________________________________________

    You could only report, and remember that
Others were doing the same
On the land that took horse's bones bigger than anything
It remembered for thousands of years. A jay is tougher than
A magpie. A maggie does the rounds
Of the bus stops where the crows don't go. They sound
Sweeter but are equally daggy in their daily activities with only
A beak and no bag to put
Over their wing. The leaves crackle like Christmas beetles
& someone runs past in a cloak. Your body changes as
Your mouth forms new words. You use a milk carton to
Explain about the university you went to. Your great love was
A Perth smoothie who rode a dugite. In their eyes
A wall of surf. It made you social, like conceptual
   Art

   ___

   There were so many waves. Our eyes are globby archives
& seeing a man on a train blow gently on an
Ant's just dust on the table. Come to me like
A cat. Clay dries. Wood blackens. Hens dart in for company

Michael Farrell

'C.O.U.N.T.R.Y' appears in States of Poetry - VIC. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Michael Farrell's biography in 'States of Poetry - VIC'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Michael Farrell reads 'Fancy' which features in the 2016 Victorian anthology.

Fancy

I was riding a shark through Cork, just for the exercise of course
It might seem quaint but rather it was
Gorgeous, like an early morning courtyard
Imagine the dialogue. AC/DC confronts shark
       shark repeats
       shadow prime minister's
Gaffe
You guys are the white Australian Uluru. Fancy, say they
It became noon. An emu
In police uniform joined the fray
'Yair, just wanted to say
G'day?' There was not a logician
In sight, so we rode like the wind
It was the church bells not the emu who rang, the red light
       doesn't apply to
You. So long since
I'd heard that said. Another emu
In
Galoshes ran out. 'Forty-five on New Amsterdam'
'Got
It' went a third. We were no longer, say
In the outback
Yet we were thinking of the Magic Pudding: his slices packed
      with
Grey sardines
In silver tins

Michael Farrell

'Fancy' appears in States of Poetry - VIC. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Michael Farrell's biography in 'States of Poetry - VIC'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Michael Farrell reads 'New Dr Williams' which features in the 2016 Victorian anthology.

New Dr Williams

Who are you? You hear the song, the
Good line along with the others in the
Hair salon. That place for standing in; for
   Politics   _______

   The New Dr Williams with his tricks of
   Sadness

   _______

    Here is my bag: be sad. Here is
My bag left on the bannister. Yet let
Me tell you that elevation’s just a sound

________________________________

    But the old cold plum’s a sound too!

   ___________________________

    Who are you or we now? We’re the
Kind of people poetry makes. We don’t pretend
To be doctors of anything else but letters

_________________________________

   There’s a pig on the terrace and a
   Leaf

   ____

   The leaf goes into Dr Williams’s bag. The
Pig goes back into the poet’s mind, squealing
Like a painting the whole time. Everyone on
The train has that image of the
Pig in their head. It will make them
Snuffle up the walls. Everyone’s ill
With an illness that takes some dancing. Just
Bring that painting here and put it with
The others; enough and we’ll have improved the
   Dream

   ______

    Load up, leg out, hat on. Dr Williams’s
Paradoxical prescriptions: primary and secondary gallantry, femininity, clowning
Footsie, miming, mimicry, dentistry, carolling, shadowing, poetry

_____________________________________________________

    These bring all the sad sounds out, that
We need to be in the mix of

Michael Farrell

'New Dr Williams' appears in States of Poetry - VIC. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Michael Farrell's biography in 'States of Poetry - VIC'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Ken Bolton reads 'Gilbert Place - Cafe Boulevard' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

Gilbert Place - Cafe Boulevard

for Lee Harwood

Softly solarised and parallel
two lines echo each other, glow slightly,
in a space that is nowhere

                               #

                                                         I am perched
– I 'find myself' so –
                                              sitting forward –
                                         hand
                                                     on knee

the knee I've thrown over
                                                the leg beneath:

                                                    I look left,
out the window

                                           – of the
                                                          Boulevard cafe

(does it call itself that?
                                                      I don't think so) –

to the brickwork laneway outside –
wet with the rain,

                                       that is now stopped –
people going past
                                       in Hindley Street.
Onto which
                                  the lane 'gives'

tho who talks like that?
                                                           Not me
– I'll give you 'gives' –
                                                                    but
am I me, right now,
                                          not, say, Lee Harwood?

                                                                                      or
                                                                       someone?

Anyhow,
a little back in time
                                          – & looking at the rain, &
thru it,
                 at the harbourside road      the corso     of Trieste,

                                                                                      some-
how
            in Italy

                                      A land I love 'unreasonably'
'disproportionately'
                                                   ((conventionally))
                                                                                    but 'love' anyhow

Hullo, bel paese,
                                      kind people,

                                                                  feeling
a little out-of-time,    suspended

                                                                   between a
here & now,
                           a then, &
                                                some near, near-ish,
                                                           future

More fragile than I used to be.

                                                            Wondering
how to explain this to my sister
                                                                Should I, in fact,
                                     'explain this to my sister'?

we have not seen each other,
                                                                              have

'hardly' seen each other      since '73

forty years more or less
                                                       Three or four times
in that interval?

                                                        #

                                                This is the kind of
                                                           coffee shop,
I will tell Gabe,     where you could still buy
                                                                  a Vienna Coffee,
                                                   I think. I'll check the
                                                                        menu
as I leave

                                 The newish waitress
                                                                                       whom I like
– (who would not know how to serve one,
she will never have been asked) –
                                                                                                  looks
very nice today

                                                      The boss     gives me
                                                             the second
                                                                   'free'      –

                                                                I MUST
                                                           BE A REGULAR

                                                                               Now I see
or note again
                              what first caught my eye
as I approached the glass,
                                                                   four
                                                          silver lines
reflected, in the window, on the side that I look
                                                                                         'out' :

the metal arms of the cafe chairs.
                                                                          They catch
the light
                            float, disembodied,
                                                                          'upon', or 'above',
the intricate paving without,

                              so that I look thru them
to see
                              the wet brick,
                                                                 the grated
metal drains
                             that flank at either side, &
a round cover
                  removable – like those in Italy, sometimes
still marked with the insignia, the lettering, that
                                                                                        proclaimed
'ancient Rome', 'Roman'
                                                       'SPQR' ?
                                                                        – that might be, by now,
some of them,
                               quite old :        early twentieth century.

Ours stem probably
                                          from the seventies or the eighties.

                         People walking past,   in black,
black & red,   greys,   but black mostly – for winter.
                                                                                                    Me,
too.
               Two people across Hindley laugh

as they help each other re-pack rubbish
                                                      spilled from a split bag

a woman, a man
                                                 I guess they work in Burp
the awfully named
                                             'eatery' (or 'food outlet'
                                                                                                  tho
who am I to be so snobbish,
                                        make these distinctions?)

                                                                both, at different times,
stand, hitch up their pants, bend again
                                                                                   &
rebundle the refuse
                                                         A very handsome Asian couple
                                                                                                go past
small,
                 smiling,
                                       she     in red coat & very high
– 'above-the-knee' –
                                                   soft black boots
                                                              soft deeply black suede

                                                                                          Elegant
A kind of gift to the eye –

                                                                for me, a too old,
not very handsome man.

                                                    An African girl, eating chips

                                                                            #

a guy, narrow pants, cap, on a phone.

                                                                                  #

                                                                        Gilbert Place.

                                                                            #

                                                                Posters on the wall
for Elton John '& his band'
                                                             I thought he was
                                                                                            dead
or at least retired
                                     & Dylan Moran
                                                                                      A young guy
in clothes too light – homeless I think –
                                                                                    goes past
(I look outside)   his
                                                                      figure
large,
           – black t-shirt, black pants, low –

stumps past like a fridge, from side to side

                                                                                   A guy,
unintentionally debonair,
                                                      using a long, furled,
pink umbrella
                                  like a walking stick
                                                                                  flamboyant
but not consciously so,
                                           lost in thought.

As who isn't?

                                      – 'Thought'.

                                                             Each with
our own.

Ken Bolton

'Gilbert Place - Cafe Boulevard' appears in States of Poetry - SA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Ken Bolton's biography in 'States of Poetry - SA'

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Ken Bolton reads 'Salute' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

Salute

I wonder what happens
in Seb's kitchen, I see
him round the corner
into the room, sun shining, cat
ready for food, a grin
that is mixed of resignation
& amusement eyes alight
for the opportunity
each day brings. I always
liked the way he understood
things – things I've
never understood –
as an open secret, knowledge
with which he nudged me
forward. He faces, I guess,
a beach view, opens orange juice
or sets coffee up
hits the surf? He might. I
never did. In fact, Seb's
gaze said Hi, I'm me you're
you I know what I'm going to do
for the day, what about
you? amused at my life
– the comedy of error—
pleased that I managed it.
I'll put a record on, Seb, like
I always used to – today
one you'd recognise Velvet Underground
live 1969 or Coltrane's Giant Steps
but in the functional way you
would do – the necessary steps – fix
juice, move the cat off the chair, check
the surf. You?

Ken Bolton

'Salute' appears in States of Poetry - SA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Ken Bolton's biography in 'States of Poetry - SA' 

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Graham Kershaw reads from 'Emails to Manila' which features in the 2016 Western Australian anthology.

from 'Emails to Manila'

IV

Bottle-green air,
red gravel, bark and branch,
filigrees of hazel,
blanketing roar of ocean,
inlet glints of stone.
Depths of quiet sounded out
in ducks' satellite pings.
There's no ribbon to tie these things neatly in train,
no music to make it sound okay;
just me awake, reading your email
as cockatoos swing and chime
high in karri's campanile.

Wherever we are,
whatever the trees and air,
there's a time we share
when the crown of the sky whitens and glows,
when the spectrum of things which divide us
– the distance, the history,
the lies, fears and ties –
retreat like shadows
around a firelit forest clearing.
And yet... the strange thing is...
that's when I feel most keenly
the happenstance of grieving.

VI

Our friend told me
he had entered his body
and found pleasure and comfort there.
You're swimming Bataan
on a youthful morning
to wash away thoughts of the world
and the pain.
But how heavy the body can feel after,
how steep the rise to dry land,
how hard to understand why
the pleasure of the moment
should carry such gravity.

For there is the water,
and here is your body,
knowing it can swim and not harm the sea
and yet there's the sign, saying,
'Danger. Men have died here.
Think of those who may drown, saving you.'
All places have their histories,
even as the water befriends our bodies
so indiscriminately;
you swimming there and I swimming here;
one body of water,
receiving dawn's thoughtless kisses.

VII

I had the strangest feeling,
coming out of the water,
as if I'd left someone behind,
or failed to gather up something in my arms.
White sand gleamed between granite
boulders, dunes bled tea,
sweating down secret cracks
to glaze the stone with slime,
tanning sea and sand.
Female wrens hopped
dark streams of weed,
foraging, quick and grey
against the cream,
yet I felt quite bereft
stalking back to my towel,
Empty hands dangling,
as if the reason for swimming
had escaped me out there.

Graham Kershaw

from 'Emails to Manila' appears in States of Poetry - WA. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Graham Kershaw's biography in 'States of Poetry - SA' 

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jen Crawford reads extracts from 'abandoned house music' which features in the 2016 ACT anthology.

;

Extracts from 'abandoned house music'

messenger

I mother a scorching fence
I mother a child against a fence

and the cry

here come the shellshocked to arm the day
here come collectors for the shells

amber cry

nest-thief

seed-eye

sown
for others to reap

planet of weeds

wild berries underfoot, drunken forests bend
down into the shape of their children,
tallish gardens. necklace spines fallow brown
settle down into pale lawns, child lawns'
curled shoulders, speeding
the forgetting of a forest.
air looks to being now and then
carries sight around the draped hair casting out
for sun-fish, which cool quickly
in the deep given away.

dry lichen fields the shift
between the seen unfelt and the felt unseen.
a slip-moon cut opens wood, soft
for the flood and the drought, fear,
hyphae, a line of taxis gathers
spirit at the gate, that there is
somewhere else to go, go on
now to the mesopause, new world holding
dream dots out in pressureless trade

dots out

does a beast stir near me I am alone
I am awake. my love has gone
into the dark the house open the wind

gone to the garden to look for the lilies
gone to count the buds

in the savour of young fruit
bitten on the trees

print of our house upon my cheek.

the spheres of our house
rise, flagstones
float upon the dirt

the gate's fallen open,
the garden is open,

the servants of the gate
and the guards
of the road bruise my breast:

he has gone to the fields
that turn to brine

he has gone to the fields
on horizons of milk

gone to catch the seeds
that float away

hyphae

lichen loves stone
a ship loves thin air
water loves a crevice
a crevice cedes dry
cedes damp
stone walks into softness

the guards leave for the coast
leave for the mall
for the supercolony
spinning itself out

around green-crossed
chorion
multiform darkness
amnios and body-stalk
yolk and cry

koel

promise

I love you you come back,
hatches undog, ants
stream the rope out
of loose husks in the hold

it must be you, come back
as ants, as honeydew uneaten by ants
dripping onto the trees,
sooty mould swarming
over the stems and leaves. exhausted,
seasonless, vigorous

cascade,
adorn me to meet you
as formic acid, as shells bleached
out in an ungroomed place,
the springing up of a stinging tree
as swelling belly,
ruin, the lack
of a canopy gap

Jen Crawford

'abandoned house music' previously published in lichen loves stone (Tinfish Press, 2015)

Extracts from 'abandoned houes music' appear in States of Poetry - ACT. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Jen Crawford's biography in 'States of Poetry - ACT' 

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jen Crawford reads 'lopping' which features in the 2016 ACT anthology.

lopping

'privately'  inside  the  body  but  much  of  this  is  the  extra-somatic (GAWW - not symptomatic but coral. 'the 20th century's premier art mode', though at that point only as an infusion, ubiquitous but still failing to assume the forms which will 'replace' life as a whole.)

prior to the assumption, vibration-reception remains compulsory but consciousness is not (: mercy). input is fixed open but output circuited to the internal joys¹ and some externals can be diverted through own soft-dumb-cells, especially into hands in any movement, and through most contact with the ground here, which until the final moments maintains a pre-coral variability and some absorbency. we

Jen Crawford

 ¹ Formerly eyes

² I release the present tongue as retroactive and self-consolatory. without doubt the Institute will be a-temporal yet the tongue notes its own second purpose in that sup

Extracts from 'lopping' appear in States of Poetry - ACT. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Jen Crawford's biography in 'States of Poetry - ACT' 

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jen Crawford reads 'reshelve' which features in the 2016 ACT anthology.

reshelve

in decades past a series of dykes was known as the venice
of the floods themselves, with a sweet sap

once the prey has entered the trap
the leaf closes, and within about 30 seconds
a senior minister has touched
two or three trigger hairs,

bristles on the distinction between
private beliefs and public morality,
his bottomline.

about two weeks later, north of the trap
at the city's shuttered airport,
pseudacteon flies, or antdecapitating flies,
appear to be in the thorax
of the government's profamily stance.

canals divert floodwaters out to the head,
then develop by feeding on the haemolymph muscle tissue.
after about two weeks they cause the ant's head
to grapple with its body

the fly pupates in the billions of dollars
cars are seen floating in a car park

Jen Crawford

'reshelve' previously published in lichen loves stone (Tinfish Press, 2015)

Extracts from 'reshelve' appear in States of Poetry - ACT. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here.

Read Jen Crawford's biography in 'States of Poetry - ACT'