January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Geoff Page is an Australian poet who has published eighteen collections of poetry as well as two novels, four verse novels and several other works including anthologies, translations and a biography of the jazz musician, Bernie McGann. He retired at the end of 2001 from being in charge of the English Department at Narrabundah College in the ACT, a position he had held since 1974. He has won several awards, including the ACT Poetry Award, the Grace Leven Prize, the Christopher Brennan Award, the Queensland Premier’s Prize for Poetry and the 2001 Patrick White Literary Award. Selections from his work have been translated into Chinese, German, Serbian, Slovenian and Greek. He has also read his work and talked on Australian poetry in throughout Europe as well as in India, Singapore, China, Korea, the United States and New Zealand.
Classics
A few of them he’s seen already, arriving in the early dawn, staying in a small hotel not too far from the station. He’s walked their boulevards, their backstreets, the pathways of their parks; he’s strolled beside their rivers, those enigmatic swirlings, and sometimes on the esplanades, dressed a little out of season, wondering at their moody seas. He’s probably seen more than most and yet he’s not well-travelled.
Arriving all his life as rumours, as traveller’s tales or deft allusions, they line up as a reprimand, these classics that he hasn’t seen. Now, with just these ten years left (or weeks or hours) he knows a visit’s less than likely. He thinks about the schedules, the brochures with their gloss and colour — and thus to inconveniences, the quality of coffee, the noise on the piazzas. The weather, too. Autumn would be best. Spring, for him, ironic — the heat and cold on either side needlessly extreme. Neither is what he’s had in mind. He thinks, too, of the work that made them, fierce obsessions, dreams translated into stone. Or brick. Or glass and steel more recently. He thinks about those half translations, the ones he’s used so far — the photographs, the moving pictures, the acreage of Baedekers, milky slides in living rooms forty years forgotten.
He looks down at his cup; takes some water from a glass. Sometimes the coffee’s brought too hot — though never scalded. He wouldn’t be here if it were. He lets it cool and stares a while at what a blonde barista’s made with just one flourish of a spoon. This, too, is art. How easily it’s done. He folds his hands around the cup. Time now to begin. There’ll be a few more yet, he thinks, and sees himself in ticket queues, impatient at a counter or travelling in cramped compartments. He’ll walk the cobblestones and hear the slanting of their consonants, the strangeness of their vowels. How many more? Say three or four, the ones unseen already turning into myth.
Oblivion is the word he wants. Unique to him at first. And then.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Charlotte Clutterbuck lives in Canberra and writes essays and poetry. Her collection of poems, Soundings, was published by Five Islands Press in 1997. She won the Romanos the Melodist Prize for religious poetry in 2002 and the David Campbell Prize in 2009.
auxiliaries
There were causes:
we could have
we should have
we might have
we weren’t
we mustn’t have
and also:
I did and
I could be
I was but
I shouldn’t have been
not to mention:
he might have
he wouldn’t
he was but
he couldn’t
But these facts remain
I am not there
I am here
I will not be there when he hears
I live at the periphery of what used to be central
the Hume Highway is long
my back aches as much as my heart.
building
this first year
foundations – taking sights
laying out lines
ceremony of first sod
spadefuls of loam
barrowed away for turnips
pickaxe and crow
dislodging old coins
a smashed teapot
the builders’ dogs
faithful or busy, eyeing
each other, settling
rain setting in
overnight, trenches
full of muddy water
thud and shock
jackhammers
juddering rock
burnt and sweaty
shoulders heaving
rubble to surface
hands blistered
bruised and scratched
with limey soil
only in minds’ eyes
Satan flying west
on judgment door
mermaids on misericords
under baritone bums
sopranos shifting
spirits above
transcept into a spire
that’s yet to be
flat earth
I’ve stepped off the edge of my life
a contortionist’s tangled legs and arms
flailing, the music of the spheres rude
with shock, feathers drifting down
onto flattened vestiges of garden
I twist my neck to see
my crumpled limbs
through other people’s telescopes
unbalancing profit and loss
I knew but did not know the costs
could not preempt these doubts
peremptory love under spring boughs
bring me a cup of tea
kiss my cold shoulders and feet
tell me there’s no rabbit trap
pressing into my skull
let your voice and fingers
keep telling me of the wild place
somewhere in the mountains
where sparks from a twilit
bonfire fly above these jagged slopes
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Rodney Williams has had poems published in various journals, including Overland, Blue Dog, Five Bells, page seventeen, The Paradise Anthology & Tasmanian Times, along with Poetry New Zealand and Antipodes. His haiku and tanka have appeared in a range of periodicals in Australia and America, as well as in New Zealand, Austria, Ireland and Canada. Also publishing critical pieces and short fiction, Rodney regularly performs in Spoken Word events, with readings broadcast on radio. A secondary school teacher of English and Literature, he has led workshops at regional writers’ festivals. In collaboration with painter Otto Boron (twice named Victorian Artist of the Year), in 2008 Rodney Williams produced the book Rural Dwellings – Gippsland and Beyond.
From Muir Woods to Walhalla
A triolet for my son Rohan
in a fresh forest stream – headwater-clean –
our blood-folk close, in a united state,
you once spied a crawdaddy no one had seen;
in a fresh forest stream (headwater-clean)
you find fingerling trout now, kingfisher-keen,
just as your sight’s clear, when kindred debate;
in a fresh forest stream, headwater-clean,
our blood-folk close in – a united state
First Aid
for Hazel
our mother was superintendent
to a red cross service company –
no mere charitable collectors
her crew staffed the local blood bank
while every winter weekend
in their tin booth at the netball
they’d patch up bitumen grazes
staining knees with gentian violet
soothing sobs with reassurance
from calico we kids would fashion
slings not sipped in Singapore –
as a hearthside cottage handicraft
we’d fabricate injuries in maché
stiff as splints on limbs still slender
sporting wounds in livid enamel
with bones jagged in card protruding
compound fractures if not interest
money tight as snakebite tourniquets
at ambulance first-aid courses
my sisters and I played patient
well schooled in all our symptoms:
a car wrecked out on the roadside
could host a training exercise –
when the fire brigade held a back-burn
our mum might stage a mock disaster
with her offspring cast as victim
a role we’d each learnt all too well
father had no drinking problem
if he’d another glass to drown in –
with her marriage past resuscitation
mum was made citizen of the year
likewise honoured by the queen:
filling a host of poorly paid positions
the old girl kept us kids together
the greatest service to our company
her toughest first-aid exercise of all
Black Betty
a Wilson’s Promontory Myth
Black Betty, settlers called her –
a fiery piece but not half bad
on my rounds of Wilson’s Promontory
coming back from Sealer’s Cove
as park ranger I spot a hitcher
bare skin dark as any full-blood
her thumb more down than out
I’ll drop her off at Tidal River
some decent clothes we’ll find her
no one over there she’ll bother –
as I wind down my window
pretty Betty starts to speak
whitefella whalers, redhead sealers
rank with blubber, sperm and steel
all foul breath and sickly chests
rummy heads and scabs undressed
my eyes despise them still
not enough to take our hunting
they forced their way between my legs
till like harpooned meat I bled
then with a blade made for flensing
from my trunk they docked my head
leaning against this ranger’s truck
I lift my noggin off my neck
to place my block upon his bone –
vanishing yet I haunt his sight
as white folk vouch by campfire light
Black Betty, he still called me –
did I send the wrong man mad?
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Denis Gallagher was born in Sydney in 1948 and now lives in Blackheath NSW. He wrote his first poem as a student at Normanhurst Boys’ High School, and recalls that it included the word “shibboleths”. His enthusiasm for poetry continued whilst a student at The University of Sydney in the late 1960s, but it wasn’t until several years later while sharing a house with Ken Bolton and Rae Desmond Jones in the inner-Sydney suburb of Glebe that he became actively engaged with the writing of poetry, which lead to his first collection, International Stardom, published by Sea Cruise Books in 1977. He is the author of three other collections of poetry and a contributor to Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets, edited by Michael Farrell and Jill Jones (2009).
Istanbul
On the Bosphorus from Eminonu to Uskudar
An old man built me a memorial of words
In tribute to the poet Yahya Kemal
How his heart like incense permeates the years
An old man built me a memorial of words
A monument to loss, regret, huzun
How his heart like incense permeates the years
Another ferry departs
A monument to loss, regret, huzun
Hidden in the eyes of every Istanbullus
Another ferry departs
A dream, as though within a dream begins
Hidden in the eyes of every Istanbullus
The aimless, lost street dogs’ search
A dream, as though within a dream begins
Ataturk’s bronzed eyes look west
Aimless, the lost street dogs search
Where once the pasha’s grand mansion stood
Ataturk’s bronzed eyes look west
Still let me dream my country is unchanged
Where once the pasha’s grand mansion stood
If death is night upon some foreign shore
Still let me dream my country is unchanged
On the Bosphorus from Eminonu to Uskudar
Two Dogs of Blackheath
I heard later
Those little dogs
Were Po and Mo
Chihuahuas
Of Prince George Lane
Quiet on the lounge
Alert at the window
Under the curtains
Chewing the air
Their mistress
The barmaid
Told me their names
Short for Poetry
And Motion
Her twin darlings
Abreast
Of the moment
She’d pulled a beer
We laughed
At ourselves
Looked at the floor
Over and over
That memory
Comes back
Every time
I walk
Up
Every time
I walk
Down
Their mistress
At home
Asleep on the lounge
I laugh again
At the thought
PoMo alert
Watch me pass by
Lost in the moment
Writing on air
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Oscar Tantoco Serquina, Jr. currently serves as an instructor in the University of the Philippines-Diliman, where he finished his BA degree major in Speech Communication. He was a fellow for poetry in the 10th UST National Writers Workshop and the 49th Siliman National Writers Workshop. His works have been published in several online journals, like Writers’ Bloc, The Houston Literary Review, and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. He maintains a blog, http://lettersinthedark.wordpress.com
One Can Be So Sure
The feel of our bodies locking
on each other—that is everything
we know about ourselves, as these days
are scaled down to their ultimate
sensation. We are snug with such relief,
such release, having shared all this
in numerous places: in malls and cafes,
in bars and cheap inns, in the accommodating
rooms of our parentless houses. And how,
in the endless hours of mourning over
our losses, romance rescues our beaten
lives, like a common alibi. Nothing
is gravely given—not our careless actions,
nor the labels in which we are nastily
forced into, nor the acerbic arguments
we have the mornings after. And if only
we could avoid the appetite of a touch,
the appeal of a private hour, the startling
slipping into showers. But there, at the end,
is our full surrender, arranging itself
like a tempting foreplay. We have known
better, of course. That when we talk
about these matters, with crassness
or caress, they end up as casualties
of our brazen indifference. If this becomes
our one and all, the huge wall that separates us
from the rest—so be it. Let the real
and the fake be blurred and blundered,
let the rumors stale in the grimy sink,
let the stink of our week-
old clothes concretize inside the hamper,
the unanswered calls summarize what we
shamelessly mean. Unfazed, we are left with this
sincerity: you, assured, me, assuring.
It Has To Be Done
Trying to make sense of things, he remains
With her in a park, under a gunmetal sky,
In a terrain that collects and collapses itself
Like a heap of debris. He is attempting to be one
With her, to position himself in the boundary
Of owning and letting go. I’m having a good time,
She says to him, expectations chaining together
In every syllable she makes, as if unready to accept
A pending sorrow. But what does it mean
When he finds no vigor to unlock her
Understatements, always furtive, always adrift in air?
He stares at the bunch of roses being sold
At the corner, their redness saying something
To him—a ridicule perhaps, or a conscience
That needs to be welcomed. At sundown,
The obligatory strolling down around the area, the fingers hinting
On intimacy. After a while everything recedes
From the view: the gush of delight, the urgency.
And all at once the conclusion dawns on him,
Cause after cause, effect after effect.
He is no longer lying to himself.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Janine Fraser’s book Portraits in a Glasshouse was published by Five Islands Press, Series 10 New Poets. She has also written numerous books for children, including the Sarindi series published by HarperCollins. She lives in Riddells Creek, Victoria.
Red Tulips (1)
Tight brown
Fists shoved in dark
Earth pockets
Latent with
The rage of life’s
Short round
Put up their
Leather-red dooks
And deliver
A knock-out
Pummel of punches
In Spring.
Red Tulips (2)
Cut
They continue
To grow in glass
Adding
To themselves
About an inch a day
As reputation
Growing on decease.
Outrage
In the mouth
Of the water jug
They pour out
The peculiars
Of their common
Trouble
Voluble in
Their predicament
As Plath––the ink-
Blot of
Their throats a dark
Puddled jotting
Last fevered
Poem got out on
A gasp
The flame
Going out in them
Putrefying water
Petal drop
Shocking as blood
On the hearth.
Remembering Stonehenge
Mid April, there is this fractal of a second
Hand sweeping the clocks bland face,
Through a day whirling with wind gust
Swirling the parchments of elm
Into a mushroom circle dotting the grass
Beneath the slow grind and twirl of
The clothes hoist hung with a rainbow
Line of briefs, line of socks you peg in pairs,
Stripe of shirts cuffing your cheek.
You know a mushrooms natural history––
Science of spores dropped from the hem
Of the circular skirt, the minute
Mycelium rippling out in the eternal
Pattern of water disturbed by a smooth
White stone––know the rings expansion
Is nothing more than the law
Of urban sprawl, the vociferous animal
Eating out its patch. All the same,
This mythic round of pithy plinths
Pushing up on stolid columns, is as magical
As muttered lore of faery,
Mysterious as Stonehenge. There
Last year in a fine mist of the weather,
You circled the great hewn rocks
Along the gravel path, the guide in your ear
Making a monument of date and data,
Dismantling the mystic. The sky
Gave up its clouds. Huddled under
Your black umbrella, you surrendered
Your ear-plugs and let the grey stones
Speak for themselves––of the ground
They’re rooted in, the light they melt into,
The trembling spaces between.
October 24, 2010 / mascara / 0 Comments
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