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Annamaria Weldon

Annamaria Weldon

Annamaria Weldon’s writing residency with Symbiotica UWA prompted the poems, essays, and photographs of Yalgorup National Park in her last book, The Lake’s Apprentice (UWAP, 2014). She has just completed her third poetry collection, inspired by Malta’s Neolithic temple culture. She researched and wrote during several visits to her birth island, most recently as 2016 Writer in Residence at St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, Valletta. Annamaria’s previous collections were The Roof Milkers (Sunline Press, 2008) and Ropes of Sand (Associated News Malta, 1984). Her poetry has been published in Australian literary journals, anthologised, broadcast on Radio National, and has been staged in several collaborative projects including contemporary dance and art installations. Her awards include the inaugural Nature Conservancy Australia Essay Prize, the Tom Collins Poetry Prize, and a shortlisting in the 2016 Peter Porter Poetry Prize.

'ghost flock' by Annamaria Weldon | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two • 13 October 2017
While women scanned the horizon, fishersand hunters tended their nets, someoneetched the Lapwing crown-plumes in clay. Abandoning hunger andits frozen ground, they soarSouth with the Grigale wind Middle Sea harbingers of theLampuki-fish moon, its haloa herald of autumn rains. Outlines, incisions quicken thoseplovers’ flight through terracotta sky.A ghost flock, timeless on stone. Annamaria W ... (read more)

'in the National Museum of Maltese Archaeology' by Annamaria Weldon | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two • 13 October 2017
We met at the Neolithic display. I was staringat the loom-weights, suspended in a glass case.Handcarved stones, smaller than seashells a tell-tale hole bored through their middle. That’s whenI noticed you, uncanny yet not out of placeholding a loom-weight. You seemed at home with fibre your fingers felt its tensions, slack or taut,sensitive to texture, strong hands threadingthe weft, sinews fa ... (read more)

'stone mother tongue' by Annamaria Weldon | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two • 13 October 2017
Alabaster: such a beautiful word for silence.Neolithic Venus, was translucence eloquentenough when stone was our mother tongue? Yellow-throated crocus were strewnat your feet, they fed you honeyand broad beans. Worship swelled your breasts and fertile belly, men livedwithout weapons, women were weaversand potters crowned in cowrie shells at death and in time their whitened bonesdyed red, with p ... (read more)

'goddess we trample' by Annamaria Weldon | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two • 13 October 2017
Archipelago, sleeping goddess whose bodywe trample as tourists take selfies, bored loversseek mystery, stray dogs piss on temple stones. Inside the sanctuary walls, torba floors enduretheir bone-white ground broken as the silencenow deities are curios, gift shop souvenirs. Asphodel and Sea-squill bloom in the corners of ruinsstrewn like footnotes to remind us these shrinesare still alive. At daw ... (read more)