States of Poetry Poems

Adlubescence, n. Pleasure,
delight
           1.    April day in Canberra, fog in the morning
                  lifts, sunshine, moon
              &nb ...

I set out one morning to return a book and five years later I have not returned; face
pressed into the dirty skin of the Earth. In the bushes I stare from scrubby branches skin
angry with red rashes trace paths travelled. I remember two of the things I left behind –
a copy of The Brothers Karamazov and a poem I wrote in Mexico. Tears catch in my eyes
at sunset ...

Miranda Lello is a Canberra poet and performer whose début poetry collection, A Song, The World To Come, was published in March 2017 by Recent Work Press. It took thirty-five years to write, and Miranda launche ...

we write small poems
make pots that shatter –
if not in fire then falling
from careless hands –

all this to make sense of
the random moments
parading past our hearts
in chaos. instead

we should write poems
make pots that shatter –
if not in fire then falling
from careless hands –

< ...

             (first stanza after Rosemary Dobson’s Over the Frontier)

The pot I imagine
is always better
than the one
                I make.

But after all these years
my hands are learning
how to work cla ...

1        They know the subtler shades of green and where each one belongs;
2        and some reds:
          ochre, orange and something aching towards crimson –
          all in a single patch;
3      &nb ...