Gig Ryan
Gig Ryan’s last book was New and Selected Poems (Giramondo, 2011), published in the United Kingdom as Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2012). Manners of an Astronaut (Hale & Iremonger, 1984) was re-issued by Shearsman Books, UK, in 2018. She was Poetry Editor of The Age from 1998 to 2016. Her work first appeared ...
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‘My new persona helped me to make money,’ says the streamer,
but cruel and petty, unhoped for ideal like a hovercraft shimmers
behind a definition of a chair ...
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Anywhere’s more homely
than this field day to mortality,
accumulating severances
that wrangle distance
like before and after’s rosary of rue.
I admire Jeremy Prynne, Clark Coolidge, Mina Loy, and Lyn Hejinian, but I don’t know whether they have influenced my work. To limit this list in time somewhat: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Eliot, Auden, Berryman, Ashbery, O’Hara. Among the Australians: Kenneth Slessor, Francis Webb, Michael Dransfield, John Tranter, Jennifer Maiden, Martin Johnston, John Forbes. Everything one reads or hears is an influence. The list seems infinite and includes songwriters such as Thomas Moore and Hank Williams.
... (read more)Selected Poems 1975–2010 by Ken Bolton & Four Poems by Ken Bolton
Cheerily inquiring, I came to Heaven’s gate open to a simple throne,
the sky perforated with stars
and Jupiter’s two-faced moon trailing its orbit
‘Teach my walking soul’