Spring 2011 Poetry Feature Part 4: Adamson, Farrell, Nunn, Hardacre, Kerdijk Nicholson, Beesley [08.09.2011]
Welcome to SPUNC’s Spring 2011 poetry feature. Over the course of National Poetry Week, we’ll post parts 1,2, 3 and 4 … a bumper crop of great poetry from some of our member presses' books.
If one, two or many of the poems jump out at you and offer you a cuppa, then we strongly encourage you to pick up a copy.
We look forward to featuring great poetry put out by Sunline Press, Odyssey Books, Hybrid Publishers, Papertiger.Media / SOI3 and Illura Press this summer.
Part 1: Hart, Ryan, Wearne, Harrison
Part 2: Sharkey, Alizadeh, Sykes, Goodfellow, Charlton, Tredinnick
Part 3: Day, Sherborne, Ballou, Mateer, Holland-Batt, Liversidge
Part 4: Adamson, Farrell, Nunn, Hardacre, Kerdijk Nicholson, Beesley
Currently, it’s springtime. Now, Part 4.
The Kingfisher’s Soul ~ Robert Adamson
A wave hits the shoreline of broken boulders
Explodes, fans into fine spray, a fluid wing,
Then drops back onto the tide: A spume
Of arterial blood. Our eyes can be gulled by what
The brain takes in—our spirits take flight
Each time we catch sight out—feathers of smoke
Dissolve in air as we glide towards clarity.
In the old days I used to think art
That was purely imagined could fly higher
Than anything real. Now I feel a small fluttering
Bird in my own pulse, a connection to sky.
Back then a part of me was only half alive:
Your breath blew a thicket of smoke from my eyes
And brought that half to life. There’s no
Evidence, nothing tangible, and no philosopher
Of blood considering possibilities,
Weighing up feathers, or souls. One day
Some evidence could spring from shadows
As my body did in rejecting the delicious poisons,
The lure of dark song. You came with a wind
In your gaze, flinging away trouble’s screw,
Laughing at the King of Hell’s weird command;
You created birthdays and the cheekbones
Of family—I was up, gliding through life
And my fabrications, thought’s soft cradle.
I scoured memory’s tricks from my own memory,
Its shots and score cards, those ambiguous lyrics—
Clear bird song was not human-song, hearing became
Nets and shadowy vibrations, the purring
Air, full of whispers and lies. I felt blank pages,
Indentations created by images, getting by
With the shapes I made from crafted habits.
You taught me how to weigh the harvest of light.
There was bright innocence in your spelling,
I learned to read again through wounded eyes.
Wispy spiders of withdrawal sparked with static
Electricity across skin, tiny veins, a tracery of
Coppery wires, conducting pain to nerve
Patterns: All lightweights, to your blood’s iron.
You brought along new light to live in
As well as read with—before you came, whenever
I caught a glimpse of my own blood, it seemed
A waterfall of bright cells as it bled away.
The clouds of euphony, created by its loss, became
Holes in thinking, pretend escape hatches. You’re now
A rush, wings through channels of my coronary
Arteries. We slept together when you conjured
A bed in your Paddington tree-house: barb-less hours,
Peace appeared and said: Soon, the future awaits you.
I stepped into the day, by following your gaze.
This poem appears in Robert Adamson’s collection, The Golden Bird, published by Black Inc. His collection, Black Water, is available from Brandl & Schlesinger.
the orange household ~ Michael Farrell
poets like kids in flap
the old glue laundry &;
donkeys dead
a roarer
he propped up
the bars &;
he brayed like someone honoured so much
time we spend at our friends looking
for termites genital rosebuds
from our lips racism is too
into your own streets lined with palm
the orange father bethlehem
in his mind a state of collapse
bags sugar in homage to an ancestress things
never need change ground the same piece of covering
valid over & over wrapping as an object
in strips of words infinitely large orange children
mourn the donkey sit down as they pour its breakfast
This poem appears in Michael Farrell’s collection, a raiders guide, published by Giramondo Publishing.
Bali Sunrise ~ Graham Nunn
i
Sunlight falls in slivers through the thatched walls of my villa. I can hear the early morning procession of motorbikes, a rasping voice that is never lost. The hibiscus outside my window is a rush of wings. The tiny bodies of these nameless birds, wide awake and restless. I had planned to sleep late this morning, but I find it impossible. This land, so wild, that I am forced to admire its beauty.
pulling back blinds
sun has touched
the rice paddy
ii
This morning I wake at 4am. The strangeness of the hotel room hits like a bad dream. I slap at the crazy sting the mosquitoes have left on ankles and neck. Watch the shadows move through the old blinds. Darkness slowly comes apart, lifts away at the horizon, which leads me to think of my grandmother and the constellation of stars she is guarding. I light a stick of incense and whisper a prayer.
alone
a gecko joins
the conversation
iii
Another humid morning and I am up with the roosters, shaving the bristles from my tired face. The animal I have only heard has eaten the banana from my fruit bowl and left its black skin for the ants. The sky is hazy, depthless. Standing before the mirror I muse on my time here. I am a solitary Adam, in a foreign paradise.
far from home
a stranger cries
in the stillness
iv
In the village market, they are laying out offerings for the gods. The closeness here makes me agitated. The streets a turbulent mix of artists, shopkeepers, drivers and dogs. Everything here rests on the edge of the tourist dollar. The bargaining is fierce and musical. They offer morning price and still we want less. The daily game of financial cat and mouse unfolds, until a price is reached. The vitality, the spiritual strength of these people make me weep as they smile and wish us good luck. In so many ways I have never felt so hollow.
counting our money
wind carries
the sound of laughter
v
Today has been gathering momentum, all of my thoughts converging into one – the poems, the people, the uninhibited beauty. Last night at the farewell party, the sky kept its stars hidden and words failed me. I tried to tell them everything, to speak of real beauty, but when asked, the silence was inevitable.
This morning, I stare through the mosquito net and watch the sunrise over the village. Images and textures, the taste and scent of this land rush through me in waves. I breathe it in.
a rooster crows -
last morning in Bali
This poem appears in Graham Nunn’s collection, Measuring the Depth, published by Pardalote Press.
5:15 ~ Paul Hardacre
words his brutal formality as
basement poem or smoky affair &
it could've been any dance club or
side of the road taking a piss / roll
in five for hanam-cit dawn laneway
treatment / a measured line of cranes
or mountains / a ronaldo wash & dry
your pre-pubescent sons / their culture
i guess / sublime orange & seasoned.
cornered she flowers in red canvas
winter all marching legs & head down
marble in green / the rusted ascent she
views the LZ flared & nothing below
to walk the rimy stone / conspicuously
wealthy & marvelled / all worn in the
head or shelled / didn't read it that way.
morning as a nacelle in acrylic
says 'that's not me' against the table
with cold fingers / the dead bonsai of
love in her mind as we pass the stall it's
byron calling on horseback in skimpy
roman armour / the grand chuckled
apology in leather & bone / sunlit dye
or later wetland sharing gum at dusk
to run / to find her voice gram-positive
This poem appears in Paul Hardacre’s collection, Love in the place of rats, published by Transit Lounge.
They talk to you, they give you one or two keys, an empty map of another earth ~ Anna Kerdijk Nicholson
These nights are a world of sound, you wrap a blanket
round you and sit, and then there it goes again,
behind the clouds, a flicker, lightning, you’d be bound,
but others say no, it’s a precursor to the southern lights.
Your ink is used to survey and chart and yet you doubt it,
surmise your words will grow nasty mould. Judgment:
in import grimmer than azimuth, zenith, lunar longitude;
in its calculation and consequence further-reaching.
You take possession of islands every day: every
thing within range of your eye seems capable of
dissolution and reconstitution at the tip of your pen.
It is ‘all for the Glory of God and for your King’,
they say; but only sons of bitches could say that:
in this phosphorescent age, you are footprints on the moon.
This poem appears in Anna Kerdijk Nicholson’s collection, Posession, published by 5 Islands Press.
Temperature and Actresses ~ Luke Beesley
afterThe Vertical Ray of the Sun, a film by Tran Anh Hung
We emptied mosquito nets
of the morning air
or simply took them off her
How strange this scene would tell
if we took its colour in a picture
The white lie
of its colour and form
as the orange curtains just happened
to lift with the wind
between the conversation.
– We are simply human fires.
She talked of the face
the expressions, the taste especially
smoking cigarettes and the smouldering talk
of art and passions. The reaction
of warmth to rain.
- How to place
the constellation of our life?
She used the word prayer because it’s restful. Think –
the cool, damp architecture of religion
the beauty left
A soft word
in a sure sentence.
The sexuality of fainting.
This poem appears in Luke Beesley’s collection, Lemon Shark, published by SOI3.
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